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Bill Giebler is a memoirist, journalist, speaker, coach, and musician. His travel writing has been honored with the Solas Awards’ Grand Prize Gold and is anthologized in the books The Best Travel Writing, Vol 10 (2015) and The Soul of a Great Traveler (2017). His journalism has appeared in Orion Magazine, Delicious Living, Yoga Journal, Earth Island Journal and several other publications. He lives on the Colorado front range with his wife Margot.
Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
Steeped: My Search for Tea and Transformation in India by Bill Giebler is a non-fiction travel memoir that takes the reader on a journey of discovery at exactly the moment the author is certain that the whole thing is impossible. Ludicrous, even. He's the head of a division he's served for a decade and a half, he's in a relationship, he has children, and he is saddled with emotional baggage that's not so easily packed up. And yet, he takes the offering when all his excuses are squashed by those with his best interests truly at heart, and finds himself in India on an exploration that overwhelms the mind, body, and soul. Giebler takes readers with him from the streets of New Dehli to a Darjeeling tea plantation, from trains to luxurious hole-in-the-wall barbering, through meditation, culture shock, immersion...did I say culture shock? Eventually, he finds a forward-moving trajectory that carries him as he moves on to the land of Buddha's enlightenment and volunteers to assist a Dalit community, before moving again to Shiva's city and projects that are as meaningful to him as they are to those he interacts with. Nothing ever seems to go according to plan, but as the adventure continues Giebler begins to see that adherence to the safe trappings of a plan, and silly things like money and toilet paper, do nothing but hold him back anyway.
I have read my fair share of travel memoirs and am really comfortable saying that Steeped ranks among the top of my stack in terms of enjoyment and overall storytelling. Bill Giebler provides strong but level doses of intelligent wit and acerbic perspective as he weaves his way through a profoundly honest narrative. I've not had as much fun reading a memoir since finishing Alison Wearing's Honeymoon in Purdah twenty years ago [yes, really]. Giebler's vulnerability is on full display and the moments where he shines the brightest are when he allows himself to accept the comfortable rhythm that flows among the uncomfortable dichotomy of things like vegetarians who hunt, and a social construct of gender that segregates work but still has beautiful married women sweetly greeting him.
A lot of the writing plays out in a stream of consciousness that complements the eccentricities of the experience, while others are far more nuanced. We get a front-row seat to Giebler's evolution but not in the way that we, or even he, expected. It's less of a full demolition and rebuild and more of a work of spiritual planning, like an architect who has drawn up beautiful blueprints based on education, but still requires the refinement that only experience can bring. He sums this up nicely by saying, “It’s unlikely, then, that the I that will be packed up and shipped home in a few weeks will be a completed project of self-actualization, and that may be the hardest thing to accept.” There's a hint of disappointment, but from the point of view of a reader, it really is the “ah-ha!” awakening that makes the book so worthwhile. And Steeped is definitely worth a read.
