Having settled in a village in the Pokhara Valley to work at a Tibetan
refugee camp, Dervla Murphy makes her home in a tiny, vermin-infested
room over a stall in the bazaar. In diary form, she describes her
various journeys by air, by bicycle, and on foot into the remote and
mountainous Lantang region on the border of Tibet. Murphy's charm and
sensitivity as a writer and traveler reveal not only the vitality of an
age-old civilization facing the challenge of Westernization, but the
wonder and excitement of her own remarkable adventures. First published
in 1967, The Waiting Land was a difficult book for Dervla. As she said
herself: `It was a light-hearted account of an experience that had not
been light-hearted'.