Dervla Murphy column 2 - Magan's World June 2009

Sat 06 Jun 2009Manchán Magan's tales of a travel addict

True traveller's tales

MANCHÁN'S WORLD:I WROTE RECENTLY about an interview I did with Dervla Murphy, Ireland’s most distinguished adventurer and travel writer, and in particular about her sense of disenchantment with the world she has spent her life travelling through. “As long as this corporate capitalism prevails there is very little to celebrate in the world,” she says. “It’s very sad.”

But what I failed to capture was the indefatigable passion for travel that still animates and propels her across the world – she published her latest book about Cuba just last year at the age of 77.

But what I failed to capture was the indefatigable passion for travel that still animates her and propels her across the world – she published her latest book about Cuba just last year at the age of 77. Following on from her comment above, she said, ‘I wish the younger generation could be much more aware of it, as you lot can change it.’

She is still a fervent advocate of travel, particularly as a way for young people to explore their world and inform themselves about what is really going on. ‘It’s in the interest of the people who run our world to prevent the average citizen of the affluent world from knowing how the majority of human beings live and why they have to live in such poverty,’ she says.

It pleases her that more people than ever are travelling, but, ‘backpackers have to be careful not to become too much of a herd - all going to the same place and staying in the same doss house and eating in the same restaurant. I think they would be far better if they went off on their own and visited fewer countries.’

At a time where our youth all too often tend to head sheep-like to Australia, with perhaps a stop off at a bungee-jumping spot in Thailand on the way, the example Dervla set by setting off on her bicycle from Lismore to Delhi through Afghanistan and Persia in the Sixties ought still to be a lesson to us all. ‘I don’t see the point of travelling above bicycle speed,’ she says. ‘I don’t think you get the feel of anything, whizzing along in a bus or a motor car or taxi - might as well stay at home, as far as I’m concerned.’

She feels today’s backpackers travel too quickly. ‘They decide to go backpacking around the world for 6 months and by the time they come home, having visited 12 countries, they don’t know t’other from which. They haven’t been there long enough, or quietly enough, to really take in the essence of the culture. They haven’t read enough about the places before they’ve been there.’

That said, Dervla still believes in the potential of travel to open minds and bridge cultures, ‘I think the one’s who go in couples or individuals, and travel slowly, achieve an awful lot in countering the more blatant, flashy capitalism, but I’m not sure that the packs achieve much.’

She explains that what she is most in search of is the feel of a place, ‘it entails being alone with the landscape, with the countryside, the actual physical territory. I don’t spend very long in cities. I arrive and then get out of them as fast as possible.’ Although she is always open to seeing the positive in a country, she will not shy away from the negative, if that is what she finds.

It’s hard to underestimate the esteem, bordering on love, with which Dervla is held among a whole generation of Irish people. After every public reading and lecture I give there is always a question about what I think of her and the influence she has had on me. The lustre in the eye of the questioner says it all. After my earlier column on Dervla I was upbraided by her fans for not providing details of where her interview can be found, and lest I attract further opprobrium - www.rte.ie/radio1/bigadventure