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A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush

4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 · rating details · 1,429 ratings · 109 reviews

For more than a decade following the end of World War II, Eric Newby toiled away in the British fashion industry, peddling some of the ugliest clothes on the planet. (Regarding one wafer-thin model in her runway best, he was reminded of "those flagpoles they put up in the Mall when the Queen comes home.") Fortunately, Newby reached the end his haute-couture tether in 1956....more For more than a decade following the end of World War II, Eric Newby toiled away in the British fashion industry, peddling some of the ugliest clothes on the planet. (Regarding one wafer-thin model in her runway best, he was reminded of "those flagpoles they put up in the Mall when the Queen comes home.") Fortunately, Newby reached the end his haute-couture tether in 1956. At that point, with the sort of sublime impulsiveness that's forbidden to fictional characters but endemic to real ones, he decided to visit a remote corner of Afghanistan, where no Englishman had planted his brogans for at least 50 years. What's more, he recorded his adventure in a classic narrative, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. The title, of course, is a fine example of Newby's habitual self-effacement, since his journey--which included a near-ascent of the 19,800-foot Mir Samir--was anything but short. And his book seems to furnish a missing link between the great Britannic wanderers of the Victorian era and such contemporary jungle nuts as Redmond O'Hanlon.

At times it also brings to mind Evelyn Waugh, who contributed the preface. Newby is a less acidulous writer, to be sure, and he has little interest in launching the sort of heat-seeking satiric missiles that were Waugh's specialty. Still, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is a hilarious read. The author excels at the dispiriting snapshot, capturing, say, the Afghan backwater of Fariman in two crisp sentences: "A whole gale of wind was blowing, tearing up the surface of the main street. Except for two policemen holding hands and a dog whose hind legs were paralysed it was deserted." His capsule history of Nuristan also gets in some sly digs at Britain's special relationship with the violence-prone Abdur Rahman: "Officially his subsidy had just been increased from 12,000 to 16,000 lakhs of rupees. To the British he had fully justified their selection of him as Amir of Afghanistan and, apart from the few foibles remarked by Lord Curzon, like flaying people alive who displeased him, blowing them from the mouths of cannon, or standing them up to the neck in pools of water on the summits of high mountains and letting them freeze solid, he had done nothing to which exception could be taken."

Newby also surpasses Waugh--and indeed, most other travel writers--in another important respect: he's miraculously free of solipsism. Even the keenest literary voyagers tend to be, in the purest sense of the term, self-centered. But A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush includes wonderfully oblique portraits of the author's travel companion, Hugh Carless, and his wife, Wanda (who plays a starring role in such subsequent chronicles as Slowly down the Ganges). There are also dozens of brilliant cameo parts, and an indelible record of a stunning landscape. The roof of the world is, in Newby's rendering, both an absolute heaven and a low-oxygen hell. Yet the author never pretends to pit himself against a malicious Nature--his mountains are, in Frost's memorable phrase, too lofty and original to rage. Which is yet another reason to call this little masterpiece a peak performance. --James Marcus(less)

Paperback, 256 pages

Published December 4th 1981 by Picador (first published 1957)

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Jan 21, 2012 Jeanette rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, travel-adventure, middle-east

It seems like it took me an awfully long time to get through such a short book. I think it was just his writing style and the way he included detail about certain things I wasn't so interested in, such as mountain climbing technicalities.
However, I did enjoy the book and stuck with it because I wanted to know what it was like in this part of the world in the 1950s as compared to the present.

