Carl’s Reviews > On a Shoestring to Coorg: An Experience of Southern India > Status Update

Underneath all the interesting observations on India by Murphy is the story of one amazing five-year-old who is dragged here and there, left here and there, hurts her foot, gets a fever, a tick in the eye, etc. etc. and keeps up with Mom as she satisfies her travel lust.

Murphy continues her travels. 5 year-old child gets infected foot; Murphy sick also. Mooching off friends of friends. Enamored with Coorgs who remind her of the Irish--always ready to talk and visit. She enjoys the non-dramatic but enchanting scenery, enjoys her walks, can imagine living in Coorg. Chapter on caste system was somewhat enlightening . . . somewhat.

Murphy bouncing around Coorg, dragging her 5 year-old daughter with her. Random conversations, observations, descriptions. Enjoyable, but no doubt that the daughter is lucky to survive Mom.

Tibetans in southern India. Murphy is impressed with everything about them, culture, religion, manner. REst of India is a mixed bag . . . lots of good, lots of bad. Theft, filth, hospitality

"I saw a line of five young women walking by the edge of the waves, balancing wicker fishbaskets on their heads. They moved with marvellous grace and against a turquoise see their full skirted gowns--orange blue, pink, yellow, red, greeen, mauve - billowed and glowed brilliantly. Life on Colva beach is full of such pictures, making the ugliness and suffering of Bombay seem not part of the same human existence.

Heywood Hill bookstore in England has a gift program. They send a book a month for a year to the lucky recipient, in this case, me. Dervla Murphy off to souther India with her five-year old daughter and not much money. Arrival in Bombay, with grinding poverty. She feels shattered, but a fellow sleeper at her hostel notes: "It's only when the Mother Teresas feel shattered that things get done."