(Written by Juan Sklar) A friend gifted me Nunca llegamos a la India (We never made it to India) for my last birthday. It has many of the qualities of what I consider a great gift: it's close enough to the kind of things I like but not so closely align as to be something I'd buy myself. Having said that, I must admit that I enjoyed reading it.

The main character travels to India and provides a very raw description of what he finds: from the neo-spiritual Europeans, Latinos, and Americans looking for cheap vacations, the spiritual traveler that wants to be enlightened, and much more. The first half is a very easy read, entertaining, not much more. The second half gets much more interesting. In a context that combines references to Indian culture, sex, rape attempts, and drugs of varios types the book begins to dig deeper and made me reconsider my view points with regards to visiting India -- something I considered many times but that always escaped away of for the same reason that the autor explained during in the first part of the book. Don't want to spoil it if you're planning to read it. I'd give it a shot if you're looking for some easy read that will likely make you cry a bit at the end.

PS: I read this book during the last week of 2021 but I was already thinking about the 2022 challenge... so I decided to put it in the list. Maybe I'm cheating a bit, I don't really care.