A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

Published in 1958, this travel narrative follows Eric Newby, newly escaped from the fashion trade, and the diplomat Hugh Carless as they set out, underprepared, to climb Mir Samir in the Hindu Kush of Nuristan in Afghanistan. The book covers their approach through Kabul and the Panjshir, the attempt on the mountain, and the villages and paths of a region then little visited by Europeans. Newby records the comedy of amateur mountaineering, the strain of altitude and poor equipment, and encounters with local people. On the way out they meet the explorer Wilfred Thesiger, which places their exploit beside a harder kind of desert travel.

Bound in cloth blocked with a wrap-around illustration in black, brown, white and light blue of the peaks in the Hindu Kush. Dark brown slipcase.