Dervla Murphy

Irish Travel Writer Who Bicycled Across the World

Since the age of 10, when she receives her first bicycle, Dervla Murphy dreams of pedaling all the way to India, but her travel plans are put on hold when she becomes caretaker of her mother at just 14 years old. This doesn’t stop Dervla from dreaming, though, and when she is released from her caretaker duties 16 years later, her trip to India becomes a reality.

Even though it’s the worst winter in almost a century, Dervla sets out on Roz, her trusty bicycle with nothing but her passport, a camera, a map, a spare pair of nylon pants and shirt, toothbrush, comb, writing paper, two pens, a copy of Blake’s poems and a pistol. What unfolds next is an incredible trip filled with many challenges, dangers, profound beauty and human connection. It has to be heard to be believed – so listen now to Dervla’s story!

“On the following morning came one of the most glorious experiences of the entire journey — a fifteen-mile cycle-run in perfect weather around the base of Mount Ararat. This extraordinary mountain, which inspires the most complex emotions in the least imaginative traveller, affected me so deeply that I have thought of it ever since as a personality encountered, rather than a landscape observed… Cycling day after day beneath a sky of intense blue, through wild mountains whose solitude and beauty surpassed anything I had been able to imagine during my day-dreams about this journey.”

Dervla Murphy