A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is a 1958 book by Eric Newby

Eric Newby

George Eric Newby CBE MC was an English travel author. Newby's best known works include A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, The Last Grain Race, and Round Ireland in Low Gear.-Life:...

. It is an autobiographical account of his adventures in the Hindu Kush

Hindu Kush

The Hindu Kush is an mountain range that stretches between central Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. The highest point in the Hindu Kush is Tirich Mir in the Chitral region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.It is the westernmost extension of the Pamir Mountains, the Karakoram Range, and is a...

, around the Nuristan mountains of Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

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Background to the book

In 1956, at the age of 36, Newby ended his London career in fashion and decided impulsively to travel to a remote corner of Afghanistan where no European had ventured for 50 years. He was ill-prepared and poorly-experienced, but Newby and his friend Hugh Carless vowed to climb Mir Samir, an unclimbed glacial peak in the Hindu Kush of 20,000 feet.