In 1956, the author quit his job in the haute couture industry and trekked with a friend through a region...more

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Jan 11, 2008 Martine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel-writing, non-fiction, british, favourites

Page 166 of the Picador edition of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush ranks among the funniest things I've ever read. On it, Newby quotes from a phrasebook of the Afghan Bashgali language, which apparently contains opening gambits like 'How long have you had a goitre?', 'I have nine fingers; you have ten', 'A dwarf has come to ask for food' and 'I have an intention to kill you', which made me laugh so hard I actually dropped my copy of the book. One day I hope to lay my hands on the phrasebook from...more Page 166 of the Picador edition of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush ranks among the funniest things I've ever read. On it, Newby quotes from a phrasebook of the Afghan Bashgali language, which apparently contains opening gambits like 'How long have you had a goitre?', 'I have nine fingers; you have ten', 'A dwarf has come to ask for food' and 'I have an intention to kill you', which made me laugh so hard I actually dropped my copy of the book. One day I hope to lay my hands on the phrasebook from which Newby quotes here. Which may prove hard, as it's over 100 years old and devilishly obscure.

While not as hilarious as the quotes listed above, the rest of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush -- about the author's impromptu trip to Afghanistan's Nuristan region, one of the most inaccessible parts of the world -- is pretty damn entertaining, too. You see, the road from Kabul to Nuristan is rather mountainous, and the author and his companion aren't exactly experienced mountaineers. They are an haute couture salesman and a career diplomat, respectively, whose only serious climbing experience prior to setting off for Afghanistan is a two-day crash course in Wales. Needless to say, this leaves them woefully unprepared for the majesty of Mir Samir, a tall and windy peak they have vowed to climb. Their misadventures on the mountain, described in a witty, self-deprecating and quintessentially British style, make for interesting reading. So does the rest of their trip. The book gets off to a slow (albeit entertaining) start, but once the actual expedition gets under way, it gets better with every page. Newby is an excellent writer with a keen eye for character, beauty and absurd dialogue. His descriptions of the scenery and the eccentric characters they come across are superb, as are his underplayed but impressive tales of woe. And boy, do the author and his friend come to woe. Yet despite the setbacks they persevere, and in the end they're rewarded for their perseverance with a chance encounter with the great explorer Wilfred Thesiger, who kindly calls them a couple of pansies.

If I have any quibbles with the book, they concern the ending, which is rather abrupt and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. The rest of the book, however, is excellent, especially the second half. Highly recommended to armchair travellers and real explorers alike.(less)

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Jul 14, 2012 Dinah Küng rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book made a delightful read for a week resting in the south of France; while Eric and Hugh labored senselessly up a mountain I'd never heard of and through villages full of unpredictable but ultimately missable minor tribes, I reclined on a chaise longue laughing my head off. I think the charm of this book, which is less than riveting in terms of travel discovery or anthropological profundity, is in the hapless and very English "Boys Own" confidence and optimism of the two trekkers. Hugh ha...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Yarndog rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had searched the internet for the best travel books ever and this book showed up on almost every list. How good can a book about two guys
hiking up a mountain be? Well, I found out; fantastic, mind blowing great.

Newby writes in short straight clear prose with wry, witty self-depreciating humor delivered with impeccable timing. Time and time again he left me ROFL.

Hugh comes across as this mysterious, aloof, travel partner whom Newby is able to portray with gut wrenching humor. Part of the suc...more

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Jan 08, 2009 Kay rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: travelogues, humor-whimsy, exploration, nonfiction

Newby writes in a now-well-established genre of travel writing: the improbable, disastrous trip taken to an unlikely place by the totally unprepared. He wasn't the first to do this sort of thing -- among others, Peter Fleming's Brazilian Adventure stands out as an earlier blackly comic "bad trip," not to mention Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. Today, the torch of the comic "bad trip" is carried by writers such as Redmond O'Hanlon, Bill Bryson, and Eric Hansen.

Like several of the writers mention...more Newby writes in a now-well-established genre of travel writing: the improbable, disastrous trip taken to an unlikely place by the totally unprepared. He wasn't the first to do this sort of thing -- among others, Peter Fleming's Brazilian Adventure stands out as an earlier blackly comic "bad trip," not to mention Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. Today, the torch of the comic "bad trip" is carried by writers such as Redmond O'Hanlon, Bill Bryson, and Eric Hansen.

