Shapiro, Michael (15 May 2006). "No. 17: 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush' by Eric Newby". WorldHum . Retrieved 20 February 2018. They find an injured boy dressed in a goatskin to draw the poison from his wounds. Newby has to eat the tail of a fat-tailed sheep. They are escorted up the Chamar valley by a greedy albino. Newby tries to learn a little of the Bashguli language from a 1901 Indian Staff Corps grammar, which contains an absurd selection of phrases; the book exploits some of these to comic effect. [18] Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-03-01 17:23:28 Boxid IA108921 Call number 3743049 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Donor There was some divergence of opinion about how that worked out. Even Evelyn Waugh, who was sufficiently impressed by young Newby's writings to offer to contribute the preface to A Short Walk without a fee, confessed himself flummoxed by the contrasts in Newby's life. However, the two sides were probably less opposed than they may have appeared. Newby had a wife and a son and daughter to support, and full-time travel writing, let alone the expense of gathering the material, had severe limitations. A classic of travel writing, ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’ is Eric Newby’s iconic account of his journey through one of the most remote and beautiful wildernesses on earth.

Notable addition to the literature of unorthodox travel ... tough, extrovert, humorous and immensely literate' Times Literary Supplement urn:lcp:shortwalkinhindu00eric_0:epub:61fcce03-2a36-495b-8adb-914566f30566 Extramarc OhioLINK Library Catalog Foldoutcount 0 Identifier shortwalkinhindu00eric_0 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t8v99cm1c Isbn 0140095756

One of the greatest travel classics from one of Britain's best-loved travel writers, this edition includes new photographs, an epilogue from Newby's travelling companion, Hugh Carless, and a prologue from one of Newby's greatest proponents, Evelyn Waugh. The first embarrassing reality he has to deal with is that Carless may be an obsessive wonder in outfitting their expedition but he has exaggerated his skills in mountain climbing based on a brief excursion to Nuristan when he was with the Kabul embassy. They have to take a detour to Wales for a crash hands-on education led by a trainer they hire and supplemented by peer guidance from a zany pair of intrepid college-age women climbers. It was lots of fun to experience them learning the arts of rappelling and belaying, but we can only shake our heads over their inadequate preparation in mastery of glacier hopping in spikes or in carving ice stairs. After completing a milestone Newby asks the instructor on its difficulty rating: A classic of travel writing, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is Eric Newby’s iconic account of his journey through one of the most remote and beautiful wildernesses on earth. FROM MY BLOG) By 1956, Eric Newby had devoted ten years of his life to working as a dress buyer for a London fashion house. Then one day, he received a telegram from Hugh Carless, a casual friend, asking "CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE?" Shapiro, Michael (2004). "Eric Newby: Through Love and War". Travelers' Tales. Archived from the original on 13 March 2013 . Retrieved 4 April 2013.

Curiously, the famed explored Wilfred Thesiger, author of classic travel books like Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs, makes an unexpected cameo in the final chapter of A Short Walk as the amateurish Newby and Carless come upon his caravan. Thesiger serves as a final counterpoint–the final foil of sorts–to illustrate how unprepared and inept Newby and Carless were throughout their journey. Indeed, Thesiger calls them “a couple of pansies” in the final line of the book for inflating their air-beds (had they been carrying air-beds this entire time?). taken from A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush Hugh Carless, seated, and a pilgrim photographer at the holy city of Meshed (now Mashhad),

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.

Hugh comes across as this mysterious, aloof, travel partner whom Newby is able to portray with gut wrenching humor. Part of the success of the book is how they play off each other. From 1973 until 1977, Carless headed the FCO's Latin-American department before his ministerial appointment as chargé d'affaires in Buenos Aires, where he monitored the disputed sovereignty of islands in the Beagle Channel, and the Falklands. He was appointed CMG in 1976. Following a secondment to Northern Engineering Industries, Carless served until his retirement, in 1985, as ambassador in Caracas. Frater wrote that the book had "become the literary equivalent of a listed building", but that he far preferred Love and War. [29] When we finished we gave out chocolate to the watchers, but it was like attempting to feed the five thousand without the aid of a miracle.The witty narrative that is the first chapter had this reviewer enthralled and with that I was looking for words that were to describe my thoughts as to the magnificent adventure that Newby tells us. About how he and Carless do what to me is the unthinkable, walk to and then climb a mountain in a place that few Europeans had ever ventured at the time, the Hindu Kush. I read A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush through its inclusion in the 2022 Year of Reading blind subscription from the English language bookstore Shakespeare and Company in Paris, France. I especially enjoyed reading about some of the small villages they passed through that were practically idyllic at that time and are probably rubble today. I had the sensation of emerging from a country that would continue to exist more or less unchanged whatever disasters overtook the rest of mankind."

The experiences of the author and his friend, Hugh Carless, during a walking expedition through Nuristan The Austrian alpinist Adolf Diemberger wrote in a 1966 report that in mountaineering terms Newby and Carless's reconnaissance of the Central Hindu Kush was a "negligible effort", admitting however that they "almost climbed it". [47] The climb was more warmly described in the same year as "The first serious attempt at mountaineering in that country [the Afghan Hindu Kush]" by the Polish mountaineer Boleslaw Chwascinski. [5] 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. This pattern became so obvious that in 1956 W. E. Bowman wrote a satire on all such books called The Ascent of Rum Doodle.Sadly, more did not mean better. Newby's journalism got repetitive and, by the late 1980s, slapdash. People began to hint, and then to say out loud, that he was written out. He may have known this, yet could not stop writing. His last title, A Book of Lands and Peoples, appeared in 2003. His style of writing is like building a straight road, and every now and then build a kink in it, then continue to build the straight road, and add another kink at a random spot, then keep building the straight road, and so on. 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. After a good few years in the printing industry I had had enough. I had been worn down by the daily grind. One day it was actually all too much, and I thought enough was enough! 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! ……..any ideas?