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A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

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Newby begins with an anecdotal description of his frustration with life in the fashion business in London, and how he came to leave it. Indeed, he was twice taken prisoner, and told the story of his recapture - "a very disagreeable experience" - in what many regard as his finest book, Love and War in the Apennines (1971), a superb reconstruction of how at the height of the guerrilla warfare against the Germans in Italy, he met Wanda, the girl he returned to find when the war was over and whom he subsequently married. Although A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958) is the comic masterpiece Newby will be remembered by, Love and War revealed another side to what on the surface was an uncomplicated nature, a compelling tenderness and compassion. There are passages of great depth, quite beyond the range of ordinary travel writing.

I still think the last few sentences of “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush” the funniest ending to any book I have read' Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Times Newby and Carless climb 2,000 feet out of the valley to reach Arayu village. At Warna they rest by a waterfall with mulberry trees. They walk on, Newby dreaming of cool drinks and hot baths. They struggle on over a high cold pass. The last village of Nuristan, Achagaur, is peopled by Rajputs who claim to come from Arabia. They reach the top of the Arayu pass [27] and cheerfully descend on the far side. They meet the explorer and author of Arabian Sands, Wilfred Thesiger, who is disgusted by their air-beds and calls them "a couple of pansies". [28] [29] Reception [ edit ]

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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. 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. But then there maybe just those such as Newby who do find a permanent sense of wonderment in the world we inhabit. That is why we read their travel writing, to get that sense of amazement and bewilderment about the world that once was, is now and maybe even what could be the future.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-03-01 17:23:28 Boxid IA108921 Call number 3743049 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Donor 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”. Rather than then returning to England, tails between their legs, they proceeded onward with a difficult climb over a mountain ridge and down into the next valley, thus passing into Nuristan. They had a number of adventures among a people so isolated that they thought Newby and Carless must be Russians, with whom they were familiar as rifle salesmen -- and so wild and incomprensible that Newby feared they must be mad. The most successful travel writer of his generation. It’s impossible to read this book without laughing aloud’ ObserverNewby writes in short straight clear prose with wry, witty self-depreciating humor delivered with impeccable timing. Time and time again he left me ROFL. 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

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