A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
ISBN 0-330-24227-X | |
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is a
The action in the book moves from Newby's life in the fashion business in London to Afghanistan. On the way Newby describes his very brief training in mountaineering in North Wales, a stop in Istanbul, and a nearly-disastrous drive across Turkey and Persia. They are driven out to the
The book has been reprinted many times, in at least 16 English versions and in Spanish, Chinese and German editions. While some critics, and Newby himself, have considered Newby's Love and War in the Apennines a better book, A Short Walk was the book that made him well-known, and critics agree that it is very funny in an old-school British way.
Background
In 1956 at the age of 36, Eric Newby ended his London career in fashion[2] and decided impulsively to travel to a remote corner of Afghanistan where no Englishman had ventured for 60 years.[3]
He sent a telegraph to his friend the diplomat Hugh Carless, then due to take up his position as First Secretary in Tehran later that year, requesting he accompany him on an expedition to Northern Afghanistan.[4] They were poorly prepared and inexperienced, but Newby and Carless vowed to attempt Mir Samir, a glacial and then unclimbed[5] 20,000 foot peak in the Hindu Kush.[6]
The book
Publication
A Short Walk was first published in
Illustrations and maps
The book was illustrated with monochrome photographs taken by Newby or Carless.[9] There are two hand-drawn maps. The "Map to illustrate a journey in
Preface
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". He hopes that Newby is not the last of a "whimsical tradition". He explains that Newby is not the other English writer of the same name and confesses (or pretends) that he began to read it thinking that it was the other man's work. He sketches out the "deliciously funny" account of Newby selling women's clothes, and the "call of the wild" (he admits it is an absurdly trite phrase) that led him to the Hindu Kush. Waugh ends by advising the "dear reader" to "fall to and enjoy this characteristic artifact."[11]
Structure
The book is narrated in the first person by Newby. Newby begins with an anecdotal description of his frustration with life in the fashion business in London, and how he came to leave it. 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. Newby drives to Istanbul with his wife, Wanda. Meeting Carless, they drive across Turkey to Persia (present day Iran). They brake to an emergency stop on the road, just short of a dying nomad, and with difficulty convince the police they did not cause the death.
Wanda returns home and the men cross Persia and Afghanistan, driving 5,000 miles (8,000 km) in a month, through Herat to Kandahar and Kabul. There are comic touches, as when "The proprietor Abdul, a broken-toothed demon of a man, conceived a violent passion for Hugh."[13] Newby and Carless try to acclimatise to the altitude with a practice walk. They visit the Foreign Ministry, hire an Afghan cook, and buy a "very short" list of supplies. Newby describes the geography of
Newby and Carless take on three "very small" horses and their horse-drivers. The cook has to return to Kabul. Despite having horses, they decide to carry 40 pound (20 kg) packs "to toughen ourselves up".[16] Walking in the heat causes the local people to insult them, and makes their drivers angry, which does not make negotiating their pay any easier. Trying to find their feet, they push themselves hard, and get upset stomachs and blisters. They find a man "with his skull smashed to pulp"; the head driver suggests they should leave the place immediately. Two
Newby and Carless arrive at the West wall of the mountain, wondering what they have let themselves in for. They walk up the glacier wearing new
They find an injured boy dressed in a goatskin to draw the poison from his wounds. Newby has to eat the tail of a
They pass a bitterly cold night below a cliff where rocks continually fall; there is a thunderstorm. They eat pea soup, tinned apple pudding, and jam straight from the tin, and try to sleep. The next day they try to ascend a 70 degree ice slope, reaching the ridge after five hours, not the two they had estimated. At 19,100 feet they have a tremendous view of the Hindu Kush, the
Carless makes an impressive speech in
Walking down from the village of Lustagam they pass hand-made irrigation canals of hollowed-out halved tree trunks on stone pillars. They are shown a rock, the Sang Neveshteh, with an inscription in
Newby and Carless climb 2,000 feet out of the valley to reach Arayu village. At Warna they rest by a waterfall with mulberry trees. They walk on, Newby dreaming of cool drinks and hot baths. They struggle on over a high cold pass. The last village of
Reception
