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Indian Travel Writers in the West: the Colonial Period (1794-1947)

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Quite a number of important travel narratives were written by early Indian travelers in the west, from Dean Mahomet in 1794, though to Mahatma Gandhi, who wrote about his formative experiences in England and South Africa in The Story of My Experiments With Truth (1929).

Alongside full-length books, there are many accounts by figures like Bhagat Singh Thind and others associated with the Ghadar movement in California. We may be presenting some of these in some form in the near future.

In late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of South Asian writers spent time in England, some of them peripherally involved with the modernist movement.

Cornelia Sorabji went to England to study law, and wrote about the experience in various later works, including her autobiography, India Calling (1934).
Mulk Raj Anand also wrote about his time in England in a book published much later in his life, Conversations in Bloomsbury.
Another key figure associated with the Progressive Writers' Movement, Ahmed Ali, also spent time in England; he published his first English-language novel Twilight in Delhi, on Hogarth Press. See Amardeep Singh's blog post on Twilight in Delhi here.
One might also want to look at books like Sajjad Zaheer's novel, A Night in London (Urdu, 1935; translated into English in 2011). See Amardeep Singh's review of Bilal Hashmi's translation of the novel here.
Finally, there is the eccentric writer G.V. Desani, whose All About H. Hatterr was published in London in 1948 (Wikipedia entry on G.V. Desani); Desani lived in England roughly between 1936-1952. Alongside his highly eccentric, experimental novel, he also worked for the BBC. See Amardeep Singh's article on Desani in Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

Here are some of the texts by Indian authors who traveled in the West during the colonial period:

Dean Mahomet, The Travels of Dean Mahomet (1794). Sake Dean Mahomet (or Mahomed, as it is sometimes spelled) was born and raised in Patna, Bihar, the son of a soldier in the British Indian Army. His father died in 1870, when he was eleven, and Dean Mahomet was then taken care of by an Irish soldier, Captain Godfrey Evan Baker. In 1882, he accompanied Baker to Ireland. There, he married an Irish woman. He and his wife later moved to London, where Mahomet opened the first Indian restaurant, The Hindustanee Coffee House, and later introduced the concept of Shampooing hair in a public steam bath he opened in Brighton. (Unfortunately, most of these details are not included in the narrative Mahomet published, which only deals with his early life in India.) See Amardeep Singh's blog post on Dean Mahomet here.

Ishuree Dass, A Brief Account of a Voyage to England and America (1851). From SAADA's summary of this text: "Dass traveled to England and the U.S. with Wilson in 1846, reaching New York harbor on October 4th that year. During his trip, he visited New York City, Philadelphia, Abington, Providence, Easton, Winchester, and Baltimore. Dass’ observes and describes several facets of American social and cultural life, including details of housing arrangements, wedding practices, government, and higher education. At several points during the narrative, Dass mentions his thoughts on slavery and his interactions with African Americans." (Source)

Pandita Ramabai, Peoples of the United States (1889) (brief excerpt). This travel narrative was published as a book in Marathi in 1888, and remained untranslated into English until 2003, when it was published as Pandita Ramabai's American Encounter (edited by Meera Kosambi). See Amardeep Singh's blog post on this text here.

Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism (1917). Not explicitly a travel narrative. These were a series of lectured Tagore delivered in English while traveling in the U.S. and Japan during the build-up to the U.S. entry into World War I. Drawing extensively on cross-cultural knowledge, he argues strongly against militarism, industrialism, and weaponized nationalism of all stripes. See Amardeep Singh's 2009 essay on Tagore's travel writings in America here.

Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth: An Autobiography (1929). Gandhi describes his year in England in considerable depth in chapters 11-25 in Part 1 of this text. His biggest difficulty initially was finding vegetarian food! As the chapters progress, we also get a sense of the formative impact of his experience in England on his developing political thought and anti-colonial ideology.