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Title: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby, Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0-86442-604-6 Publisher: Lonely Planet Pub. Date: September, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.44 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Real Treasure
Comment: Approaching mid life and feeling restless in the world of London's fashion industry in the 1950s, Eric Newby asked a friend to go mountain climbing in the Hindu Kish. Newby quits his job, puts his affairs in order and, together with his friend, sets off for an adventure in Northeastern Afghanistan. Their walk was not short and they almost reached the summit of 19,880 foot Mir Samir, but not before stopping for four days of instruction about mountain climbing in Wales. Newby's description of the geography and peoples he encountered along the way opens the door a little further and provides another peek on one of the most mysterious regions of the world. Unlike many books in this genre that are often told in a breathless, self promoting style, Newby's approach is modest, self effacing and understated, right down to the title. This book is a delight!
Rating: 5
Summary: Nothing Short of Excellent
Comment: Good travel narrative should begin with self awareness and, one would hope, a sharp wit on behalf of the writer. That's the entertainment half. It should end in a new appreciation of place and culture for the reader, the edifying part. A Short Walk In the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby delivers on all accounts. Though the "short" walk of the title took place circa 1956 and the book was published in 1958, it has special pertinence for the contemporary reader. The name of the mountain range translates as the "Killer of the Hindus," straddling Afghanistan and Nuristan, the wild vortex where cultures and powers have collided in attempts to bridge east and west for thousands of years. Most recently, of course, the region has figured in the war on terrorism. In fact, I have a much better grasp of the multicultural nature of the land and its political history from Newby's careful notes than from contemporary media.
Even if the Hindu Kush was irrelevant to latterday headlines, Newby's narrative is worthwhile reading. To explain why an urbane executive in the fashion industry would quit and suggest a trek in partly uncharted mountain range in a alien land, with no experience in mountain climbing, he begins with a hilarious account of his London job. He also speaks to that national urge to get off the island and go look about. His is a genuine yearning for exploration, for experiencing "the other." The trek, taken with a pal and some local guides, is often perilous. At the very end, the Newby party meets up with the embodiment of the stuffy military Brit who belittles their achievement. The author does not have to answer for the reader or himself-we know, as he does, that it was quite extraordinary.
Newby is great company, a fine writer who doesn't make the story about himself even when starring in it. Lonely Planet is to be thanked for keeping this in print.
Rating: 5
Summary: A too-short walk through Kafiristan!
Comment: I really like this book, largely because the journey takes place on foot through the wildest parts of Afghanistan, describing people, languages villages, scenery, Islam, the heat and insects, weather, the mountains and passes. It's a voyage of discovery, the only way discovery can be properly made: on foot. Also important, pp. 83-93 provide the reader with a short history of Nuristan.
Two English amateurs take a few mountain climbing lessons (learning how to go up, but not how to come down) on a big rock in Wales, then set out via auto for Kabul, nearly being jailed for a car accident along the way. From Kabul, they set out northeast in the Panjshir Valley where they acquire three Tadjiks (including a hefty, surley one) and three horses to carry their two air mattresses and an incredible amount of other equipment, including very tasty old army rations of diverse sorts. They note U.S. and Russian road building in the Panjshir Valley. These roads proved to be extremely useful to the Russians to enter Afghanistan in 1979, and to hightail it out again in 1989. Along the way to Nuristan/Kafiristan, their main goal, they make several attempts on Mir Samir (19880 ft.) and fail honorably. The description of the mountain should be useful to modern climbers wishing to scale it. Crossing the Chamar pass into Nuristan, they finally meet many Kafiris but don't stay long enough in that neck of the woods to tell us enough about the people, mainly because the lead Tadjik regards all Katirs as robbers and murders and had to be tricked into going into Nuristan in the first place. His fear is communicated to the author, who writes with the best form of English humor about their endurances and escapades. So, unfortunately, they rushed through the most interesting part of Afghanistan, exiting via the Rangul Valley. Newby writes of many Tadjiks and Kafiris traveling barefoot through the mountains. In the Alps, we've only seen two (young, female) herders who did that in recent times. The Dari word for alm/alp/seter/monte is Aylaq", a word that does not exist in English. Newby describes one endearing/irritating habit not understood by at least one recent journalist in Afghanistan: village people always came out and sat around the visitors, watching every move with fascination. In a recent news article, this sort of behavior was reported but then was ignorantly attributed to fascination with American power". Correlation does not imply cause and effect!
One of our adventurous pair speaks Farsi, the other has forgotten Urdu, so they can communicate with the Tadjiks and somehow (??) manage to communicate with the Kafiris, who speak a multitude of dialects of an uralt Indo-Iranian language. Iranian is the lingua-franca of the Afghanistan and Pakistan. We can conclude that calling a Nuristani Kafir", even before the time of Abdur-Rahman (the Karlus Magnus of Afghanistan), was an insult comparable to calling the ancestors of Hopi Indians Anasazi". Along the way, our heroes met an old Kafir who could tell them about the old days of wine and terraced hillsides before Islamicization ca. 1890. Madrassas and bad-tempered mullahs also existed in Newby's time, even in Nuristan.
The last words to our anti-heroes in this book, spoken by Wilfred Thesiger, are priceless. They met Thesiger's caravan coming up the valley on their way out of Nuristan. He convinced them to stay another night. Fluent in Arabic, he claimed not to know a word of Persian, and barked orders to his carriers in English, leaving it to the Afghans to find out what he meant best way they could. That reminded me tangentially of Mark Twain's description of his relationship" to German in A Tramp Abroad".
That Newby was, in the beginning, a rank amateur is evidenced by the fact that he had a pair of hiking boots specially made, then did not try them out before getting deep into the Panjshir Valley!
I got onto this book via An Unexpected Light", and recommend both books highly, without any qualification. This book describes some of the Afghan tribes in the 1950's, so we get a picture of what it was like before the Russian invasion and the resulting religious fanaticisim of the Taliban made the country kaput. One could hope that the west will be smart enough to help the Afghans without trying to convert them to western ways this time around, but the recent record of the U.S. and Great Britain in Iraq does not give such a ridiculous hope much credibility.
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