Like several of the writers mentioned above, a great deal of the charm of Newby's book lies in several key factors. First of all, he's grossly unprepared for the trip, which involves climbing a hitherto-unscaled (and very daunting) mountain. Newby had no climbing experience whatsoever, and his account of taking a crash course in climbing is one of the more engaging sections of the book. Secondly, there's the abrupt change in life situation. His initial position -- as a buyer in the fashion industry -- could not be further removed from the remoter sections of Afghanistan which he visits. (Even there, however, the reader will note that he has a good eye for garments of all sorts.) And finally, there's the "other person" in the story -- Newby's slightly monomaniac friend Hugh Carless. Much of the comedy is at Hugh's expense, for it seems that Hugh's strange fascination with going back to Nuristan to scale a peak that had once defeated him sets the stage for later disasters.

I found the earlier sections of the book (before the actual journey) to be predictably lighter and funnier. The considerable hardships endured on the road are documented in a wry stiff-upper-lip in the best British tradition, but they do rather wear on. I also had great difficulty figuring out where the hell they were half the time, even after consulting the various maps in the book. Perhaps this is my shortcoming, but the second half of the book did seem to run together for me into one long, protracted, miserable march. The bits of interjected historical background and local color, mostly in the form of mangled interactions with various remote tribal people, redeemed it, however.

The four stars here rests on two things: Newby's wonderfully crisp way of describing even the most dreadful situation, often to uproarious effect, and his keen eye for evoking the natural splendor (and brutal conditions) in one of the remotest corners of the world. It's wonderful armchair travel... and, frankly, I'd MUCH sooner be a voyeur by proxy in this part of the world than actually undertake such a venture.(less)

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May 25, 2013 Babak Fakhamzadeh rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoires, travel-literature

A fantastic travelogue. The book's difficult to obtain in 'the West', but thank god for the illegal presses in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Here, this book can obtained by the 100s.

Newby, mid-level management at some fashion firm, quit his job and convinces an old friend of his, Carless, working in the British foreign service, to visit Nuristan, even today a very undiscovered part of Afghanistan. Newby and his wife meet up with Carless in Istanbul, after driving from London to the Turkish c...more

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Apr 27, 2013 Don rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

(FROM MY BLOG) By 1956, Eric Newby had devoted ten years of his life to working as a dress buyer for a London fashion house. Then one day, he received a telegram from Hugh Carless, a casual friend, asking "CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE?"

Nuristan -- which until 1896, when its people were forcibly converted to Islam, had been called Kafiristan (land of the infidels) -- is one of the most remote and backward provinces in Afghanistan, nestled in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, northeast of Kabul. Af...more (FROM MY BLOG) By 1956, Eric Newby had devoted ten years of his life to working as a dress buyer for a London fashion house. Then one day, he received a telegram from Hugh Carless, a casual friend, asking "CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE?"

Nuristan -- which until 1896, when its people were forcibly converted to Islam, had been called Kafiristan (land of the infidels) -- is one of the most remote and backward provinces in Afghanistan, nestled in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, northeast of Kabul. Afghanistan itself, at the time, was a nation so primitive that it had virtually no paved roads. Carless suggested not only exploring Nuristan, but also bagging a first ascent of near-by Mir Samir (19,878 ft.).

Newby of course said "yes," walking away from his career in the fashion industry. And thus was born his best-selling travel adventure, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.

Although Newby's life to that point had been a bit more adventuresome than his account of it suggests -- distinguished military service, and shipping out as an 18-year-old apprentice on a four-masted sailing vessel carrying grain as cargo between Europe and Australia -- neither Carless nor he had any mountaineering experience. To prepare for their adventure, they took a short course in elementary techniques from some experienced climbers, mountaineers who appeared concerned not only for the pair's safety but also for their sanity.

Newby writes in a humorous, self-deprecating and understated style about their efforts to properly outfit themselves and prepare for what he increasingly realized would be a totally foolhardy ordeal. The early chapters read like "Laurel and Hardy Go Mountaineering." Carless appears insouciant and confident; Newby was in a constant state of panic and alarm.

