by Eric Newby
Harper Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-00-736775-7; paperback

“CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE?” “OF COURSE, HUGH”. Two cables, eight words and two men sparked off the journey that would become the legend that is this book. Eric Newby, a man from the haute couture side of the rag trade and Hugh Carless, a career diplomat set out on an expedition to climb Mir Samir, a mountain in Afghanistan, and the rest as they say is history.

Newby and Carless had no mountaineering experience but after spending a long weekend at a hotel in North Wales under instruction in rock climbing basics from a ‘real climber’ and the part time barmaids; clutching a pamphlet on mountain climbing they set off. Their journey to Kabul via Istanbul and Tehran was full of the sort of incidents and accidents that accompanied them for the rest of the expedition. The result is a book that manages to combine acute and amused observation with a marvellously self-deprecating style. When I first read it over thirty years ago it really was a ‘laugh out loud’ book and so it remains today. This edition has an introduction by Evelyn Waugh and an epilogue written by Hugh Carless in 2008 which was very interesting as I had not read it before.

That they failed in their climb had a certain inevitability, but their expedition was anything but a failure. Bad weather; dreadful food; lack of experience; the wrong kit; ill health; splendidly irascible porters; all contributed to their decision to give up their attempt on the mountain. Following the abandonment of the climb they descended from Mir Samir and managed to continue their trek successfully into Nuristan

and finally trek out safely. Their meeting with Wilfred Thesiger on the way back to Kabul is finely observed and remains a comedy classic. The real success of the trip though is this book.

It is set in 1956, a time when this part of Central Asia was relatively peaceful; today a journey through the Panjshir Valley by two Europeans would likely prove a one way trip. Mir Samir is a peak of 5904m in the Hindu Kush on the edge of the tribal territory of Nuristan in the north-east of Afghanistan. It was finally climbed by a German group in 1959.

by Richard Winter