Eight Feet in Andes - Dervla Murphy

Ever since a friend of mine suggested me to pick one of Dervla Murphy's books, I have been on a look out for her books. But incidentally I couldn't find any in all the major bookstores in Pune, and finally I ordered couple of her books online. Normally I prefer buying books from a store, but my online book shopping experience was good enough and encouraged me to shop further from the comforts of my abode.

This book is about a trek by the author with her 10 year old daughter Rachel in Peru. They walked from Cajamarca to Cuzco, which lies along the lines of central Andes [approx 900 miles according to the book] in 3 months 10 days. This similar route was taken by the Spanish conquistadores [conquerors] sometime in 1533 when they conquered the Inca Empire in Peru.


Reading this book is like reading a diary, because it is written in that format - Date wise each days incidents are jotted down & described. So every day entry at least had details like what they ate, where and how they camped, the terrain and distance they covered & the weather conditions they faced. She has also described various encounters with native people & how much their hospitality helped her when it came to food, shelter, direction and bureaucracy at times.

What I marvelled in this book, was they way Dervla described the terrain, the mountains & nature around her while trekking. I generally find reading verbose descriptions about nature or climate boring because they mostly don't make any picture in my mind. But Dervla is just too good when it comes to describing scenery. The words she has used or the way she has described is just too interesting & beautiful. Its so easy to formulate the picture in your mind & the picture formed is truly beautiful, one feels like being in the place.

What I really admire is the courageous & intrepid traveller in Dervla & Rachel. Its amazing how one goes on such long treks admist nature & sticks to it even in extreme conditions of hunger, thirst, cold or exhaustion.

What I kinda found monotonous was their mula [this is not a typo] related problems. How could I forget mentioning about their mule Juana until now when many a times it felt that its the mule's trek & not theirs. They were accompanied by this mule which they bought in Cajamarca before beginning their trek so that it could carry their load. And eventually they grew fond of it which is kinda natural. But their mula related problems - fodder availability, picket theft, illness, limping, falling was described more often than I could appreciate.

Her encounter with native people gives an idea about the Indian life in Peru. Since she was mostly away from big cities & mostly halted in pueblos [small town], it gave a glimpse of poverty there. The Indians/Mestizos in most of the pueblos are poor, uneducated and barely managing to cultivate enough to survive. They seem to have more coca to chew than food to eat. It looks as if there is no link between the government governing Lima[capital] and these pueblos. Families are huge & each member contributes in cultivating whatever little they do for themselves. She encountered both kinds of people - shy/uninterested and helpful, greatly benefiting from the latter. As she approached comparatively big cities likes Cuzco, she faced the problem of theft, something she didn't have to deal in small pueblos.

She quotes some excerpts from books written on Spanish conquest by different authors[eg John Hemming's Conquest of the Incas] which gives slight idea about the Peruvian history. Author feels that this conquest is in a way responsible for the complete demoralization of people & in turn downfall of the race.

Overall a very nice mix of nature, culture and history to read. Here are few lines from the book which I simply loved..

" We need to be close to, and opposed to, and sometimes subservient to, and always respectful of the physical realities of the planet we live on. We need to receive its pure silences and attend to its winds, to wade through its rivers and sweat under its sun, to plough through its sands and sleep on its bumps. Not all the time, but often enough for us to remember that we are animals. Clever animals, yet ultimately dependent, like any other animal, on the forces of nature. "