A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

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The account of their adventures written in this ironic self-deprecating way is like a breath of fresh air in the oxygen and imagination deprived atmosphere of mountain literature. using horses, not donkeys, encountering every sort of adverse weather, hungry insect, terrifying landform, and assortment of dangerous, perverse and just plain strange humans (although sometimes that was questionable) ever in one geographical location, barely subsisting on the most unpalatable diet you can imagine, should NEVER have survived. John Huston with actors Sean Connery and Michael Caine, centre their plots around the Kingdom of Kafiristan which was the pre-Islamic name of Afghanistan's Nuristan province where Eric Newby and Hugh Carless travelled in A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.

Our resources are crucial for knowledge lovers everywhere—so if you find all these bits and bytes useful, please pitch in. They are superstitious and fearful about the Kafir people of the Panjshir Valley on the other side of the pass on the plan for crossing. I was delighted to find A Short Walk now on Audible, though I have read it in print many, many times. 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.In Varieties of Nostalgia in Contemporary Travel Writing, Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan observed that "travel writing, like travel itself, is generated by nostalgia". A two-page preface by the novelist Evelyn Waugh recommends the book, remarking on its "idiomatic, uncalculated manner", and that the "beguiling narrative" is "intensely English". After three years at the FCO in London, then as head of chancery at Budapest, there followed a sabbatical year in the department of politics at Glasgow University. 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.

The food no sooner started to warm up than a whirlwind descended on the amphitheater, which extinguished the stoves and covered everything in dust.We Americans don't use that term so much, but consider that the Khyber Pass is part of the Hindu Kush. Afghans, ruled by King Zahir Shah, were then demanding that "Pushtunistan", an area of north-west Pakistan, should be ceded to Afghanistan. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. After that, onwards to Tehran, where Newby's wife flies back to England and Newby and Carless continue on what really is the trip of a lifetime.

Men run to meet them: they are told they are the first Europeans ever to cross the pass – Newby does not believe this – and are given ice-cold milk to drink. The first embarrassing reality he has to deal with is that Carless may be an obsessive wonder in outfitting their expedition but he has exaggerated his skills in mountain climbing based on a brief excursion to Nuristan when he was with the Kabul embassy. Of course the English Lake Distruct hardly compares with the Hindu Kush but nevertheless it generated a real sense of empathy. Pickering noted that Newby's combination of whimsy with close observation fitted in to the British travel writing tradition.Through all the shenanigans and crises that ensue, we learn a little about the cultures and geography encountered and very little about the flora and fauna. 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. setting in motion a legendary journey from Mayfair to Afghanistan, and the mountains of the Hindu Kush, northeast of Kabul. Carless did speak Persian, of which the local languages were variants or dialects; Newby spoke only English. As oriental secretary in Iran (1956-58) at the time of Suez crisis, it was Carless's task to engage with the people and update the ambassador on Iran's social and political undercurrents; and, through him, the Foreign Office.