Their travel cross-country from Europe to Kabul was in itself the adventure of a lifetime. Once past Kabul, and on the trail up into the Hindu Kush, Newby's account becomes less manically funny and more humorously observant of the real dangers and problems they encountered. Newby's feet were blistered and in bandages from the outset, and both suffered from chronic dysentary. The local helpers whom they had secured in Kabul were difficult to deal with, often obdurate and unwilling to do what was asked of them, and difficult to communicate with. (Carless did speak Persian, of which the local languages were variants or dialects; Newby spoke only English.) The pack horses were in poor condition, and often terrified by the trail they were forced to follow.

Despite unspeakable hardships, primitive food rations, and unfriendly villagers, the two adventurers dragged themselves up higher and higher into the Hindu Kush. Facing miseries that would cause many experienced climbers to give up, and needing to pull out a sort of "Climbing for Dummies" manual whenever they confronted a technical challenge, they somehow managed to reach a point just 700 vertical feet below the summit of Mir Samir. They could have continued successfully to the summit but for the lateness in the day and their lack of any equipment for an overnight bivouac -- even turning around at that point, they returned to their camp after dark.

Rather than then returning to England, tails between their legs, they proceeded onward with a difficult climb over a mountain ridge and down into the next valley, thus passing into Nuristan. They had a number of adventures among a people so isolated that they thought Newby and Carless must be Russians, with whom they were familiar as rifle salesmen -- and so wild and incomprensible that Newby feared they must be mad.

The book comes with a sketchy map, hand-drawn by the author, on which the reader can follow a dotted line marking Newby's route. The map, indeed the entire trek, brings to mind Frodo's quest in Lord of the Rings. Although no orcs or dwarves come bounding out of any of the many caves Newby and Carless pass, their adventure is odd enough, and divorced enough from how we picture the world of 1956, that we would hardly have been surprised. Newby even happens upon a faded inscription carved into stone in an unknown tongue -- strangely reminiscent of Tolkien's elvish runes.

Until I had read Newby's book, I'd never heard of Nuristan, despite the fact that the remote valley was the core sanctuary of the Afghan opponents to the Russian occupation in the 1980's. We think of Afghanistan as a bleak, ugly country filled with murderous fanatics. But before the Russian invasion in 1979, Afghanistan was a popular stop on the "hippie highway" to India. Newby's book reminds us of how beautiful and undeveloped much of Afghanistan remains, and of how primitive and isolated many of its people were as late as the Eisenhower era. And, for all I know, may still be.

Afghanistan as a tourist (or trekking) destination may seem improbable any time in the near future. It wasn't so long ago, however, that Americans felt the same way about Vietnam.(less)

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Nov 17, 2012 Rick Skwiot rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An improbable—though hilarious—foray into Afghanistan by two Brits in 1956.

After a bad day at the office, the then 36-year-old London fashion salesman decides to quit his job, kiss goodbye his wife and children, and mount an ill-conceived exploration of mountainous Afghani hinterlands with an eccentric foreign service friend luxuriating in Rio.
After two days of mountain-climbing school in Wales, they drive off toward Kabul. Within weeks they find themselves scaling 19,000-foot mountains, inching...more

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Sep 29, 2012 Clive Walker added it · review of another edition

A delightfully understated and hilariously funny account of what must have been a very serious undertaking. Fraught with danger, the author, seems not to notice as he stays ahead of death by the narrowest of margins. Where the rest of us, mere mortals that we are, may feel compelled to describe the tortuous hunger or the withering cold, Newby is moved to remark on an attractive butterfly which catches his eye, or an amusing incident regarding his boot .

Similar in narrative style to Jerome K. Je...more

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May 06, 2012 Christopher rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As per the other user reviews, this tells the story of a trip to the Hindu Kush taken in 1956 - apparently on no more than a whim.

Eric Newby was working in the fashion industry for some years before the journey and the opening chapter covers some of his time here.

