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Whilst Dervla's first book, 'Full Tilt' was solely about her journey, and her second 'Tibetan Foothold' mixed tales of travel and life in the refugee camp, 'The Waiting Land' is the first of Dervla's books in which she primarily recounts her experiences of day to day life as a resident of a town or village. ('On a Shoestring to Coorg' (1976) and 'Tales from Two Cities' (1987) would later follow suit). Taking a small flat in the bazaar in Pokhara, Dervla went on to live there for around six months fully immersing herself not only in her work at the refugee camp, but also in Nepalese life as a fully fledged (albeit temporary) member of the community. Whilst the book certainly recounts some extraordinary experiences of local customs, flamboyant festivals and unfamiliar traditions (including an unsettling experience wherein Dervla stumbled upon a scene of traditional corpse dismemberment), the primary interest, for me, is in the recounting of the 'banalities' of every day home and work life - shopping, washing, dealings with neighbours, managing illness, celebrating, the list goes on.....
For me as a reader, one of the particular charms of Dervla Murphy's writing is its ability to portray episodes from daily life in distant and diverse cultures in a way which makes them seem simultaneously extraordinarily different and reassuringly familiar. We are all familiar with waiting for the arrival of much anticipated post, at home or in a queue at the Post Office collection depots....yet for how many of us does that entail spending '....a prodigious number of hours each week simply awaiting the arrival of planes. Luckily one cannot tire of a place where horsemen on richly caparisoned steeds may frequently be seen galloping across the airfield - briefly framed by the wing of a Dakota - with bells ringing a wild harmony and hoofs pounding an exhultant reply...' (P58)
It is unclear whether (to my mind probably unlikely that) 'Full Tilt', ''Tibetan Foothold' and 'The Waiting Land' were specifically written with the intention that they should be read or viewed as a trilogy - almost certainly they were not planned to be a hint of future journeys and works. Nonetheless, to look at them now as a three part introduction to Dervla Murphy and her travels can be useful, as they introduce the reader to Dervla the traveller, Dervla as a champion for human rights, and Dervla the adaptor, the neighbour, and one can speculate, even sense, at times, that the experiences of travel and human relationships detailed in later books were shaped in some way by these initial experiences.
Sarah Ledger 2012
For me as a reader, one of the particular charms of Dervla Murphy's writing is its ability to portray episodes from daily life in distant and diverse cultures in a way which makes them seem simultaneously extraordinarily different and reassuringly familiar. We are all familiar with waiting for the arrival of much anticipated post, at home or in a queue at the Post Office collection depots....yet for how many of us does that entail spending '....a prodigious number of hours each week simply awaiting the arrival of planes. Luckily one cannot tire of a place where horsemen on richly caparisoned steeds may frequently be seen galloping across the airfield - briefly framed by the wing of a Dakota - with bells ringing a wild harmony and hoofs pounding an exhultant reply...' (P58)
It is unclear whether (to my mind probably unlikely that) 'Full Tilt', ''Tibetan Foothold' and 'The Waiting Land' were specifically written with the intention that they should be read or viewed as a trilogy - almost certainly they were not planned to be a hint of future journeys and works. Nonetheless, to look at them now as a three part introduction to Dervla Murphy and her travels can be useful, as they introduce the reader to Dervla the traveller, Dervla as a champion for human rights, and Dervla the adaptor, the neighbour, and one can speculate, even sense, at times, that the experiences of travel and human relationships detailed in later books were shaped in some way by these initial experiences.
Sarah Ledger 2012