Asian travellers' tales

Press, 5 June 1982, Page 16

Asian travellers' tales

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. By Eric Newby. Pan, 1981 (First published 1958). 248 pp. $5.95 (paperback)..

(Reviewed by

Stephen Erber)

“K Short Walk in the Hindu Kush” is really a study of one of a dying breed — the English Amateur. In his preface Evelyn Waugh puts his finger on the essence of this book — “For more than 200 years now Englishmen have been wandering about the world for their own amusement; suspect everywhere as government agents, to the great embarrassment of our officials. The Scots endured great hardships in the cause of commerce; the French in the cause of either power or evangelism. The English only have half (and wholly) killed themselves in order to get away from England.” So it was. in 1956 with Eric Newby. Fed up with selling women’s clothes, he telegraphed his friend Hugh Carless, a diplomat then stationed in Rio

de Janeiro — “Can you travel Nuristan June?” Reply — “Of course, Hugh.” Nuristan lies in the extreme north-eas( of Afghanistan and is enclosed by a vast mountain range called the Hindu Kush. Until 1895 the region was called Kafiristan. This expedition was really a fancy; for Newby’s sole training for scaling mountains was a few days on rocky Welsh promontories. *

A less self-conscious and understated', and a more captivating account of a . journey could not be found. The focus of Newby’s ambition was to climb a 19,000ft' peak called Mir Samir. Newby and Carless missed by only a few hundred ' feet. It must have been a disappointment; ' but the reader , does not feel it. Newby . does not- try to tell you how hard things i were; just how they were. For all the . hardship that doubtless existed, what the? reader is left with is a sense of breathless enjoyment at the dauntless, cheerful', good-natured optimism of this" idiosyncratic Englishman.