A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

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He tells how he and his friend Carless receive brief training in mountaineering technique, on boulders and small cliffs in North Wales. The inn's waitresses are expert climbers; they take Newby and Carless up a difficult climbing route, Ivy Sepulchre [a] on Dinas Cromlech. His style of writing is like building a straight road, and every now and then build a kink in it, then continue to build the straight road, and add another kink at a random spot, then keep building the straight road, and so on. Wieners, Brad (1 January 2003). "The 25 (Essential) Books for the Well-Read Explorer". Outside magazine. Archived from the original on 30 May 2013 . Retrieved 4 April 2013. The key to Newby's success is he writes straight prose, straight as an arrow, then without warning, slips in a sidebar, related yet not related, that just catches you with no alternative but to set the book down, and laugh. Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL7347524M Openlibrary_edition

The Austrian alpinist Adolf Diemberger wrote in a 1966 report that in mountaineering terms Newby and Carless's reconnaissance of the Central Hindu Kush was a "negligible effort", admitting however that they "almost climbed it". [47] The climb was more warmly described in the same year as "The first serious attempt at mountaineering in that country [the Afghan Hindu Kush]" by the Polish mountaineer Boleslaw Chwascinski. [5] Shapiro, Michael (2004). "Eric Newby: Through Love and War". Travelers' Tales. Archived from the original on 13 March 2013 . Retrieved 4 April 2013. This travelogue has some of the best anecdotes you could ask for. Misadventures galore. What were they thinking? Two out-of-shape pasty-pale gits thinking they could just stroll up the sides of Mt Everest? It's a wonder they weren't killed. The witty narrative that is the first chapter had this reviewer enthralled and with that I was looking for words that were to describe my thoughts as to the magnificent adventure that Newby tells us. About how he and Carless do what to me is the unthinkable, walk to and then climb a mountain in a place that few Europeans had ever ventured at the time, the Hindu Kush.A classic of travel writing, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is Eric Newby’s iconic account of his journey through one of the most remote and beautiful wildernesses on earth. a b Chwascinski, Boleslaw (1966). "The Exploration of the Hindu Kush" (PDF). Alpine Journal: 199–214.

Anon (2002). "Hugh Michael Carless, CMG" (PDF). British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, Churchill College, Cambridge. p.9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 August 2011 . Retrieved 4 April 2013. From 1973 until 1977, Carless headed the FCO's Latin-American department before his ministerial appointment as chargé d'affaires in Buenos Aires, where he monitored the disputed sovereignty of islands in the Beagle Channel, and the Falklands. He was appointed CMG in 1976. Following a secondment to Northern Engineering Industries, Carless served until his retirement, in 1985, as ambassador in Caracas. Thesiger invited them for a meal and to spend the night in his company. They were rather overawed and wondered what Thesiger thought of them, being so callow and inexperienced. They found out when they unrolled their mattress pads: Thesiger, who probably just hollowed-out a depression in the gravel to sleep, observed contemptuously, “God, you must be a couple of pansies”.So here we have two pretentious ill prepared dandies floundering around the mountain, looking for a way to the top, enduring all sorts of rough demands, bullying their way along the trial.