Eric Newby - A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

This was heady stuff but then, quite suddenly, the tone of the letters changed.

I don’t think we should make known our ambition to go to Nuristan. Rather I suggest we ask permission to go on a Climbing Expedition. There are three very good and unclimbed peaks of about 20,000 feet, all on the marches of Nuristan. One of them, Mir Samir (19,880) I attempted with Bob Dreesen in 1952 ( vide my letter of 20.9.52). We climbed up to some glaciers and reached a point 3,000 feet below the final pyramid. A minor mishap forced us to return.

He was already deeply involved in the clichés of mountaineering jargon. I re-read his 1952 letter and found that the ‘minor mishap’ was an amendment. At the time he had written, ‘one of the party was hit on the head by a boulder’: he didn’t say who. He continued remorselessly:

This will leave us free to approach the War Office for equipment [I had rashly mentioned a Territorial Regiment with which I was associated] and the Everest Foundation for a grant. It will be honest, honourable, and attainable, and if only partially so leaves us free to return to that part NEXT YEAR.

I was filled with profound misgiving. In cold print 20,000 feet does not seem very much. Every year more and more expeditions climb peaks of 25,000 feet, and over. In the Himalayas a mountain of this size is regarded as an absolute pimple, unworthy of serious consideration. But I had never climbed anything. It was true that I had done some hill walking and a certain amount of scrambling in the Dolomites with my wife, but nowhere had we failed to encounter ladies twice our age armed with umbrellas. I had never been anywhere that a rope had been remotely necessary.

It was useless to dissemble any longer. I wrote a letter protesting in the strongest possible terms and received by return a list of equipment that I was to purchase. Many of the objects I had never even heard of – two Horeschowsky ice-axes; three dozen Simond rock and ice pitons; six oval karabiners (2,000 lb. minimum breaking strain); five 100 ft nylon ropes; six abseil slings; Everest goggles; Grivel, ten point crampons; a high altitude tent; an altimeter; Yukon pack frames – the list was an endless one. ‘You will also need boots. I should see about these right away. They may need to be made.’

I told Wanda, my wife.

‘I think he’s insane,’ she said, ‘just dotty. What will happen if you say no?’

‘I already have but he doesn’t take any notice. You see what he says here, if we don’t go as mountaineers we shan’t get permission.’

‘Have you told the Directors you’re leaving?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are in a spot. We’re all in a spot. Well, if you’re going I’m going too. I want to see this mountain.’

I wrote to Hugh. Like an echo in a quarry his reply came back, voicing my own thoughts.

I don’t think either of you quite realize what this country is like. The Nuristanis have only recently been converted to Islam; women are less than the dust. There are no facilities for female tourists. I refer you to The Imperial Gazetteer of India, volume on Afghanistan, page 70, line 37 et seq. This is somewhat out of date but the situation must be substantially the same today.

I found the book in a creepy transept of the London Library.

‘What does it say?’ asked Wanda. ‘Read it.’

‘“There are several villages in Kafiristan which are places of refuge, where slayers of their fellow tribesmen reside permanently!”’

‘It says “fellow tribesmen” and I thought you were going to Nuristan. This says Kafiristan.’

‘Don’t quibble. It was called Kafiristan until 1895. It goes on; listen to this: “Kafir women are practically slaves, being to all intents and purposes bought and sold as household commodities.”’

‘I’m practically a slave, married to you.’

‘“The young women are mostly immoral. There is little or no ceremony about a Kafir marriage. If a man becomes enamoured of a girl, he sends a friend to her father to ask her price. If the price is agreed upon the man immediately proceeds to the girl’s house, where a goat is sacrificed and then they are considered to be married. The dead are disposed of in a peculiar manner.”’

‘Apart from the goat, it sounds like a London season. Besides he admits it’s all out of date. I’m coming as far as I jolly well can.’

‘What about the children?’

‘The children can stay with my mother in Trieste.’

I was heavily involved on all fronts: with mountaineering outfitters, who oddly enough never fathomed the depths of my ignorance; possibly because they couldn’t conceive of anyone acquiring such a collection of equipment without knowing how to use it: with the Consuls of six countries, and with a Bulgarian with whom I formed an indissoluble entente in a pub off Queen’s Gate. He was a real prototype Bulgarian with a big moustache and lots of black hair.

‘Have a pint of Worthington, Mr Kolarov.’

‘I SHALL like it.’ He threw his head back and it was gone.

‘You like it?’

‘Not strong enough. I shall have a cognac, then I shall have a Worthington, then perhaps another cognac, then perhaps I shall be more gay.’

More soberly with the Foreign Office, who had to obtain permission from the Ambassador at Kabul for Hugh to visit Afghanistan. I was interviewed by a representative of the Asian Desk in the sombre room full of hair sofas and broken umbrellas reserved for persons like myself, intruders from the outside world without credentials. We faced each other across a large mahogany table. Like all such encounters it was not a success.

‘We have sent the Ambassador a long cable.’

‘But that was a month ago.’

‘It is not as simple as you think.’ Without undue subtlety he managed to convey that I never thought at all. ‘You can hardly blame us if you leave a request of this kind until the last moment, besides, there is nothing to stop you going to Afghanistan, the cable only refers to Carless.’

‘Grr.’

With the Autumn Collection. It was now the second week in May. I was leaving in a fortnight. To add to my troubles I now received a letter from Hugh. It was extremely alarming. I read it to Hyde-Clarke.

‘These three climbs will certainly be a good second-class mountaineering achievement. But we shall almost certainly need with us an experienced climber.’

‘I thought you said he was an experienced climber.’

‘So I did. Do listen!

‘“What about Adam Arnold Brown who is now in India as a head of a public school at Begumpet?”‘ Here Hyde-Clarke chuckled.

‘He was head of the Outward Bound Mountaineering School in Eskdale, and has done a good deal of Alpine climbing. He and I were at Trinity Hall together. I have sent him a cable asking him to join us in Kabul by air for a five-week assault on three 20,000 feet peaks but he may be on leave. His address in London is V/C (WRATH) W.C. 1.’

‘Very appropriate, but what a terrifying cable to receive.’

‘That’s only the beginning. Listen to this.

‘It is just possible that he may not be able to come. In which case we must try elsewhere. In my opinion the companion we need should not only have climbing ability and leadership but round out our party’s versatility by bringing different qualities, adding them to ours.’

‘It sounds like the formula for some deadly gas.’

‘Will you listen! This isn’t funny to me.

‘Perhaps he would be a Welsh miner, or a biologist, or a young Scots doctor. Someone from quite another background, bringing another point of view …’

‘For the first time,’ said Hyde-Clarke, ‘I’m beginning to be just a little bit jealous. I’d love to listen to you all lying on top of one another in one of those inadequate little tents, seeing one another’s points of view.’