Full Tilt: From Dunkirk to Delhi by Bicycle

This was a fascinating read about Murphy's first travelling adventure, back in 1963, fulfilling a dream she'd had since the age of 10, to travel to India by bicycle. She has many adventures and misadventures: being attacked by wild dogs ( she had learned to use a shotgun), being horribly sunburned on one arm from travelling east, incurring a cracked rib from a nasty altercation between two Afghanis on a bus, by being accidentally hit with the butt of a rifle, being threatened physically by a young officer in Azerbaijan who although he had a gun, became the victim himself when Murphy used " unprintable tactics to reduce him to a state of temporary agony"...

It's impossible to note all the adventures she had, all her observations, the many, many people she met, so I decided to concentrate for my notes here on her accomodations throughout the journey- and these are just examples!

In Slovenia, she asks a girl on a street about lodgings, and the young woman takes her home. This happens time and agin in her travels: people would drive by, stop and give her the names of friends and relatives along the way and urge her to stay with them.

In Persia, she learns to deal with hotel bedrooms without locks- you balance empty bottles on top of the door. " As creating empty bottles is one of the few things I'm good at, this is an appropriate suggestion". (I think Dervla likes the odd drink now and then!)

She often stayed in police stations: in Persia, where the gendarmeries is known as a force existing primarily to protect tourists. She awoke once to find a bunch of men all watching her sleep!

People wanted to speak English, so this was another way she was invited into homes. Her travelling by bicycle also established an instant rapport, although people would often stop to tell her she was nuts, or to offer advice about drinking enough water and using sunscreen. She encountered problems getting a visa to travel through Afghanistan because she was a woman travelling alone on a bicycle, but with a little subterfuge, she managed to get one.

In one town in Afghanistan, she was directed to what was termed a Class A hotel, which was so named because it had an eastern-style lavatory ( i.e. a hole in the floor) with a flush overhead, and an empty toilet-paper holder. When she flushed, she received a shower of rusty water.

She describes " a good sleep on carpets in a corner of a tea-house". Also, a visit to a chief's house in Afghanistan, who lived in " a mud compound, where the chief, his five wives, fourteen sons and uncounted daughters, 38 grandchildren and sundry cousins all lived in a various apartments around a courtyard through which flows a swift stream with weeping willows and birches lining its banks."

A Tourist's Hotel in Bamian where there was "(a) no food or drink of any description, (b) no light, (c) nowater, (d) no heating and (e) only one thin blanket on each bed. As we were now 8550 feet above sea level, (e) was not funny." She and two young Indian men scrape together a meal from their provisions and raid empty rooms for more blankets.

She describes a midday nap on a mountainside in Pakistan only to wake and find that nomads had erected a tent over her to shield her from the sun.

In a tiny Himalayan village, she shares "six stinking blankets with six stinking children", although she adds that she prefers their company and their situation to their wealthier neighbours down in the valleys. Later, she has to purge herself of fleas!

High up in the North-West province of Pakistan, she meets some travelling Afghanis, and sleeps " snugly in sheepskins in a circle of Afghans around a fire which we kept up all night".

Her accounts of travelling in the high Himalayas were the most interesting- intense, debilitating heat, extreme cold, glaciers, lack of food- and of all the countries she travelled through, her favorites were Afghanistan and Pakistan, least favorites were India and Azerbaijan. Time and time again I was placed in awe by her thirst for adventure, her comfort level with travelling alone in totally deserted country, and her detailed descriptions she wrote in her diary, which later became this book.( How could she write so extensively in a diary after a day of cycling from 5:30 a.m. to 4:30 pm?)

Now that I've read this book- the Dervla Murphy book I wanted to read right from the beginning, the one I purachsed- her most recent- probably deserves another look, to see the journey by train through Siberia which she took at the age of 75, and also alone.