As with other parts of the book, this can be a little confusing. Mr Newby also neglects to mention his time in the SBS and his earlier endeavours before and during the 2nd world war.

This book worked well on 2 levels for me -

Firstly, a c...more

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Sep 13, 2011 Jim O'Donnell rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Surprisingly, even though I am a lover of mountains and trekking and, to be quite honest, would go just about anywhere, the Hindu Kush hasn’t really topped my Bucket List. I’m glad it did for Eric Newby however.

A former SBS officer, Newby, middle-aged, well-off and sick to death of his job in the fashion industry leaves (companion in tow) to scale a never-conquered mountain (Mir Samir) in one of the most remote regions of the planet. And they know nothing of climbing.

In 1958 it had already bee...more

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May 02, 2011 Steven Hargrove rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who likes self-deprecating humor

A short note to a friend in the Foreign Service inquiring about where to go for holiday led to a lifetime as a travel writer for Eric Newby. Although previously employed in advertising, on a sailing ship, and for many years in the wholesale fashion business, an expedition to Afghanistan (then Nuristan) in the mid-1950s with his friend Hugh Carliss led to Newby's classic travelogue. The foibles of these two plucky and utterly overmatched Englishmen make for a superbly fun read, filled with the tr...more

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Aug 18, 2011 Magdelanye rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: travel, disappointing

The title of this iconic book summerizes it well.
One does not just take a short walk in the Hindu Kush, take a look at any map.
As EN discovers early on, the beginning and the start are separate events, and the execution
something else entirely. What began as a lark takes on the nature of a grail quest, without the
religious overtones. Eric and his posh, poseur friend Hugh share more with bumbling Don Quixiote
than with the noble knights, and their destination might appear to be more tangible, but...more

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May 28, 2012 Jeruen Dery rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An edited version of this article was first published as Book Review: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby on Blogcritics.org.

So you don't like your current day job as a businessman in the fashion industry. What do you do? You call up a friend and ask him to join you on a mountain-climbing trip to Afghanistan! Does that sound crazy? For Eric Newby, not so much!

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is Eric Newby's wonderful tale of amateur mountaineering. Having had no mountain-climbing experien...more An edited version of this article was first published as Book Review: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby on Blogcritics.org.

So you don't like your current day job as a businessman in the fashion industry. What do you do? You call up a friend and ask him to join you on a mountain-climbing trip to Afghanistan! Does that sound crazy? For Eric Newby, not so much!

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is Eric Newby's wonderful tale of amateur mountaineering. Having had no mountain-climbing experience before, he recounts his adventures from the time he was still a fashion industry salesman, to his four-day mountain-climbing training trip in Wales, to the actual trip in Afghanistan, which took a full month. He vividly recounts their adventures with driving across Europe and Iran, their mishaps with the nomads, and the pains with climbing a glacier in the Hindu Kush, both physical and mental. As I am a big fan of hiking and trekking, as well as having a dream of mountaineering one day, this book served as background reading for me. Add to that the fact that Afghanistan is still one of the least visited countries on earth.

Plotwise, A Short Walk is not complicated: it simply moves forward, chronicling their adventures. Hence, the plot line isn't the strong point of this book. After all, one doesn't expect non-fiction travel writing to be non-linear or cyclical. What I admire from this book is the content. Things are told in a vivid yet comical style, that sometimes, I find myself reading this book and laughing just by myself. The author surely still sees humor in a daunting task such as mountain-climbing.

One aspect of the book I did not like was the conclusion. I felt like the author prematurely ended the narrative. The narrative started in England, where the author is from. However, the narrative didn't end back in England. Hence, in the back of my head, I am still asking, "Did they reach England back safe and sound?" Of course, they must have. After all, this book is published. However, it still gives the feeling that the narrative prematurely ended, when they were still in Afghanistan. Sure, they got down from the mountains and into the safety of flat land, but still, it felt like the story wasn't completed, and he just ran out of pages.

