Full Tilt and other early writings in 2012 In 1963, Murphy set off on her first long-distance bicycle tour, a self-supported trip from Ireland to India. Taking a pistol along with other equipment aboard her Armstrong Cadet men's bicycle (named
Rozinante in allusion to
Don Quixote's steed and always known as
Roz), she passed through Europe during one of the
worst winters in years. In
Yugoslavia, Murphy began to write a journal instead of mailing letters. In Iran, she used her gun to frighten off a group of thieves, and "used unprintable tactics" to escape from an attempted rapist at a police station. She received her worst injury of the journey on a bus in the
Kingdom of Afghanistan, when a rifle butt hit her and fractured three ribs; however, this only delayed her for a short while. She wrote appreciatively about the landscape and people of Afghanistan, calling herself "Afghanatical" and claiming that the Afghan "is a man after my own heart". In Pakistan, she visited
Swat (where she was a guest of the last
wali,
Miangul Aurangzeb) and the mountain area of
Gilgit. The final leg of her trip took her through the
Punjab region and over the border to India towards Delhi. Her journal was later published by
John Murray as her first book
Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle. After arriving in Delhi, Murphy worked as a volunteer helping Tibetan refugees under the auspices of
Save the Children. She spent five months in a refugee camp in
Dharamsala run by
Tsering Dolma, sister of the
14th Dalai Lama. She then cycled through the
Kullu Valley, spending Christmas in
Malana. Her journals from this period were published in her second book,
Tibetan Foothold. On returning to Europe, Murphy took part in a fundraising campaign for Save the Children, In 1966, Murphy made her first trip to Africa. She travelled to the
Empire of Ethiopia and walked with a pack mule from
Asmara to
Addis Ababa, confronted by
Kalashnikov-carrying soldiers on the way. This journey was described in her fourth book,
In Ethiopia with a Mule.
Travels with Rachel Murphy's daughter Rachel accompanied her on a trip to India at the age of five; they flew into
Bombay and travelled to
Goa and
Coorg (described in
On a Shoestring to Coorg). The pair later journeyed to
Baltistan (
Where the Indus is Young), Peru (
Eight Feet in the Andes) and Madagascar (
Muddling through in Madagascar). Their last trip was through Cameroon on a horse, where Dervla was frequently mistaken for Rachel's husband (
Cameroon with Egbert). She surmised that this misgendering occurred not only because of her physique but also because the idea of women travelling so far without a man was inconceivable. She tried different ways to correct the understanding, the most successful being unbuttoning her shirt. "It was, like her literary voice, frank and persuasive," wrote
Jori Finkel in her
Washington Post obituary. On travelling with a child, Murphy wrote: A child's presence emphasises your trust in the community's goodwill. And because children pay little attention to racial or cultural differences, junior companions rapidly demolish barriers of shyness or apprehension often raised when foreigners unexpectedly approach a remote village.
Politicisation In 1978, Murphy wrote
A Place Apart about her travels in
Northern Ireland and encounters with members of the Protestant and Catholic religious communities. It won the 1979
Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. She credits her 1982 book
Race to the Finish? The Nuclear Stakes as a turning point that led her to write more about political issues. In 1985 she lived for several months in
Bradford and
Birmingham, talking to members of the Asian, Afro-Caribbean and White communities and witnessing first-hand one of the
Handsworth riots (described in
Tales From Two Cities). In 1992, she cycled from Kenya to Zimbabwe, where she witnessed the impact of AIDS; when describing this journey in
The Ukimwi Road, she criticised the role of
non-governmental organisations in
sub-Saharan Africa. Her other writings include discussions about the aftermath of
apartheid (
South from the Limpopo) and the
Rwandan genocide (
Visiting Rwanda), the displacement of
tribal peoples (
One Foot in Laos), and post-war reconstruction of the
Balkans (
Through the Embers of Chaos). She was
anti-globalization and critical of
NATO, the
World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund and the
World Trade Organization. She spoke out against
nuclear power and
climate change. In 2005, she visited Cuba with her daughter and three granddaughters, and made two return trips in 2006 and 2007 (described in
The Island that Dared). Her Havana experiences are also featured in a collection of traveller's tales. Over the summer of 2011, Murphy spent a month in the Palestinian
Gaza Strip, where she met liberals and Islamists,
Hamas and
Fatah supporters. She described her stay in a book published in 2013:
A Month by the Sea. She wrote about further encounters with Israelis and Palestinians in her 2015 book,
Between River and Sea. ==Personal life and interests==