"HIDDEN ASIA"

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 132, 30 November 1935, Page 8

"HIDDEN ASIA"

AN ARDUOUS JOURNEY

MR. PETER FLEMING'S STORY

Mr. Peter Fleming, who undertook a journey to the Far East on behalf of the London "Times," visited Manchuria, Mongolia, the interior of China, Northern Tibet, Sinkiang, and Kashmir. His journey to Manchuria was described in a series of articles which, by arrangement with "The Times," were published in the "Evening Post" in January and March. A new series of articles will under similar arrangements be published, beginning on Monday, describing his journey overland from Peking *o India. His travels have taken Mr. Fleming over several thousand arduous miles. He himself calls his mission "a successful essay in travelling light," but, as his account will show, it was often beset, especially in the stages to which the coming articles relate, by discomforts .sometimes threatening disaster, by delays inevitable in the disturbed state of the Chinese territories, and by varied adventure and misadventure. The end of the story remains to be told in a further series. After his disappearance into the interior of China, Mr. Fleming was for long unable to communicate his whereabouts. It was not until July 29 that "The Times" was able to announce his safe arrival at Kashgar on his way to Gilgit and British India. Indeed the successful completion of the journey was often in doubt. When, in February, Mr. Fleming and his three companions (two of whom were soon arrested and sent back) set off from Peking they took "a route not generally recognised as such," with the intention of making a flank attempt upon the province of Sinkiang, or Chinese Turkestan. How at length they won through the articles tell. Mr. Fleming's remaining comradi was Mile. Maillart, an intrepid Swiss, whose power of endurance was happily accompanied by an aptitude for cooking and doctoring.