The magnificent adventurous Dermal Murphy. One is tempted to use the word masochistic. Who would choose the bitter cold and danger of walking in the depths of winter? But she makes friends and convinces one of human nature at its best. And very well written in the form of a diary.

Predictably, another good and easy read. This is about travels in the Baltistan region in the mid 70s.

Predictably, another good and easy read. This is about travels in the Baltistan region in the mid 70s.

Die abenteuerliche Reise einer Frau zu den Quellen des Indus

Dervla Murphy shouldn't surprise us with her willingness to take herself (and her six year old child) into situations that would terrify the armchair traveller. Nor, knowing her history, should we be astonished with her capacity to extract herself from those situations, and to bear her own misfortune and suffering much more readily than she would that of those around her. But we are. Baltisan in Northern Pakistan in winter is not about skiing or the beauty of mountains (although there is that). It's about slow grinding starvation every year, people living on the edge of existence yet showing - for the most part - the best of human nature.

To some extent this is now a story of a vanished land, but that doesn't do justice to the resilience of human society. Even in the 1970's Murphy saw change coming in this region, anticipating both the good and the bad. But she also saw, and narrated how things had already changed and how people had struggled to carry on, to preserve their beliefs and their integrity, and most of all to simply try to stay alive.

There's no bicycles in sight in this story - her trademark means of locomotion. But plenty of ponies, and precipices and crumbling paths clinging to vertical cliffs sufficient to induce terror in the reader, and wonder that mother and daughter survived to tell this, and dozens of other stories of travel and places - and people - down the years. Highly recommended, not so much as a travel book, but as a book about travelling to an extraordinary place and culture. ( )