Slightly Better Books
Category Focus:Travel - Travel Diaries
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Travel Diaries, Travel Logs; Travel & Exploration |
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About the book/storyline/contents: Miss Murphy, daughter of the County Librarian of Waterford, was given a bicyle and an atlas for her tenth birthday, but it was not until 21 years later, when freed of family responsibilities, that she was able to realise her secret ambition to bicycle to India. In January 1963, one of the worst winters in memory, she started off from Dunkirk, and in an introductory chapter, she tells of her arduous progress across frozen Europe. This highly individual account of her extraordinary journey is based on the daily diary she kept while riding through Persia, Afghanistan, over the Himalayas to Pakistan and into India. A woman traveller on her own with a bicycle (even with a revolver in her saddle bag), in such hazardous countries still largely untouched by modernisation, was an unusual focus of interest to say the least of it, and the problems of finding a track across scorching deserts or the ice, snow and storms of mountains were no ordinary problems. But, and this is what makes her book so enjoyable, her resourcefulness matches up to her unexpected encounters - the fight in an Afghan bus, the cow that knew exactly where to escort her across the seemingly impassable torrent, the demure retreat before the threats of the naked sun-blackened mountain devotee and others equally strange. Throughout, her approach and reactions to the many different people she met have sharpness and pungency based as they were on a belief in the natural and instinctive friendliness of even the most outlandish characters; and her descriptions of the countries through which she pedalled are equally vivid. She often went hungry, suffered from heat exhaustion and extreme cold, but she never failed in gusto or determination: and the blind eye she turned on personal danger and her unselfconscious disregard of discomfort are remarkable. It is a truism to say that there are few corners of the earth left to be discovered. It is a matter for thanks that there are still travellers of the astonishing individual calibre of Miss Murphy. About the Author: In November 1931, Dervla Murphy was born to parents of Dublin origin; her grandfather and his family were prominent in the Irish Republican movement: for example her father was interned in Wormwood Scrubs prison for three years. Dervla studied at the Ursuline Convent in Waterford until she turned fourteen when, because of wartime shortages of servants (amongst other things), she left education to look after the household for her father, where she helped with her mother's care. This was her life for another sixteen years, interspersed with occasional breaks cycling on the continent. At the time of publication, Dervla Murphy lived near Lismore in County Waterford |
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About this book/synopsis: Joseph Wolff was one of the most eccentric of the Victorian travellers and explorers. Born in Germany in 1795, the son of a Jewish Rabbi, he became a Roman Catholic and studied Oriental languages at the College of Propaganda in Rome; although he was expelled from Rome for having 'erroneous opinions' and went to stay in Britain where he joined the Church of England. At first he became a country parson, but then turned his attentions to missionary activities, travelling widely and calling himself the Apostle of Jesus for Palestine, Persia and Bokhara. His main expedition, described in this volume, was made in the period 1843-1845, a semi-diplomatic mission to discover the fate of two British agents, Colonel Stoddart and Captain Connolly. They had been sent by the Government of India to Bokhara, a Central Asian Khanate, where they were detained by the Amir, imprisoned, and -as Wolff discovered-executed. Wolff gives a vivid account of the ramshackle government of Central Asia which was destined to perish before the advance of Russian power. Notable features of the book are the descriptions by Wolff of the bizarre characters he encountered, and the reflection of his own remarkable personality. He describes, for example, how he was received in audience, wearing full canonicals, by the Amir of Bokhara, and his account of their conversation is richly comic. But though he makes his mission sound extravagant and absurd, he quite clearly took it very seriously and is unware of how ludicrous some of the situations he describes are. The book is therefore a unique piece of travel literature. Wolff's own account of his mission in this particular book is preceded by a long editorial introduction. Abridgement Note: The original work runs to more than 180,000 words; in this edition, whose text is based on that of the 7th edition, the work has been abridged to about half the original length. The parts omitted mainly consists of those passages where Wolff repeats himself or indulges in lengthy discussions that are irrelevant to the narrative. All illustrations except for the frontispiece portrait are taken from the 2nd edition of the narrative published in 1845. Contents: Illustrations: Map |
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in Great Britain by John Murray in hardback with dustjacket, 235pp, No ISBN
