Full Tilt - Ireland to India with a Bicycle
Book Review
by Dervla Murphy; Various Editions
In 1941, Dervla Murphy was given an atlas and a bike for her tenth birthday. Shortly thereafter, she decided that someday she would ride her bike to India. This book, first published in 1965, describes that journey.
She set off in the winter of 1963, riding a classic English three-speed, which she modified to be a single speed, figuring a derailleur would never survive the roads of Asia Minor. She aptly named her bike Rocinante (Roz for short) and took with her, along with a lot of wool clothes, a spare tire and tube, some extra chain links, a battery for the lamp, many notebooks, a rain cape, and a .25 calibre pistol.
She chose winter, thinking she could beat the heat once beyond Istanbul. It turned out to be the coldest European winter in 80 years; she nearly froze to death pushing her bike over mountain passes in Yugoslavia. She was also attacked by starving feral dogs outside Belgrade, in complete darkness to boot. She shot two of them, and the others fled.
She reached Afghanistan in early April, and fell in love with the place, despite rapidly rising temperatures and having to rely on buses for transport. “My experience to date of Afghan buses leads me to expect that the trip to Mazar will be (a) infinitely more dangerous than by cycle, (b) a thousand times more wearying and uncomfortable, and (c) at least as long in travelling hours.”
After suffering heatstroke in Pakistan, she concluded that “evidently the human mechanism can adjust to almost anything but extremes of temperature.”
This was Dervla Murphy’s first book. She’s a lyrical and gifted writer, and she’s still very much active, writing and travelling, often by bike. Many editions of this book exist; I recommend finding one with photos.
----------