Critics such as the travel writer Alexander Frater have noted that while the book is held in extremely high esteem,[b] and is enjoyably comic,[30][31] it is not nearly as well-written as his later autobiographical book, Love and War in the Apennines (1971), a judgement in which Newby concurred.[29][32][33][34] The travel writer John Pilkington stated that the book had been an early inspiration in his life, and wrote of Newby that "He had an understated, self-deprecating sense of humour which was very British – perfect travel writing."[35] Michael Shapiro, interviewing Newby for Travelers' Tales, called the book "a classic piece of old-school British exploration, and established Newby's trademark self-deprecating wry humor"[36] and included it in WorldHum's list of favourite travel books.[37] Boyd Tonkin, writing in The Independent, called the book a "classic trek", and commented that while it is told light-heartedly, Newby, despite his comic gift, always retained his "capacity for wonderment".[38]
Kari Herbert noted in The Guardian's list of travel writer's favourite travel books that she had inherited a "well-loved copy" of the book from her father, the English polar explorer Wally Herbert. "Like Newby, I was in a soulless job, desperate for change and adventure. Reading A Short Walk was a revelation. The superbly crafted, eccentric and evocative story of his Afghan travels was like a call to arms."[34] Outside magazine includes A Short Walk among its "25 essential books for the well-read explorer",[39] while Salon.com has the book in its list of "top 10 travel books of the [20th] century".[40] The Daily Telegraph too enjoyed the English humour of the book, including it in a list of favourite travel books, and describing Newby and Carless's meeting with the explorer Wilfred Thesiger as a "hilarious segment". It quotes "We started to blow up our air-beds. 'God, you must be a couple of pansies,' said Thesiger."[41] The Swedish journalist and travel writer Tomas Löfström noted that the meeting with Thesiger represented, in Newby's exaggerated account, a collision between two generations of travel writers who travelled, wrote, and related to strangers quite differently.[42]
Margalit Fox, writing Newby's obituary in The New York Times, noted that the trip was the one that made him famous, and states that "As in all his work, the narrative was marked by genial self-effacement and overwhelming understatement." She cites a 1959 review in the same publication by William O. Douglas, later a Supreme Court judge, who called the book "a chatty, humorous and perceptive account", adding that "Even the unsanitary hotel accommodations, the infected drinking water, the unpalatable food, the inevitable dysentery are lively, amusing, laughable episodes."[43]
The American novelist Rick Skwiot enjoyed the "blithely confident Brit's" narrative style, finding echoes of its concept, structure and humour in Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. Skwiot notes the hazards of the journey as crevasses, precipices, thieves, bears, disease, thirst, hunger. "Somehow they blunder on toward their whimsical destination", he remarks, the "seductive and tickling narrative" told with "understatement, self-effacement, savage wit, honed irony, and unrelenting honesty." The reader is drawn in "by his endearingly flawed humanity."[44]
In Varieties of Nostalgia in Contemporary Travel Writing, Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan observed that "travel writing, like travel itself, is generated by nostalgia". But the "anachronistic gentleman" can only exist, they note, quoting Simon Raven, "in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal". The resulting "atmosphere of enhanced affectation is exploited to maximum comic effect" in books such as A Short Walk, which they called "an acclaimed post-Byronic escapade in which gentlemanly theatrics come to assume the proportions of full-blown farce."[45]
The essayist and professor of English Samuel Pickering called A Short Walk and Newby's later book Slowly Down the Ganges "vastly entertaining", reminiscent of earlier British travellers such as Robert Byron (The Road to Oxiana, 1937), but also "episodic, each day cluttered with odd occurrences that are striking because they occur in exotic lands". Pickering noted that Newby's combination of whimsy with close observation fitted in to the British travel writing tradition. In his view, Newby's writing has aged, but like old wine, it goes down smoothly, and remains invigorating.[46]
Legacy
The
In January 2012, an expedition under the auspices of the British Mountaineering Council, citing the "popular adventure book", attempted the first winter ascent of Mir Samir, but it was cut short by an equipment theft and "very deep snow conditions and route finding difficulties".[48]
Notes
- ^ This is one of the routes pioneered by Peter Harding.[12]
- ^ Frater wrote that the book had "become the literary equivalent of a listed building", but that he far preferred Love and War.[29]
References
- ^ 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.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 17.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 22.
