A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

by Eric Newby

  His Persian being both fluent and academic, he was lucky to be posted to our Embassy at Kabul where he could actually make use of his talents.

  From time to time he wrote me long letters, which came to me by way of the District Postmaster, Peshwaar, which I read with envy in the bedrooms of the provincial hotels I stayed in when I ‘travelled’. They were not the sort of letters that third secretaries in the Foreign Office usually write, full of details of the compound, the current indiscretions, the cocktail parties and the people passing through. Instead, they spoke of long, arduous, and to me fascinating, journeys to the interior, undertaken with horses and mysterious beings called Tajik drivers.

  It was early in 1952 that he first mentioned Nuristan.

  ‘An Austrian forestry expert, a Herr von Dückelmann, has recently dined with me,’ he wrote. ‘He has been three or four times in Nuristan. Food there is very scarce, he says, and although he himself is a lean, hardy man he lost twelve pounds in weight during a ten day trip to the interior.’

  Later in 1952 he wrote again.

  I have just returned from an expedition to the borders of Nuristan, The Country of Light. This is the place for you. It lies in the extreme N.E. of Afghanistan, bordering on Chitral and enclosed by the main range of the Hindu-Kush mountains. Until 1895 it was called Kafiristan, The Country of the Unbelievers. We didn’t get in but we didn’t expect to, the passes are all over 15,000 feet and we didn’t have permission. So far as I can discover no Englishman has been there since Robertson in 1891. The last Europeans to visit it – von Dückelmann apart – were a German expedition in 1935, and it’s possible that no one has visited the north-west corner at all. I went with Bob Dreesen of the American Embassy.

  I had heard of Dreesen. He was one of the American party which escaped from the Chinese Communist advance into Turkestan in 1950, evacuating the Consulate from Urumchi by lorry to Kashgar and then crossing the Karakoram Range into India with horses. Hugh went on to speak of a large mountain, nearly 20,000 feet high, that they had attempted to climb and of one of his men being hit on the head by a great stone. At that time it had all seemed infinitely remote, and subsequently Hugh had been transferred to Rio de Janeiro; but the seed had been planted.

  Hugh’s telegram was followed by a great spate of letters which began to flow into London from Rio. They were all at least four pages long, neatly typed in single spacing – sometimes two would arrive in one day. They showed that he was in a far more advanced state of mental readiness for the journey than I was. It was as if, by some process of mental telepathy, he had been able to anticipate the whole thing.

  ‘Time’, he wrote, ‘is likely to prove a tricky factor for me. I have been posted at Tehran. I hope to leave here on 12 May and fly home via the United States where I must spend five days in New York with a friend’ (the sex of the friend was unspecified but he subsequently married her). ‘I could meet you in Stamboul on 20 June. We can be in Kabul on 1 July. I have heard from my Ambassador in Tehran who hopes I will be there by August. He will probably allow late August.’

  In answer to my unspoken question about how I was to be in Stamboul on 20 June, he continued.

  ‘I have ordered a vehicle for delivery at Brighton’ (why Brighton, I wondered) ‘on 25 May. It will be a station wagon with sleeping accommodation for two and will have a wireless set and two extra wheels.’ It was typical of Hugh that he could invest a car radio with all the attributes of a transmitting set without actually saying so. ‘You will have to leave England on 1 June whether you drive to Stamboul or ship from Genoa or Trieste.’

  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 mou
ntaineering 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.’

  ‘Why don’t you come too? I don’t see why Hugh should be the only one to invite his friends.

  ‘All proper expeditions seem to have a faithful administrative officer, who toils through the night to get everyone and everything off from London on time and then is forgotten.’

  ‘I like the part about being forgotten.’

  ‘I know how busy you must be but couldn’t you find one?’

  ‘With a ginger moustache and a foul pipe …’

  ‘Captain Foulenough?’

  ‘Why don’t you write to Beachcomber?’

  We pursued this fantasy happily for some time.

  ‘“Have you approached the Everest Foundation? They are there to assist small parties such as ours.”’

  ‘Not quite like yours, I should have thought,’ said Hyde-Clarke. ‘I should try the Oxford Group. Ring up Brown’s Hotel.’

  I received only one more letter before Hugh left Rio.

