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We were trotting along, numb with cold and exchanging our harrowing experiences of the road, when a blood-curdling yell halted us and we found ourselves looking down the barrel of a rifle held by a very young soldier. We gave a chorus of little yelps of terror and said ‘Hotel! Hotel! Tourist’s Hotel!’ But the sentry wasn’t at all sure that three strangers – one with a bicycle and two without luggage – coming suddenly out of the black, cold night, could be genuine tourists, so he kept us covered until another soldier had examined our passports. This second lad then led us to the hotel, some 200 yards away from what is apparently a military barracks. It was depressing, if not altogether surprising, to discover that here there was (a) no food or drink of any description, (b) no light, (c) no water, (d) no heating and (e) only one thin blanket on each bed. As we were now 8,550 feet above sea level (e) was not funny. I had coffee and sugar and bread with me and the boys had some tinned sausages and pineapples so we scraped together a meal of sorts by the light of oil-lamps borrowed from the military, making coffee with the boys’ emergency water supply. (The side-splitting part of this story is that Bamian Hotel is listed as Luxury, Grade A!)
Murphy, D. (1986) Full tilt: Ireland to India with a bicycle. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press.
It’s very funny – around here the idea of a woman travelling alone is so completely outside the experience and beyond the imagination of everyone that it’s universally assumed I’m a man. This convenient illusion is fostered by the very short haircut I deliberately got in Teheran, and by a contour-obliterating shirt presented to me at Adabile by the US Army in the Middle East, who also donated a wonderful pair of boots – the most comfortable footwear I’ve ever had and ideal for tramping these stony roads.
Murphy, D. (1986) Full tilt: Ireland to India with a bicycle. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press.
The light here goes out every ten or fifteen minutes for about five minutes, which is very right and proper; it would be too boring to travel all the way to Central Asia and then have an infallible electricity supply.
Murphy, D. (1986) Full tilt: Ireland to India with a bicycle. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press.
The area also produces potatoes so I’d a luxury dinner with the boys this evening – spuds and stewed clover and ghee. It would have been even more luxurious without the ghee. They make butter here by putting milk in an ill-cured sheepskin and sitting for hours rocking it to and fro on their knees. The whole family takes a turn and eventually you have butter. Then the stuff is put in another, equally ill-cured, skin and buried in the snow for two years. When resurrected the thing is allegedly a delicacy. If you want to be frightfully polite you can describe it as ‘mature’ – and if you survive it you’ll survive anything.
Murphy, D. (1986) Full tilt: Ireland to India with a bicycle. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press.
