Woman’s travel book sells decades after writing it

AN AUTHOR from Ewelme is celebrating the success of a second print run of her book How I Travelled to Kathmandu on Three Toilet Rolls and Barely Made It.

Trisha Scott, 77, who lives in High Street, self-published the book last year, which chronicles her travels in the Far East in the Seventies, and is now considering a third print run.

Ms Scott has sold around
60 copies of her book for charity, stocking copies in Ewelme Village Store, Derry’s Den in Benson and in the Wallingford Bookshop.

Now the 30 books produced in her second print run are beginning to sell out. Proceeds from sales go to World Cancer Research and others supporting animal welfare.

Ms Scott has lived in the village for 30 years with her sister and runs the Watercress Painters of Ewelme art group.

She wrote the majority of the 138-page book almost
55 years ago in exercise books, while travelling through Greece, Tehran, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India at the age of 21.

She said: “It was quite an adventure at the time. It was pre-internet, pre-mobile phones and pre-mass travel.” Ms Scott responded to an advert for the trip, which cost about £60, in a newspaper, and signed up for it with a friend she met while working as an au pair in Paris.

“Our parents waved us off at London Euston,” she said. “As soon as they had waved us off, our driver turned to us and asked us how to get to Dover.”

They visited landmarks like the Taj Mehal in Agra and the Red Fort in Delhi and slept in tents. But in Tehran the group started to splinter due to arguments and the driver was unable to take them further.

Ms Scott was able to gather others keen to continue to Kathmandu and travelled there by train in a carriage shared with animals.

“There was a good feeling when we made it,” she said. “That sort of travel is quite character-forming — it makes you quite resourceful. There’s a slight frisson in not knowing what’s going to happen.”

Ms Scott said putting the book together decades after the trip was “quite an undertaking” but was supported by her friend Anna Andrews, who lives in Devon, who proofread copies of the book.