I also did not like the Eurocentric approach. Sure, this was set in the 1950s, with a whole half century between the current period. However, I still felt uncomfortable reading narratives where there are two European men, acting like they owned the whole place, with a very slim regard for the native inhabitants of the area they were visiting. The author might be a good traveler, but he would make a very bad anthropologist.

Overall, I find myself not hating the book, but not liking it either. It was a good read, if I wanted to know more about an area of the world that I currently have no access to. For that reason, I liked it. But outside of that perspective, this book does not sit well with my mind. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

See my other book reviews here.(less)

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Feb 08, 2009 Juha rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who like travel literature, are interested in exotic cultures and lands and history.

Shelves: central-asia, travel, history

This classic account of the author's climbing expedition to Mir Samir in Afghanistan in the 1950s is both informative and entertaining. The tone of the volume shifts from light and hilarious to more exhausted as the authors moves from preparation of the trip in England and Wales to the actual hardships in the Hindu Kush. Yet Newby never loses his wry humor. The extensive and detailed nature descriptions are well-crafted but may become a bit tedious at times. But the descriptions of the culture a...more

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Feb 25, 2013 Happy rated it 3 of 5 stars

When you travel as I am now (in India) you come across other travellers and book swapping is always part of that transaction. I was given this book and read it over two days. It was first published in 1958 and reads that way, very English. I have also read “A book of travellers’ tales” by Eric Newby in my late teens and loved it. Even though I don’t climb I do love walking and trekking and I could picture being part of the team participating in this adventure many years ago even though everyone...more

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Mar 12, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One day in the mid 1950s Eric Newby decided to leave his career in London's fashion industry in order to undertake a mountaineering expedition in the Hindu Kush (Afghanistan). Never mind that he and his travel companion had never summited a mountain and had no experience with mountaineering equipment. He and a friend took off, driving across Europe, through Turkey, to Kabul where they set off on foot to climb Mir Samir and journey through Nuristan. The result is an unorthodox, entertaining trave...more

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Feb 22, 2012 Allan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A wonderful travel adventure from the end of the golden age of exploration. Newby is best when he describes with humor and self-deprecation their woeful lack of credentials in the matter of exploration and mountain climbing. After four days of practice in the relative safety of Wales, Newby and his companion Hugh Carless travel to Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush, attempt to climb the 20,000 ft Mir Samir and trek through Nuristan in northern Afghanistan. The fact that they accomplished all they di...more

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Sep 22, 2010 Tania Malik rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wonderfully wry and self-deprecating travelogue of the author’s journey into Nuristan, across the Hindu Kush mountain range, in the 1950’s. Full of period detail as well as descriptions of the forbidding landscape and the tribes that lived in what was then a remote corner of Afghanistan (going through my mind as I read this was all the recent upheaval in this area after 9/11, and this is addressed by the author’s travel companion in a nice Epilogue). The author’s inexperience with mountain climb...more

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Jul 09, 2009 Eric rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A man leaves his job in the fashion industry to attempt climbing a mountain in eastern Afghanistan with his old pal who works in the foreign service, who has made one very unsuccessful attempt on Mir Samir already. With one weekend's worth of climbing lessons in Wales, they head to Istanbul and drive to Kabul, then set out on foot, with their gear carried by horses. Their journey takes palce in the 1950s. It's an interesting book because of the descriptions of the people and places encountered....more

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May 11, 2013 Chuck rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: asia, autobiography, classic, humor, non-fiction, adventure, owned, arab-themes, review, top-ten-percent