  If you want to take a Folboat you could make the passage down the Kabul River from Jalalabad, through the frontier gorge in Mahsud Territory, just north of the Khyber, past Peshawar and Nowshera to Attock where the waters of the Kabul and Indus rivers flow together through a magnificent defile. There on the cliffs Jelal ud Din, the young ruler of Bokhara and Samarqand, made a last stand against the Mongol hordes and, having lost the day, galloped his horse over the cliffs, which as far as I can remember are 150 feet high, swam the river, went to Delhi and carved out another kingdom.

  * * *

  1. Fortunately this was merely a plaisanterie.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Birth of a Mountain Climber

  When Hugh arrived from New York ten days later I went to meet him at London Airport. Sitting in those sheds on the north side which still, twelve years after the war, gave the incoming traveller the feeling that he was entering a beleaguered fortress, I wondered what surprises he had in store for me.

  His first words after we had greeted one another were to ask if there was any news from Arnold Brown.

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not so disastrous. After all, you have done some climbing. I’ll soon pick it up. We’ll just have to be careful.’

  He looked pale. I put it down to the journey. Then he said: ‘You know I’ve never done any real climbing.’

  It took me some time to assimilate this.

  ‘But all that stuff about the mountain. You and Dreesen …’

  ‘Well, that was more or less a reconnaissance.’

  ‘But all this gear. How did you know what to order?’

  ‘I’ve been doing a lot of reading.’

  ‘But you said you had porters.’

  ‘Not porters – drivers. It’s not like the Himalayas. There aren’t any “tigers” in Afghanistan. No one knows anything about mountaineering.’

  There was a long silence as we drove down the Great West Road.

  ‘Perhaps we should postpone it for a year,’ he said.

  ‘Ha-ha. I’ve just given up my job!’

  Hugh stuck out his jaw. Normally a determined-looking man, the effect was almost overwhelming.

  ‘There’s nothing for it,’ he said. ‘We must have some lessons.’

  Wanda and I were leaving England for Istanbul on 1 June. Hugh and I had just four days to learn about climbing.

  The following night after some brisk telephoning we left for Wales to learn about climbing, in the brand new station wagon Hugh had ordered by post from South America. He had gone to Brighton to fetch it. Painted in light tropical colours it had proved to be rather conspicuous in Hammersmith. Soon it had been covered with swarms of little boys and girls whose mothers stood with folded arms silently regarding it.

  We had removed all the furniture from the drawing-room to make room for the equipment and stores. Our three-piece suite was standing in the garden under a tarpaulin. The drawing-room looked like the quartermaster’s store of some clandestine force. It was obvious that Hugh was deeply impressed.

  ‘How long have you been living like this?’

  ‘Ever since we can remember. It’s not all here yet. There’s still the food.’

  ‘What food?’ He looked quite alarmed.

  ‘Six cases of Army ration, compo. in fibre boxes. It’s arriving tomorrow.’

  ‘We can always leave it in England. I don’t know about you but food doesn’t interest me. We can always live off the country.’

  I remembered von Dückelmann, that hardy Austrian forester without an ounce of spare flesh on him, who had lost twelve pounds in a fortnight in Nuristan.

  ‘Whatever else we leave behind it won’t be the food.’

&
nbsp; ‘Well, I suppose we can always give it away.’ He sounded almost shocked, as if for the first time he had detected in me a grave moral defect. It was an historic moment.

  With unconcealed joy my wife watched us load some of the mountaineering equipment into the machine.

  ‘We’d better not take all of it,’ said Hugh. ‘They might wonder why we’ve got so much stuff if we don’t know how to use it.’

  Over the last weeks the same thought had occurred to me constantly.

  ‘What about the tent?’

  The tent had arrived that morning. It had been described to me by the makers as being suitable for what they called ‘the final assault’. With its sewn-in ground-sheet, special flaps so that it could be weighed down with boulders, it convinced me, more than any other single item of equipment, that we were going, as the books have it, ‘high’. It had been specially constructed for the curious climatic conditions we were likely to encounter in the Hindu Kush.

  ‘I shouldn’t take that, if I were you,’ said my wife with sinister emphasis. ‘The children tried to put it up in the garden after lunch. Whoever made it forgot to make holes for the poles.’