A short walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby
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One of my favourite mountaineering and travel book of all time is the incredible story of how Eric and Hugh, roadtripped from London to Afghanistan to climb an unclimbed 5800-metre peak in 1950s!
The real-life adventure follows Eric Newby CBE MC, a second world war prisoner, former special forces soldier, and fashion photographer (an interesting career path in itself!), and his diplomat friend, Hugh Carless CMG, as they drive a station wagon from London to Kabul, Afghanistan, via Iran – a journey of some 5000 miles (around 8000 kilometres) through Europe, Turkey, Iran, over the course of a month and all without any support vehicles. We think this itself is an impressive feat of planning and navigation in the era before GPS, mobile phones, or breakdown assistance!
The team navigate through the capital city, Kabul, arrive in the Hindu Kush with the intent to summit ‘Mir Samir’, a 5,809 m (19,058 ft) mountain located in the upper Panjshir Valley of Afghanistan, a few hundred kilometres North of Kabul.
With the aid of guides and a chartered support tea , the two inexperienced mountaineers (they learned the skills over three days in Wales, in a short training package!), fall foul of persistent dysentery and almost run out of food. Perhaps one of the most often understated parts of the story is when the pair meet Wilfred Thesiger, a mid-thirties former Major in the Special Air Service (SAS), extreme explorer, diplomat and adventurer (akin to an earlier incarnation of Ranulph Fiennes) – who later describes them as ‘pansies’ when they pull out their beds to sleep!
I was lucky enough to see some artefacts from the trip at the Royal Geographical Society in London in 2021, that bought the story even more to life for me.