She had few positive things to say about the rise of mass tourism, the arrival of “gadgets” – mobile phones and the like – that she felt went against “the ethos of travelling”, or the “destructive changes” wrought by modern infrastructure, including roads. Interviewers often found her difficult her first publisher, Jock Murray, compared the experience to “trying to open an oyster with a wet bus ticket”. She was pelted with rocks in Iran, got “dead drunk” with the head of an Afghan village, and was struck by acute gout, several broken ribs and Hepatitis A while in Madagascar.Īlong the way she became a firm believer in the innate trustworthiness of most human beings – though her manner could at times be reticent.
Neither entirely ensured against occupational hazards.
On later journeys she left the pistol behind, relying on a penknife and emotional intelligence to get her through sticky situations. 25 pistol – which she had cause to fire when she was set upon by a pack of wolves in Romania. To protect herself on that first overland trip she carried a. Dervla Murphy, the Irish travel writer, who has died aged 90, set out from Dublin on a bicycle called Roz in 1963 Full Tilt, the account of her subsequent journey to Delhi via Iran, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, became a publishing sensation and inspired a slew of imitators.įull Tilt was the first of some two dozen books in which she drew on more than five decades exploring some of the most remote and inhospitable parts of the world – most often by bike or on foot, and usually alone.
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