- ^ "Obituaries – Hugh Carless". The Telegraph. 21 December 2011.
- ^ a b Chwascinski, Boleslaw (1966). "The Exploration of the Hindu Kush" (PDF). Alpine Journal: 199–214.
- ^ Newby 1974, pp. 22–23.
- ^ Good Reads editions
- ^ "ti:a short walk in the hindu kush au:eric newby". WorldCat. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
- ^ Newby 1974, pp. 128–129.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 248ff.
- ^ Newby 1974, pp. 11–12.
- ^ Perrin, Jim (19 December 2007). "Peter Harding Rock-climbing pioneer whose exploits defined the postwar sport". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 May 2013.
- ^ Newby 1974, pp. 59–60.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 84.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 106.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 110.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 129.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 166.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 169.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 181.
- ^ Newby 1974, pp. 207–208.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 212.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 216.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 219.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 227.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 230.
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 244
- ^ Newby 1974, p. 248.
- ^ a b c Frater, Alexander (29 October 2006). "Eric Newby | 'I remember the hum of excitement he created'". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
- ^ Gutcher, Lianne (5 February 2017). "Following Eric Newby's footsteps in the Hindu Kush". Wanderlust Travel Magazine. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
- ^ Waldmann, Greg (1 July 2016). "From the Archives: Summer Reading 2015 – Cool Reads". Open Letters Monthly | An Arts and Literature Review. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
- ^ George, Edward Mace (23 October 2006). "Idiosyncratic travel writer from another age, and author of the classic A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
- ^ Anon (24 October 2012). "Review of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby" (PDF). Anmore Ladies' Book Club (Gentlemen Welcome). Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
- ^ a b Herbert, Kari; Gimlette, John; et al. (16 September 2011). "My favourite travel book, by the world's greatest travel writers". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
- ^ "John waxes lyrical about Balkan venture". Southern Reporter. 19 November 2015. Archived from the original on 16 February 2018. Retrieved 16 February 2018.
- ^ Shapiro, Michael (2004). "Eric Newby: Through Love and War". Travelers' Tales. Archived from the original on 13 March 2013. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
- ^ Shapiro, Michael (15 May 2006). "No. 17: 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush' by Eric Newby". WorldHum. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
- ^ Tonkin, Boyd (5 November 2010). "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, By Eric Newby". The Independent. Archived from the original on 13 June 2015. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
- ^ 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.
- ^ George, Don (19 May 1999). "The top 10 travel books of the century". Salon.com. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
- ^ Anon. "The 20 best travel books of all time". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
- ^ Löfström, Tomas (17 June 2013). "Världens lockelse" [The attraction of the World] (in Swedish). Österlens Bokcafé. Retrieved 21 February 2018.
"Möten med det främmande. Reseskildringens skiftande former", published as Världens lockelse in HVL/Karavan 3/99 (theme travel literature; first issue under the name Karavan)
- ^ Fox, Margalit (24 October 2006). "Eric Newby, 86, Acclaimed British Travel Writer, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
- ^ "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby". Rick Skwiot. Archived from the original on 16 February 2018. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
- ISBN 9780754603665.
- S2CID 161178121.
- ^ Diemberger, Adolf (1966). "Development of Mountaineering in the Hindu Kush". Himalayan Journal. 27. Translated by Merrick, Hugh.
- ^ Bingham, James; Brooksbank, Quentin; Wynne, Mark (2012). "A Short Winter in the Hindu Kush" (PDF). British Mountaineering Council. Retrieved 23 April 2013.
Edition
- ISBN 0-330-24227-X.