There''s more to northeast than insurgency: Siddharth Sarma

New Delhi, Sept 19 (PTI) Author of a quirky travelogue about the north east and the India winner of Vodafone Crossword Book Award 2009, Siddharth Sarma rues the fact that any discussion about the region is usually political in nature.

"I believe there is more to the north east than just insurgencies. There is history, a certain way of life, which is never explored," says the author who recently participated in the Delhi launch of his book "East of the Sun".

The Delhi-based journalist say he wrote the book to encourage readers to travel there and discover the culture and eccentricities of the place for themselves.

Released earlier this year in the author''s hometown Guwahati, the book ''East of the Sun: A Nearly-stoned Walk Down the Road in a Different Land'' traces Sarma''s journey through Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura and Mizoram into western Myanmar and is interspersed with humorous anecdotes and SMS lingo (''prolly'' for probably and ''imho'' for in my honest opinion).

The idea for the book came from a series of emails the author wrote to his friends as he travelled through the seven sister states to research for his first novel ''The Grasshopper''s Run''.

When his editor saw the emails, Sarma was asked to compile them into a book.

"I have also written about other places I visited in the region, during previous trips" says Sarma, who earlier covered insurgencies in the north east.