A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Eric Newby

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Название A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
Автор произведения Eric Newby
Жанр Хобби, Ремесла
Серия
Издательство Хобби, Ремесла
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007508143



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       A Short Walkin the Hindu Kush

      ERIC NEWBY

      Preface by Evelyn Waugh

      Epilogue by Hugh Carless

      

      Table of Contents

       Title Page

       Chapter Seven A Little Bit of Protocol

       Chapter Eight Panjshir Valley

       Chapter Nine A Walk in the Sun

       Chapter Ten Finding our Feet

       Chapter Eleven Western Approaches

       Chapter Twelve Round 1

       Chapter Thirteen Coming Round the Mountain

       Chapter Fourteen Round 2

       Chapter Fifteen Knock-out

       Chapter Sixteen Over the Top

       Chapter Seventeen Going Down!

       Chapter Eighteen A Room with a View

       Chapter Nineteen Disaster at Lake Mundul

       Chapter Twenty Beyond the Arayu

       Epilogue to the 50th Anniversary Edition

       Plates

       Notes

       Acknowledgements

       About the author

       Praise

       Also by the Author

       Copyright

       About the publisher

       Dedication

      This book is dedicated to Hugh Carless of Her Majesty’s Foreign Service, without whose determination, it must be obvious to anyone who reads it, this journey could never have been made.

      

       Epigraph

       ‘Il faudrait une expédition bien organisée et pourvue de moyens matérials puissants pour tenter l’étude de cette région de haute montagne dont les rares cols sont à plus de 5000 mètres d’altitude.’

       L’Hindou Kouch et le Kaboulistan

      Raymond Furon

       MAPS

       Preface

      Mr Eric Newby must not be confused with the other English writer of the same surname. I began reading A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush in the belief that it was the work of his namesake, whom I have long relished. I found something equally delightful but quite different.

      Mr Eric Newby, I have since learned, is the author of an exciting sea-log, The Last Grain Race, an account of how at the age of eighteen he signed on as an apprentice of the Finnish barque Moshulu, lived in the fo’c’sle as the only Englishman, worked the ship, rounded both capes under sail in all the vicissitudes of the historic and now extinct passage from Australia to the United Kingdom of the grain-carrying windjammers. His career in the army was heroic and romantic. The bravado and endurance which had briefly made him a sailor were turned to the King’s service. After the war he went into the most improbable of trades, haute couture. It would strain the imagination to picture this stalwart young adventurer selling women’s clothes. We are relieved of the difficulty by his own deliciously funny description, which immediately captivates the reader of the opening chapters of A Short Walk. One can only use the absurdly trite phrase ‘the call of the wild’ to describe the peculiar impetus which carried Mr Newby from Mayfair to the wild mountains of Afghanistan. He was no sailor when he embarked in the Moshulu; he was no mountaineer when he decided to climb the Hindu Kush. A few days scrambling on the rocks in Wales, enchantingly chronicled here, were his sole preparation. It was not mountaineering that attracted