A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

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Anon (2002). "Hugh Michael Carless, CMG" (PDF). British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, Churchill College, Cambridge. p.9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 August 2011 . Retrieved 4 April 2013. 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. 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. Before falling asleep, having long since lost all sense of time, I looked at the calendar in my diary. The date was the twenty-third of July. Only fourteen days had passed since we had set off from Kabul. It seemed like a lifetime. p.208

Apparently this place belongs to a Nuristani general who lives at Kabul," said Hugh as we digested the ghastly meal I had prepared. "Not Ubaidullah Khan." Born and brought up in Barnes, south-west London, Newby was sent to St Paul's school, his middle-class parents, George and Hilda, no doubt intending him for a thoroughly conventional future, perhaps a notch up socially, with a safe, well-paid nine to five job and a Joan Hunter-Dunn marriage. Small indications were noted early that events might turn out otherwise. In the fifth form, he was marked out as a boy who could spot a joke at 20 yards and who revelled in self-ridicule. All his life his humour had the equivalent in music of perfect pitch. Nevertheless, after leaving school at 16, he went to work for the advertising firm, Dorland.Fox, Margalit (24 October 2006). "Eric Newby, 86, Acclaimed British Travel Writer, Dies". The New York Times . Retrieved 4 April 2013. 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." Frater wrote that the book had "become the literary equivalent of a listed building", but that he far preferred Love and War. [29] Eric Newby (1919-2006) went on to a career of travel writing and is memorialized in this 2010 edition with its Afterword by fellow adventurer Hugh Carless (1925-2011). The Preface by writer Evelyn Waugh was already included in the first hardcover edition in 1958. Kari Herbert noted in The Guardian 's list of travel writer's favourite travel books that she had inherited a "well-loved copy" of the book from her father, the English polar explorer Wally Herbert. "Like Newby, I was in a soulless job, desperate for change and adventure. Reading A Short Walk was a revelation. The superbly crafted, eccentric and evocative story of his Afghan travels was like a call to arms." [34] Outside magazine includes A Short Walk among its "25 essential books for the well-read explorer", [39] while Salon.com has the book in its list of "top 10 travel books of the [20th] century". [40] The Daily Telegraph too enjoyed the English humour of the book, including it in a list of favourite travel books, and describing Newby and Carless's meeting with the explorer Wilfred Thesiger as a "hilarious segment". It quotes "We started to blow up our air-beds. 'God, you must be a couple of pansies,' said Thesiger." [41] The Swedish journalist and travel writer Tomas Löfström [ sv] noted that the meeting with Thesiger represented, in Newby's exaggerated account, a collision between two generations of travel writers who travelled, wrote, and related to strangers quite differently. [42]

The experiences of the author and his friend, Hugh Carless, during a walking expedition through Nuristan So here we have two pretentious ill prepared dandies floundering around the mountain, looking for a way to the top, enduring all sorts of rough demands, bullying their way along the trial.

Margalit Fox, writing Newby's obituary in The New York Times, noted that the trip was the one that made him famous, and states that "As in all his work, the narrative was marked by genial self-effacement and overwhelming understatement." She cites a 1959 review in the same publication by William O. Douglas, later a Supreme Court judge, who called the book "a chatty, humorous and perceptive account", adding that "Even the unsanitary hotel accommodations, the infected drinking water, the unpalatable food, the inevitable dysentery are lively, amusing, laughable episodes." [43] I had searched the internet for the best travel book ever and this book showed up on almost every list. How good can a book about two guy hiking up a mountain be? Well, I found out; fantastic, mind blowing great.

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] Shapiro, Michael (15 May 2006). "No. 17: 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush' by Eric Newby". WorldHum . Retrieved 20 February 2018. Newby has a very enjoyable style of writing. Very English, very much tongue in cheek, resulting in the most terrible of circumstances being described as only minor annoyances along the way. There are two hand-drawn maps. The "Map to illustrate a journey in Nuristan by Eric Newby and Hugh Carless in 1956", shows an area of 75 × 55 miles covering the Panjshir valley to the Northwest, and Nuristan and the Pushal valley to the Southeast; it has a small inset of Central Asia showing the area's location to the Northeast of Kabul. The other map, "Nuristan", covers a larger area of about 185 × 140 miles, showing Kabul and Jalalabad to the South, and Chitral and the Pakistan region of Kohistan to the East. [10] Preface [ edit ] What spoiled the book for me was exemplified by this insidious class trait. I can't trust EN's descriptions of the people he encounters in the wild places, no matter how bluntly detailed, because he doesn't really see them as people. His writing reveals a sense of entitlement limits his vision.Thesiger invited them for a meal and to spend the night in his company. They were rather overawed and wondered what Thesiger thought of them, being so callow and inexperienced. They found out when they unrolled their mattress pads: Thesiger, who probably just hollowed-out a depression in the gravel to sleep, observed contemptuously, “God, you must be a couple of pansies”. 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?" A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush” established him as a traveler who not only journeyed fruitfully but had the ability to bring his readers with him' William Trevor, Guardian Newby writes in short straight clear prose with wry, witty self-depreciating humor delivered with impeccable timing. Time and time again he left me ROFL.