A selection of Indian travel narratives

The following accounts all feature examples of narratives similar to that of Odysseus’s encounter with Polyphemus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphemus) in the Odyssey, featuring either a frightful one-eyed monster or the hero's ruse of wearing a sheep’s skin to avoid detection.  

• “The Travels of Sānudāsa the Merchant.” In Tales of Ancient India, edited by J. A. B. van Buitenen, 218-58. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.
• Morality tale from the Brihatkatha (early centuries of the first millennium AD)
• Quṯban. The Magic Doe : Quṯban Suhravardī’s Mirigāvatī: A New Translation. Translated by Aditya Behl. Edited by Wendy Doniger. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Sixteenth-century Sufi romance in Avadhi (a dialect of Hindi)
• Shahriyār, Buzurg ibn. The Book of the Wonders of India: Mainland, Sea, and Islands. Translated by G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville. Edited by G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville. London: East-West Publications, 1980.
• Sailors’ yarns in Arabic collected by a Persian captain in the 10th century AD.
• Haddawy, Husain. The Arabian Nights II: Sinbad and Other Popular Stories. New York: Norton, 1995.
• Adventures (in Arabic) of Sindbad the merchant of Baghdad, included in European translations of the Arabian Nights in the 18th century AD.  
• See also: Molan, Peter D. “Sinbad the Sailor, a Commentary on the Ethics of Violence.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 98, no. 3 (1978): 237-47.
• A structuralist interpretation of this often confusing narrative.  Thought provoking.  Available from JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/598685

Other travel narratives:

• [Fa-hsien], Faxian, and Xuanzhi Yang. Travels of Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun, Buddhist Pilgrims from China to India (400 A.D. and 518 A.D.). Translated by Samuel Beal. Edited by Samuel Beal. London: Trübner, 1869.
• Available as a free Google e-book: http://books.google.com/books?id=G6k-AAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Travels+of+Fah-Hian+and+Sung-Yun&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-cPiUY6RJ7HI4AOYnoHoCQ&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
• Tsiang [Xuanzang], Hieun. Si-yu-ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World. Translated by Samuel Beal. Vol. 1, Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1885.
• Available as a free e-book through Archive.org: http://archive.org/details/siyukibuddhistre02hsuoft
• Majumdar, R. C. “Periplus Maris Erythraei.” In The Classical Accounts of India, Being a Compilation of the English Translations of the Accounts left by Herodotus, Megasthenes, Arrian, Strabo, Quintus, Diodorus Siculus, Justin, Plutach, Frontinus, Nearchus, Apollonius, Pliny, Ptolemy, Aelian and others, with maps, editorial notes, comments, analysis and introduction, 288-312. Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1960.
• Itinerary of first-century AD travel to ports along the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.  
• Fisher, Michael Herbert. Visions of Mughal India: An Anthology of European Travel Writing. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007.