Manchan talks of his time with the Screamers, a primal screaming commune in a guerilla controlled area in the Andes of Columbia. He talks about the Colonial buildings of Popayan and the prehistoric statues of San Agustin in Columbia.  On a bicycle ride from the Andean town of Bayos, Ecuador into the Amazon jungle Manchan gets bitten by a rapid dog and describes his adventures trying to find a cure. He talks about falling in love with a Hollywood star in Vilcabamba, the Valley of Longevity in Southern Ecuador and later running away to the town of Huaraz in Peru.

His book, Angels and Rabies is published by Brandon.

ABOUT MANCHAN MAGAN - writer & documentary maker

Manchan Magan has written, presented and co-produced a series of 50 travel documentaries exploring the people and cultures of China, the Middle East, India, South & North America, Greenland, Ireland and Eastern Europe for Irish television, as well as making a major historical movie on the Irish Civil War, The Struggle for RTE.  His programmes appear on Travel Channel, TG4, RTE, YLE, SVT, Canal+ and France 5. He is  a regular contributor to Irish television and radio. His Global Nomadseries has been sold to over 25 territories world-wide, from South Africa to Sweden to Russia.

When not traveling he occupies himself with writing and forestry. In 1998 Manchan wrote the first Gaelic travelogue on Africa, Manchan ar Seachran. A follow-up, Baba-ji & TnaG won the 2005 Oireachtas Prize for Non-fiction. 

In May 2006 Brandon published his first English book, Angels and Rabies, part of a series of works inspired by his years living in India, Africa, Canada and South America.  Having knocked down his straw bale cottage, he now lives in a grass-roofed house in an oakwood in Co Westmeath, Ireland. 

"I realised I had to tell the story of my time in South and North America a decade ago. It was the one thing that obsessed me. Some of the experiences I had and the ideas behind them were far-out and weird but I wanted to see if I could get them across to a reader; to express the chaos and epiphanies of that time.

Manchan Magan

Angels and Rabies is the true story of Manchan Magan's adventures on a journey through the Americas, ranging from living in a primal screaming commune in the Columbian Andes to contracting rabies in the Peruvian rainforest and falling in love with a Hollywood star.

Disillusioned with his native Ireland, Manchan, or Mocha, as he is known in the story, sets out to find a greater sense of reality and, more importantly, to find true love. He finds himself amidst the marginalised wherever he is; shamans murdering missionaries; Israeli conscripts seeking absolution; tree-huggers in love with loggers; cannabis growers influencing the CIA with mind-meld techniques; women addicted to menstrual blood and enema junkies seeking enlightenment. By burrowing beneath the skin of alternative societies from Ecuador to Seattle, Mocha reveals the cultural and sociological make-up of the Americas. He also reveals the inner-psyche of a soul-searching, slightly unhinged young man.  

It's a poignant and farcical book, wise and deranged, about adventure, love, transcendence and aspiration.

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