On a Shoestring to Coorg: An experience of southern India

Dervla Murphy and her five-year-old daughter Rachel- with little money, no taste for luxury and few concrete plans- meander slowly from Bombay to the southernmost tip of India. Interested in everything they see but only truly enchanted by people, they stay in fisherman's huts and no-star hotels, travelling in packed-out buses, on foot and by local boats. They double back to the place they liked most, the hill province of Coorg, and settle down to live there for two months. Here, anchored by her daughter's delight in the company of her Indian neighbours, Murphy sketches an affectionate, fresh and evocative portrait of these cardamom scented highlands and their warm, spontaneous and self-sufficient inhabitants.