This book combines two of my favorite reading themes. The first is travel to desolate or exotic places and secondly, insight to the cultures and people of these places. If you want an unusual place to go the Hindu Kush would probably be in the top two or three remote destinations available. It encompasses the eastern Himalyas and presently includes those parts of Afganistan that has more drones flying over it than people. This is the area that Bin Laden was supposed to be drinking tea in some ca...more This book combines two of my favorite reading themes. The first is travel to desolate or exotic places and secondly, insight to the cultures and people of these places. If you want an unusual place to go the Hindu Kush would probably be in the top two or three remote destinations available. It encompasses the eastern Himalyas and presently includes those parts of Afganistan that has more drones flying over it than people. This is the area that Bin Laden was supposed to be drinking tea in some cave. The book is made more entertaining due to the fact that the two principal characters are Englishmen that planned the trip in 1956 to summit Mir Samir, a 19,880 foot peak. The only problem was that they were as well prepared for this effort as I am currently prepared to scale the outside of the Empire State Building. So with this entertaining scenario, my first criteria was met with the adventure of two young British men tackling the Hindu Kush as someting to do between jobs. My second love in reading is to have insight to remote cultures which was well satisfied with many long descriptions of the country, the participants in their vagabond posse and the people encountered on the way. The tribal nature of the people of this area revealed itself best by saying that the only connection that my mind could generate were Genghis Khan and Attilla the Hun. This is a fascinating journey into a world that has not changed in thousands of years and in my opinion will not change in the next thousand. The author and his companion realized that this was an adventure of a lifetime, however the following is his own words at the end of the book. "All of a sudden I felt that revulsion against an alien way of life that anyone who travels in remote places experiences from time to time. I longed for clean clothes; the company of people who mean what they said, and did it. I longed for a hot bath and drink." This book is comparable to the journeys of Wilfred Thesinger when as described in his book "Arabian Sands", he journeyed into the "empty quarter" of the Arabian peninsula. This book's location is more spectacular, but Thesinger's insights to the culture are unequalled. As a coincidence the last several pages of the book describe a meeting of a Thesinger's group heading into the Hindu Kush as this group is leaving and ends with the author blowing up an air mattress while Thesinger looks on and calls him a "pansy". A delightful adventure for my tastes and for mountain climbers, but not for everyone.(less)

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Aug 01, 2011 Janet rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book was published in 1958, so for obvious reasons it feels somewhat dated in places, but this doesn’t detract from the book at all - or at least, not for me. :)

Eric Newby and Hugh Carless decide to climb a mountain which has yet to be scaled. However, they really don’t know much about mountain climbing, so spend a few days in Wales as practise! With their new-found ‘experience’, they head off to Afghanistan to climb “Mir Samir”.

Although the object of their expedition is the climb, the major...more The book was published in 1958, so for obvious reasons it feels somewhat dated in places, but this doesn’t detract from the book at all - or at least, not for me. :)

Eric Newby and Hugh Carless decide to climb a mountain which has yet to be scaled. However, they really don’t know much about mountain climbing, so spend a few days in Wales as practise! With their new-found ‘experience’, they head off to Afghanistan to climb “Mir Samir”.

Although the object of their expedition is the climb, the majority of the book is about their journey to the mountain. On the way they meet many people, and have many adventures, all of which are delivered with the right balance of seriousness and humour.

It is amazing to me that they survived the trip at all, considering their scant knowledge of climbing and the provisions they had with them in Afghanistan - a most unforgiving place with sweltering temperatures during the day, and freezing at night.

As I know less than nothing about mountain climbing, some of the descriptions went over my head - and similarly, my knowledge of the geography of Afghanistan is non-existent, but that didn’t stop me visualising due to Newby’s detailed description - although whether I was picturing correctly is anybody’s guess! I was surprised by the different flora and fauna mentioned - I’d always imagined Afghanistan to be a fairly bleak, desert-type landscape, but clearly that’s only a very small part of the country!

Obviously Afghanistan is a very different country today. It is nice to read how the country was in the 1950s - and difficult to imagine it ever being the same again.

This edition contains about 10 black and white photos in the centre. I would have liked to have seen more photos from the expedition, but due to a mishap with some film and one of the cameras, it was lucky any pictures survived at all.

This edition of the book contains a touching epilogue from Carless, written after Newby’s death. I found the print to be rather small - but not to the detriment of my enjoyment - but I really must go and book that eye test that is a year overdue!

