On a Shoestring to Coorg: An Experience of Southern India

Dervla Murphy is the best kind of traveller: observant, high-spirited, open-minded, and impervious to discomfort, and Rachel is a honey ... Their keen appreciation of India's natural beauty makes the tiny province of Coorg appear as an earthly paradise (Sunday Telegraph)

Here is a new vision of the sub-continent (Times Literary Supplement)

Dervla Murphy spans the wide range of sensation of India, where moments of great happiness come hard upon frustration and stench (Guardian)

This is a charming book, bringing to immediate life the beautiful landscapes and friendly people of a little-known part of the sub-continent (Geographical Journal)

A travel writer of rare heart and freshness ... time in Asia has opened her eyes; it has not closed her heart to the romance of fresh places and faces (Observer)

Vividly she records the harshness of Indian peasant life, the beauty of the countryside, the warmth and spontaneity of the Indian people (Lady)

This is a book that makes one realise how much of the real quality of life we in the West have lost (Daily Telegraph)

With her five-year-old daughter as travelling companion, Dervla Murphy, veteran of solo journeys by mule and bicycle to some of the most inaccessible places on earth, sets off for Bombay, with plans to meander through southern India. Dervla and Rachel travelled by boat and by peasant-filled bus, making myriad friends along the way. They fell in love with Coorg, the smallest of India's provinces, and stayed there for two months. Dervla Murphy's account of this remote mountain paradise, famed for its landscapes, scented with honey, cardamon and oranges, is evocative, fresh and entertaining.