Evansville native C. L. Stambush narrates her 5-month, 7,000-mile journey in her new book Untethered: A Woman’s Search for Self on the Edge of India – A Travel Memoir
Never having ridden a motorcycle before, C. L. Stambush buys a Bullet motorcycle to travel the dangerous edge of India. Along the way she is reshaped as she encounters friendly families and ominous men, confronts culture clashes, hijras, and bandits, experiences monsoons, scorching deserts, and homicidal drivers, crashing her motorcycle and learning about herself as she loses her camera, her way, and her self-control—crossing lines she never imagined possible.
The suspenseful and honest prose of Untethered immerses readers in India’s diverse culture while vividly conveying the harrowing and triumphant journey of a woman alone, in a world where women don’t travel alone, discovering her true grit.
C.L. Stambush is a journalist, writer, and editor who has lived, worked and traveled in more than 20 countries. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Far Eastern Economic Review, Travelers’ Tales, as well as national and international newspapers. She is the recipient of awards, scholarships, and residencies from Hedgebrook Writers Colony, RopeWalk Writers Retreat, Split Rock Arts Program, and Indiana University Writers’ Conference, where an early chapter from this book was judged Best Creative Nonfiction by Scott Russell Sanders.
She lived in Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia for six years, traveling by foot, train, truck, bus, boat, camel, donkey cart, and motorcycle. After returning to the United States, she was recruited to become a national motorcycle safety instructor where she trained hundreds of people (many of them women) to ride safely during her fourteen-year tenure.