Lessons From the Woman Who Put the ‘Rough’ in Rough Travel

Last fall, on a train bound for northern India, I shared a sleeping compartment with a German woman named Marta. We had plenty of time to get acquainted because the Jammu Mail was delayed for eight hours.

As the compartment grew hotter and stuffier, and the bathrooms filthier, I started feeling sorry for myself. I needed a bath, a change of clothes and a comfortable bed. But then Marta started describing the first three months of her trip, traveling by train, bus and truck from Beijing across China and Nepal to India, camping out or staying in hostels all the way. She had wonderful stories to tell about her adventures, which made me envious and more than a little ashamed of my softness.

Marta was a classic rough traveler, my favorite kind, even if I know I don’t have the stuff to follow in her boots. I’d rather read about people like her, which is why I’ve become devoted to the writing of Dervla Murphy, a flinty, funny, completely intrepid Irishwoman, now 66, who started traveling rough 30 years ago and hasn’t quit yet.

Her first travel book, “Full Tilt,” tells the story of a 4,445-mile solo bike ride she took in 1963 from Dublin to New Delhi, with little more than one change of clothes, a toothbrush and a .25 automatic pistol.

Later she had a daughter (though she didn’t marry the father). But that didn’t stop her. Together, the two of them roamed through southern India (“On a Shoestring to Coorg”), walked 1,300 miles along the crest of the Andes (“Eight Feet in the Andes”) and, most recently, crossed Cameroon with a cantankerous stallion (“Cameroon With Egbert”). Several weeks ago I got the chance to ask Dervla Murphy why she travels the way she does, and this is what she said (in a voice as thick as a bog and as lilting as an Irish tin whistle):

Question: What makes you take these incredible trips?

Answer: Well, you see, they’re not really. I don’t know why people think they’re incredible. In fact, they’re the sort of trips that anybody could do. There’s no special equipment involved. All you’ve got to do is get a pair of walking boots and a good bicycle, and off you go.

Q: What made you a traveler?

A: Who knows? You’re just born like that. I grew up in a little village in Ireland with nobody in my immediate circle who’d ever traveled very far. I always wanted to, still do. Before I went to Laos in November I was just as excited as if I’d never been out of Ireland. It’s real when people talk about the wanderlust. It’s a specific component in a personality. You don’t grow out of it.

Q: When you travel, you generally trek or bike. Why?

A: Because you can get away from main roads, from the international pop culture that’s everywhere these days. And you’re much more acceptable to the people in whatever region you’re traveling through.

Q: You travel with very little money. Is that by necessity or choice?

A: It’s by choice. I don’t like splashing money around, and again, the more simply you travel the easier it is to get on with the local people. It helps if you’re to some extent dependent on them, if they feel that you trust them. You don’t want to be locked up in a hotel room at night. You’re perfectly happy to sleep in their hut or camp out near their village.

Q: You actually found yourself penniless in India and in Cameroon.

A: Yes, just because the banks were closed, I think.

Q: What did you do?

A: Just got by. It’s not very difficult to live off your fat for a few days.

Q: How do you adapt to privation?

A: I’ve got very low standards of comfort. So I don’t have to make any effort to adapt.

Q: Why did you start traveling with your daughter, Rachel?

A: Traveling and writing is the way I earn my living. There was no way I was going to leave her behind.

Q: In India when Rachel was just 5, she got brucellosis [a bacterial disease]. Some people would say you were pushing her too hard.

A: Well, I don’t agree. In our civilization, we’ve gotten too soft. The majority of children all over the world are exposed to what she was exposed to.

Q: And at the end of “On a Shoestring to Coorg,” she says she’s sorry to be leaving India.

A: Well, the first journey she took on her own, as an adult, was to India for six months. So I think she must have meant that.

Q: You wrote that before taking Rachel to India you were concerned about losing your solitude. Going alone is my favorite way to travel too. Could you explain its attractions?

A: The Cameroon trip was interesting because Rachel was 18 then. I planned to do the trip on my own, but she decided she’d like to come along. We got on fine, but it was the first time I’d traveled with her as an adult. That proved a theory I’d had. When the local people see two foreigners, it is, in fact, a group, and they feel that the two have each other. It’s much more difficult to integrate, then, with the local people.

Q: In “Full Tilt” you say some people in the Middle East thought you were a man. Do you think that’s part of the reason why you can go anywhere?

A: No, no, I think you’re safer as a woman. In remote, traditional villages, a strange man would seem much more of a threat than a solitary woman. Particularly in the Muslim countries I’ve traveled through. They’ve such a high sense of honor about protecting women that there was never any hassle.

Q: But didn’t you once get jumped by a guy in Azerbaijan?

A: That’s right. That is the one area of the world where I would not recommend young women to travel on their own. A lot has to do with your own attitude. If a woman is all tensed up and expecting hassles, she’s much more likely to invite it than if she’s just relaxed and treats the men the same way she treats her men friends at home.

Q: And you really don’t think you’re particularly courageous?

A: If you don’t feel any fear, courage doesn’t come into it.

Q: You don’t feel fear?

A: Not unless there’s something directly threatening me--for instance, in Ethiopia when bandits were debating whether they’d murder me or not.

Q: Was that your most frightening travel experience?

A: Yes, except just recently in Laos when both brakes on my bike gave out on a very rough, steep track with a lot of hairpin bends and a drop on one side of at least 500 feet. I was absolutely terrified.

Q: What did you do?

A: Well, I just managed. I just got to the bottom.

Q: So Laos was last year. Where do you want to go next?

A: From my point of view, there are fewer and fewer places where I can do the traveling I like to do. Motor roads are being built in every little corner now. But I dare say somewhere will turn up.

Dervla Murphy’s “Full Tilt: Ireland to India With a Bicycle” (1987), “The Waiting Land: A Spell in Nepal” (1987), “Eight Feet in the Andes” (1989), “Muddling Through in Madagascar” (1989), “On a Shoestring to Coorg: A Travel Memoir of India” (1989), “Cameroon With Egbert” (1990), “Transylvania & Beyond” (1993) and “The Ukimwi Road: From Kenya to Zimbabwe” (1995) are available from the Overlook Press, 2568 Route 212, Woodstock, NY 12498; telephone (914) 679-6838.