Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle by Dervla Murphy
Full Tilt is laced with cynical and thought-provoking witticisms and humorous observations. Dervla Murphy, a young Irishwoman struck off alone by bike in the dead of winter to mingle with the natives of countries from Ireland to India, eat their food, drink their drinks, and live as they did. She ventured off the main roads into remote villages, up high mountains, across parched deserts. She was at times hot, freezing cold, parched, drenched. and exposed to lepers, tuberculin, and all sorts of unvaccinated people. She was no stranger to heat strokes and dysentery.
Her indomitable Irish persistence saw her through.
In my long life I have only encountered two of these glib-tongued stand-alone personalities who were uniquely unforgettable and a treasure to know. Needlessly to say I loved the book and the author.
EXCERPTS:
For days I had been living in a state of permanent saturation from the waist down, so that the only sensible reaction was lots of rum and no fuss.
The excitement of approaching for the first time the sinister Iron Curtain. At each bend I looked eagerly for tangled masses of barbed wire, watch-towers manned by vigilant soldiers armed with machine-guns and binoculars, and alert policemen keenly observing every movement for miles around. But not one of these thrilling phenomena appeared and it was only when I saw a locked, five-foot high gate across the road that I realized I had arrived at the significant point.
Viewing the desk and reflecting that if I wanted to enter the spy business here was my chance to make away with a fine collection of vitally important seals.
Stamps on my passport are the only souvenirs that I can afford to collect, and I didn’t want to be cheated of this one.
The Bulgarian Embassy in London had issued me with a visa valid for only four days. Now this genial policeman, who spoke fluent English, took one look at the card, said that it was ridiculous, and issued me with a new visa entitling me to stay in Bulgaria as long as I wished! After which we sat by the stove and amiably discussed our two countries over glasses of brandy.
Nowhere did I see any evidence of extreme poverty and the average citizen – a cheerful, singularly unapressed-looking individual – appeared to be adequately clothed, housed and fed.
I am far too reactionary to regard ‘backward peasants’ as being ipsofacto in need of modernization; yet in fairness I must give my personal impression of that side of the Communist coin which is not popular among Western propagandists.
The citizens of these countries provide for their deprived brothers as generously as do the tax-paying citizens of a Welfare State and the disparity between the circumstances of the disabled of Persia and the disabled of Britain is no greater than that between the circumstances of the working men of the two countries: in fact it may well be less, though the distribution of funds is more haphazard. Also the Muslim method of providing ‘Social Services’ has the important virtue of maintaining a natural and humane link between individuals. It is obviously more desirable to have citizens giving to beggars voluntarily, out of compassion, rather than to have them grumbling paying taxes to an impersonal government which dispenses what is left, after its civil servants have been paid, to unknown sufferers who are mere names in a filing cabinet.
I must admit that it’s difficult to get adjusted to such a fetid atmosphere, in which one is always conscious of the power of money over integrity.
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