page_title: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
section_title: Structure
hierarchical_section_title: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush / The book / Structure
caption_attribution_description: English: Boys on donkey, Afghanistan, 1976
context_page_description: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is a 1958 book by the English travel writer Eric Newby. It is an autobiographical account of his adventures in the Hindu Kush, around the Nuristan mountains of Afghanistan, ostensibly to make the first mountaineering ascent of Mir Samir. Critics have found it comic, intensely English, and understated. It has sold over 500,000 copies in paperback.
  The action in the book moves from Newby's life in the fashion business in London to Afghanistan. On the way Newby describes his very brief training in mountaineering in North Wales, a stop in Istanbul, and a nearly-disastrous drive across Turkey and Persia. They are driven out to the Panjshir Valley, where they begin their walk, with many small hardships described in a humorous narrative, supported by genuine history of Nuristan and brief descriptions of the rare moments of beauty along the way. Disagreements with Newby's Persian-speaking companion Hugh Carless, and odd phrases in an antique grammar book, are exploited to comic effect.
  The book has been reprinted many times, in at least 16 English versions and in Spanish, Chinese and German editions.
context_section_description: The book is narrated in the first person by Newby.
  Newby begins with an anecdotal description of his frustration with life in the fashion business in London, and how he came to leave it.
  He tells how he and his friend Hugh Carless receive brief training in mountaineering technique, on boulders and small cliffs in North Wales. The inn's waitresses are expert climbers; they take Newby and Carless up a difficult climbing route, Ivy Sepulchre on Dinas Cromlech.
  Newby drives to Istanbul with his wife, Wanda.
  Meeting Carless, they drive across Turkey to Persia (present day Iran). They brake to an emergency stop on the road, just short of a dying nomad, and with difficulty convince the police they did not cause the death.
  Wanda returns home and the men cross Persia and Afghanistan, driving 5,000 miles (8,000 km) in a month, through Herat to Kandahar and Kabul. There are comic touches, as when "The proprietor Abdul, a broken-toothed demon of a man, conceived a violent passion for Hugh."
  Newby and Carless try to acclimatise to the altitude with a practice walk. They visit the Foreign Ministry, hire an Afghan cook, and buy a "very short" list of supplies. Newby describes the geography of Nuristan "walled in on every side by the most formidable mountains" and a little history, with the legend of descent from Alexander the Great, the British imperial adventures, and pre-war German expeditions.
  They are driven out from Kabul to the Panjshir valley by a servant from the Embassy. They stay in a tall mud house in a place with mulberry trees, vines and willows by a river. Hugh puts the dinner guests to sleep with a complicated story "about an anaconda killing a horse".
  Newby and Carless take on three "very small" horses and their horse-drivers. The cook has to return to Kabul. Despite having horses, they decide to carry 40 pound (20 kg) packs "to toughen ourselves up". Walking in the heat causes the local people to insult them, and makes their drivers angry, which does not make negotiating their pay any easier.
  Trying to find their feet, they push themselves hard, and get upset stomachs and blisters. They find a man "with his skull smashed to pulp"; the head driver suggests they should leave the place immediately. Two lammergeiers, carrion feeders, circle overhead.
  Newby describes how he and Carless become tired of each other's company, and of the food they have brought. They come to a ruinous summer pasture village, and eat local food: boiled milk, the yellow crust that forms on cream, and fresh bread. They catch sight of their goal, Mir Samir in the Hindu Kush mountains. They find tracks of ibex and wolf. One of their drivers catches a snowcock by running after it.
  Newby and Carless arrive at the West wall of the mountain, wondering what they have let themselves in for. They walk up the glacier wearing new crampons, probing for crevasses with their ice-axes. They cross the bergschrund and climb a little on rock. Carless suggests abseiling 200 feet (60 m) to the next glacier, a place where they would have been trapped. Wisely, they return to their base camp and try again the next morning, again finding their way blocked. They wish the climbing waitresses from Wales were with them.
  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.
  The next day they attempt to climb the East ridge in hot weather. The rock is gritty with sharp flakes of mica. They pretend to be Damon Runyon characters to cheer themselves up. They get better at roped climbing and reach 18,000 feet before returning for the night, assuring themselves they could succeed if they start earlier and try a different route.
  They pass a bitterly cold night below a cliff where rocks continually fall; there is a thunderstorm. They eat pea soup, tinned apple pu
caption: Boys on donkey, Afghanistan
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