Two Wheels in the Dust: From Kathmandu to Kandy

Rating:
Summary: 297 pages to gather Dust
Review: Well I've read a few books on travelling foreign lands by bike. It seems that more often that not they are written by middle aged women, who are perhaps in more of a transition point in life and are more apt for meaningful self reflection, I dunno.

I picked up this book excited that I had found a series of books to get hooked on that would get into travelling remote and wonderful parts of the world by bike and describing the journey.

What I found was a big disappointment, that pretty much sums it up right there. I've read 3 other books while trying to slug through this one.

I had expected it would be descriptive of riding through Nepal, India and Sri Lanka talking of the people and sights. This isn't what I found. Mustoe has a knack for avoiding those interesting bits like, ohh describing much about the place at all.

The novel paralleled the legend of the Ramayama. Which has an equal portion of the text as her journey does. Unforunately this text is rather daunting and her journey becomes more involved with the details of how she got to given monuments than what was there or in the rest of the contry for example. At times she comes off as snobby, mentioning she's used to not living in luxury and then turning up her nose at the lack of availibility of Kingfisher beer in a nation that doesn't drink for example.

I was also disappointed a little mislead since thiswasn't a journey from Nepal through to Sri Lanka, in fact it was a sequence of several trips over many years.

Her detail of the way her tourguides pants were pressed is more commonly mentioned than riding through the countryside, which is not the type of detail I was looking for.

She has an overlying attitude that this is what she does for a job and offers little more than a narritave, offering little of herself to the reader other than to mention she is from London and is a widow. No more is mentioned. Which keeps the reader at arms reach, and you get less out of it.

Would I read another one of her books, maybe someday...if I was stormstayed into an airport or doing time.

[I'd recommend Margo Archibald's Cycling Into Your Soul over this one]