In that sense, it's more than a "bad trip" exercise, but a lesson in good humor, wit under pressure and friendship. What is a tongue-in-cheek title turns into an ironic truth about the book: comprising of little more than half the book, the walk is indeed short.

We build and maintain all our own systems, but we don’t charge for access, sell user information, or run ads. Not all the women veiled themselves and some giggled archly, like girls inviting attention on a high street. The region of nomads and tribes who were living peacefully despite their differences in faith, food, religion and dressing(! Also, he is often the ultimate butt of his humor as the one responsible for the insane quest in the first place and mistakes in first impressions.Ill-prepared and inexperienced, Newby and Carless endured a month of hardship with great good humour in one of the most beautiful wildernesses on earth. They pass a bitterly cold night below a cliff where rocks continually fall; there is a thunderstorm. Eric Newby is in Haute Couture for 10 years now and during one of the sales shows decides to quit his career when he receives a telegram from his friend to meet him in Nuristan. Newby and his wife meet up with Carless in Istanbul, after driving from London to the Turkish capital.

In Varieties of Nostalgia in Contemporary Travel Writing, Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan observed that "travel writing, like travel itself, is generated by nostalgia". I first read this over 40 years ago and it may have been the book that got me interested in this genre. It is an autobiographical account of his adventures in the Hindu Kush, around the Nuristan mountains of Afghanistan, ostensibly to make the first mountaineering ascent of Mir Samir. Newby’s careful attention to culture and landscape, his wry self-knowledge, and his historical place at the end of the great age of Himalayan exploration make the book extraordinary.I also had great difficulty figuring out where the hell they were half the time, even after consulting the various maps in the book.

I rang up a mate and his phone went to message bank I blurted something stupid like let’s climb a mountain in the middle of nowhere or or or or! It is very sad indeed that we shall never again see that ubiquitous trilby perched with the precision of a lightning conductor above that handsome, weatherbeaten face, or hear once more the heart-warming chuckle. In the middle of this mayhem, Newby suddenly reports sending a cable to his friend Hugh Carless at his job with the State Department in Rio de Janeiro:. The book gets off to a slow (albeit entertaining) start, but once the actual expedition gets under way, it gets better with every page.The account of their adventures written in this ironic self-deprecating way is like a breath of fresh air in the oxygen and imagination deprived atmosphere of mountain literature.