'I felt an uplift of spirit. Never had I seen such country.' This was Thesiger's reaction to his first sight of snow-capped mountain ranges and Iraqi Kurdistan. The legendary explorer has always been attracted to mountains. In the course of thirty years he fulfilled his dreams of travelling in the awesome ranges of the Karakorams, the Hindu Kush and in Ladakh, visiting Chitral, where the people of the Black Kafir valley still worshipped pagan gods, and wild, untravelled Nuristan.

Drawing on his unpublished diaries. Thesiger brilliantly documents the hardships, dangers and rewards of mountain travel. Each of his journeys has a unique quality, captured in some of the finest photographs he has ever taken - images of startling beauty, many of which are reproduced here for the first time.

'Both the pleasure and pain of mountain travel are revealed through eyes of one of the legendary explorers of our time.'
CONDE NAST TRAVELLER

'This is not the tale of a mountaineer but of a man who loves mountains. His delight lies in seeing them, travelling through them and meeting the resilient men who live on them'
MICHAEL TILLOTSON, 'Country Life'

'Here is a true grandeur in the landscape and true dignity in the man'
CATHERINE LOCKERBIE, 'Scotsman'

'The photographs alone make it worth a place on the traveller's bookshelf.'
WANDERLUST