ON A SHOESTRING TO COORG - Softcover

Dervla Murphy is one of the very best loved of travel writers. She was born in County Waterford and since 1964 has been regularly publishing accounts of her journeys - by bicycle and on foot -- in the remoter areas of four continents. She has also written about the problems of Northern Ireland, the hazards of nuclear power, and race relations in Britain. The Times Literary Supplement called her 'an admirable woman -- she has a romantic soul and a keen eye'.

In the fall of 1973, Murphy responded to a periodic travel itch by taking her five-year-old daughter Rachel to India, a journey that began in Bombay, proceeded down the coast, then turned inland to the remote and rugged highlands of southern India. They traveled by train and bus, staying at hostels or primitive hotels. Murphy found that Rachel was a link rather than a barrier to the natives. They discovered in Coorg an atypical India: neither crowded nor impoverished, Coorg boasts a magnificent landscape, temperate climate and congenial people (a curiously Anglicized atmosphere). The Murphys visited local families and had occasion to explore a culture in which ancestor veneration is practiced. The author discusses caste in detail; she and Rachel attended festivals, a christening ceremony, funeral and wedding. In their journeys they encountered Tibetan refugees, Western hippies, transplanted Europeans. Readers who enjoyed Murphy's Muddling Through in Madagascar will find this lively travel memoir to their taste as well.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.