Ukimwi Road

Allowing herself several months to unwind, Dervla Murphy, at sixty, set off on a three-thousand-mile bike ride from Kenya to Zimbabwe via Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia. She soon realized that, for travellers in search of tranquillity, Africa is best avoided. Beguiled by the loquacious people she met, she was nevertheless preoccupied by their immense hardships: the devastating effects of AIDS (or ukimwi as it's called in Swahili); drought and economic collapse; scepticism about Western aid schemes; and corruption and incompetence. During her journey, Murphy was sustained by her extraordinary thirst for adventure. Despite being beaten by paramilitaries, and having to endure starvation and a bout of malaria, her deeply personal, compassionate and often humorous description of East Africa and its peoples is high-spirited and hugely compelling.