Eight Feet in the Andes

The author describes a journey she made through the Peruvian Andes with her nine-year-old daughter and a mule, and shares her observations on the people of Peru

Travel

MURPHY, DERVLA

South America

HarperCollins Publishers Canada, Limited

From Bombay to the hippy beaches of Goa and on to the tropical tip of India, travelling by boat and bus, staying in fishermans huts and no-star hotels, Dervla Murphy and her young daughter, Rachel, explored southern India. En route, they fell in love with the tiny mountain paradise of Coorg, whose landscapes and people form the focus of an entertaining diary.

On a Shoestring to Coorg: An Experience of Southern India

Asia

Flamingo

One winter, Dervla Murphy and her six-year-old daughter Rachel walked into the Karakoram mountains in the frozen heart of the Western Himalayas and along the perilous Indus Gorge. Accompanied only by a gallant polo pony, they encountered conditions that tested the limits of their ingenuity, endurance, and courage. Hair-raising, gloriously subjective, and with the quirky vitality of fiction, the resulting book is a classic of travel writing

Where the Indus Is Young: Walking to Baltistan

HarperCollins, UK

Dervla Murphy often recalled these words while pedalling or pushing her bicycle over some of the roughest roads in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the beauty of the contrasting landscapes along her 3,000-mile route from Kenya through Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia to Zimbabwe more than compensated for the hazardous and the unexpected.;Dervla had been naively looking forward to a few carefree months of fresh air and exercise free from the stress of the last few years. Soon, however, she realized that for travellers who wish to remain carefree, Africa is the wrong continent. Inevitably she was caught up in the harrowing problems of the peoples amongst whom she travelled: on the one hand the devastating effects of AIDS, drought and economic collapse and on the other the scepticism of the Africans about Western 'development projects' and 'aid schemes' which promise so much but deliver so little except to the administrators.;By day Dervla enjoyed the space and solitude of rural Africa; even the toughest terrain did not deter her although on one occasion it nearly claimed her. In the evenings she usually stayed in villages, sometimes sleeping on the floor.She found the locals talkative and welcoming and many shared her fondness for beer. Hours of illuminating conversation ended most days and often AIDS (in Swahili 'ukimwi') was discussed by both men and women. By now the disease is of epidemic proportions in Africa and she discovered a wide range of reactions to this new mysterious threat and its effects on family life.;What also emerged, as Dervla travelled on, was the extent to which the barriers to progress in Africa were being underpinned by corruption and incompetence both White and Black. In consequence she sensed a new wind of change. As it is clear that no African country can sustain 'development' along European lines some communities are reverting to traditional ways of organizing village society and discovering that this can lead to greater stability.

The Ukimwi Road: From Kenya to Zimbabwe

Literature & Fiction

Classics

Travel writer Dervla Murphy affectionately portrays the people of Nepal's different tribes, the customs of an ancient, complex civilization and the country's natural grandeur and beauty.

The Waiting Land : Spell in Nepal

Muddling through in Madagascar

"Everything about Madagascar is surprising", as Dervla Murphy and her 14-year-old daughter, Rachel, found to their delight. Despite accidents, misadventures, contrasts and the political instability of the Great Red Island, they returned with a lasting respect for the kindness of its proud people.

Muddling Through in Madagascar

Africa

One Foot in Laos

HarperCollins Publishers Canad

At the height of The Troubles, Dervla Murphy cycled to Northern Ireland to try to understand the situation by speaking to people on either side of the divide. She also sought to interrogate her own opinions and emotions. As an Irishwoman and traveller who had only ever spent thirty-six hours of her forty-four years over the border to the north, why had she been so reluctant to engage with the issues? Despite her own family connections to the IRA, she travelled north largely unfettered by sectarian loyalties. Armed instead with an indefatigable curiosity, a fine ear for anecdote, an ability to stand her own at the bar and a penetrating intelligence, she navigated her way through horrifying situations, and sometimes found herself among people stiff with hate and grief. But equally, she discovered an unquenchable thirst for life and peace, a spirit that refused to die.

A Place Apart: A brilliant travel writer explores the hearts and minds of Norther Ireland.

Europe

Penguin??Books

The moving tale of Dervla Murphy's experiences working in the Tibetan refugee camps of Northern India in the sixties.

Tibetan foothold

Pan Books

Dervla Murphy spent eight months in Transylvania - and beyond - sharing the everyday lives of ordinary Rumanians. Her book describes a journey on two levels - wandering through the remotest corners of the Carpathians, on foot or by bicycle, and into the often daunting mental terrain of a post-Communist society where nothing was quite what it seemed.

Transylvania And Beyond (CH) (Charnwood Large Print Library Series)

Charnwood

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Books by MURPHY, DERVLA