The Waiting Land

A few years before this book, Dervla Murphy spent time in Northern India with Tibetan refugees, which she wrote about in her book Tibetan Foothold. This time, she is in Nepal at a similar Tibetan refugee centre near Pokhara. Much is the same as the previous book, although there are differences. In her time in Nepal she learns more about the Nepalese and the Tibetans, and also get a little travel in too.

As an early book of Murphy's, she was still on deadly form. She loves a drink (some might more readily say she needs a drink, given the lack of options available, and her inevitable keenness) and she is ready to poke fun where she can with her scathing assessment.

p70... at the moment, this consolation consists of a brew distilled in Kathmandu, sold at seven shillings per pint bottle and imaginatively described as ‘pineapple wine'... Most certainly ‘pineapple wine' is not wine and I doubt pineapples play any part in its production - at a guess I would say that it's pure poteen, coloured green. For even the best heads two tablespoons produce the desired effect, and it is probable that three tablespoons would result in macabre hallucinations, quickly followed by death. What it does to one's inside, when taken regularly, I hate to think - but time will tell.p155Now that... tourists are again coming to Nepal, and almost every day during this part week a special plane has flown from Kathmandu to spew out on our air strip a rigidly regimented group of ‘Round-the-Worlders'. These groups of course comprise the bravest tourist spirits - the ones who have taken a deep breath and, against their friends advice, decided to risk two or three hours in Pokhara, bringing hygienically packed lunches with them, drinking very little at breakfast time because - ‘My dear, we were warned! There simply aren't any toilets in the place!' It is unkind to laugh at such groups - but impossible not to do so...... A few days ago one high-heeler caused me hours of tormented curiosity. Her regiment was passing my house... at once she stopped to stare... then called to her friend - ‘Betty look! Do you suppose she lives there?
But her six months near Pokhara allowed he a good look there and in Kathmandu, and she writes good descriptions or people and places. After he time with the refugee camp she heads north of Kathmandu to undertake two weeks trekking, along with a guide - not that he is very familiar with the area she is headed - Gosainkund and Langtang. This is an area I am a little familiar with, having spent 20 days trekking there and the Helambu circuit in 1998. Strangely she never really reached either the fabulous mountains of Langtang or the amazing lakes of Gosainkund! This didn't stop her having a great time and experiencing the fabulous hospitality of the locals, although she was hardly in the ‘trekking circuit' back then.

As a narrative it did sort of lose its way in the last quarter, with her trekking, but got back on track in her epilogue, where she describes bringing her Nepalese puppy back to Ireland (despite failing to secure a permit to do so).
p212Nepal weaves a net out of splendour and pettiness, squalor and colour, wisdom and innocence, tranquility and gaiety, complacence and discontent, indolence and energy, generosity and cunning, freedom and bondage - and in this bewildering mesh foreign hearts and trapped, often to the own dismay.4 stars