Yet Murphy was under no illusion that the world then was not the same as now. Her books are reminders that most people are fundamentally good. There are bad people, but most are welcoming and as curious as she is, opening their homes and cafes to this Irishwoman on a bicycle who has made her way to the mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan. She describes travelling through countries with little or no money, without knowing the language nor what or who she would encounter. But it is Murphy’s writing that comes to mind when that hopelessness creeps in. It is easier than ever to assume the world is a terrible place and that people are awful and that kindness and empathy are dying qualities. Reading Full Tilt made me feel as if I were eight years old again. Young boys grow up being given stories of adventures and adventurers, but young girls have to find them. She said that in order to be brave, you had to be afraid in the first place, which she never was. She was famously attacked by wolves that she shot at during the Full Tilt journey in Bulgaria. I think of the simple courage and awesome recklessness of her travelling, often alone, never in vehicles (at least not that she was driving), but on mules, bikes and foot, over mountains and through deserts and forests.
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