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Feb 14, 2010 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The first 'adventure travel' book I read about the Hindu Kush or Karakoram, and a good thing it was this book, which is a classic. PArt of the reason for this books' success which chronicle Newby Fraiser's travel in 1956 though the Hindu Kush, is he spends a lot of his writing not one himself, but on his travel companion Hugh Carless, and his wife, Wanda. who add a lot of humor and fun to his epic travels, that might otherwise have been deadly serious. A classic travel literature piece.

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Feb 01, 2012 Jim Puskas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Long before the Taliban, long before the Mujahideen, there existed Afghanistan, much as it had existed, almost entirely unchanged since time immemorial. Into that unforgiving landlocked place ventured one Eric Newby, who, having penetrated the Hindu Kush, returned to tell the tale of his 'short walk'.
Afghanistan's people remain as implacable as the land they inhabit. And after the upheaval of our day has been long forgotten, it will probably still be it always was.

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Nov 04, 2011 Julie H. Ferguson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A classic expedition story in Nat Geog's top twenty books of travel adventures. The story of two Englishmen who travel into the wilds of Afghanistan in the mid 1950s. Written with self-deprecating humour and understated British irony, this book includes the history of the region, culture, and faiths, as well as beautiful descriptions of the Hindu Kush and the natural world Newby and Carless encountered. Highly recommended for all who love expeditions and good writing.

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Jan 18, 2012 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Couple of gung-ho but completely inexperienced Englishmen decide to go climbing a mountain in Afghanistan in 1954. They have no idea what they are doing (getting a how-to guide out halfway up an ice cliff). I read this years ago and my reaction was "I want to do that". Now, older and wiser, the reaction is "you idiots!" Still, a lot of fun, if a bit, well, traditional in the views of the Asian people. Rated PG for some medical procedures. 3.5/5

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Jul 24, 2011 Gary Land rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In 1956 Eric Newby and his friend Hugh Carless determined to hike the mountains of Nusristan, an isolated section of Afghanistan. They were rank amateurs and Newby tells their story with both honesty and humor, including their unsuccessful attempt to climb Mir Samier. I am an armchair adventurer, not inclined to go out climbing mountains but enjoying reading about those who do. This book is a throughly enjoyable read for anyone who likes such books.

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Jun 09, 2008 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: walks, 1950s, hills

In 1956 Eric Newby, a refugee from London haute couture, and Hugh Carless, a career diplomat, set out from Istanboul in a station wagon, intent on driving overland to Afghanistan, where they hoped to scale Mir Samir, a towering mountain in the Hindu Kush. Both Newby and Carless were complete amateurs, relying on decade-old army rations, donations from venerable geographic societies, and an endearing naïveté. Just about everything that could go wrong did -- breakdowns, accidents, imprisonment, mu...more

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Mar 15, 2009 Jill rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

in the 1950's Newby quits his job in the London fashion industry and sets out to climb a 20,000 ft peak in Afghanistan with no training. It's an entertaining travel book that's as much about the adventure of getting from London to Afghanistan by station wagon as it is the actual mountain climbing. An interesting look into the culture of the secluded Nuristani hill tribes. Full of typical British humor - understatement abounds.

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Aug 15, 2011 Jan-Maat added it

Shelves: 20th-century, travel, central-asia

This is a good light read.

Working in the clothing industry in 1950s London the author and friends hit on the idea of having a mountain climbing adventure in Afghanistan.

They know nothing about mountain climbing, despite which they still think it's a good idea to attempt some peaks in Afghanistan but they do have a couple of days practise in the UK beforehand.

They are horribly unprepared. Not just in there almost total lack of climbing skills but also for the temperatures and the harsh environm...more

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About Eric Newby

George Eric Newby CBE MC (December 6, 1919 – October 20, 2006[1]) was an English author of travel literature.

Newby was born and grew up near Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School. His father was a partner in a firm of wholesale dressmakers but he also harboured dreams of escape, running away to sea as a child before being captured at Millwall. Owing to his father's frequ...more

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