Asia, page 3

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Asia - Page 3

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In the Hoofprints of Marco Polo Major Clarence Dalrymple Bruce ISBN 1590481593	There is an old saying among the equestrian journeyers of Central Asia that a unique occasion will produce a special man. When such a rare occasion arose in 1905 for a courageous horseman to ride from Kashmir to Peking, Major Clarence Bruce stepped into the saddle and cantered into Long Rider history. As the 20^th century dawned this soldier turned author found himself on the wrong side of the Himalayas. Bruce had previously led a regiment of Chinese solders. Yet fate now placed him in picturesque Srinagar, Kashmir, thousands of miles away from faraway Peking where he wished to be. So Bruce did what any Long Rider would do – the impossible. He began by making his way to the mountain kingdom of Ladakh. There he enlisted a crew of “wild looking ruffians and 28 rugged ponies,” then set off on an eight-month journey that taxed men and horses to their limits. Mounted on his trusty 13 hand high Kashmiri pony, Bruce started by leading his caravan over 18,000 foot high Himalayan passes, before descending onto the Devil’s Plain in Tibet. The caravan was hard pressed to avoid detection by these xenophobic mountaineers who were adamant about keeping foreigners like Bruce out of their “forbidden kingdom.” They needn’t have bothered. Bruce had set his sights on Peking, thousands of kilometers away, so he wasn’t inclined to linger near Lhasa. From freezing in Tibet, Bruce next crossed into Chinese Turkistan. There he stood face to face with the infamous Lop Nor desert. It was in this dreaded wasteland, as they followed “in the hoofprints of Marco Polo,” that Bruce’s caravan suffered. Men collapsed. Ponies died. Yet they still rode towards mythical Peking. “The ponies never failed us, no matter how impossible the ground was,” Bruce recalled. “In the Hoofprints of Marco Polo” is that rare kind of book, one that reads as fresh today as it did the day Bruce set his pen to paper. Its pages are full of brave men and braver horses, wild mountains and picturesque tribesmen. Amply illustrated with photos taken by the author, this equestrian travel classic also contains an excellent appendix, complete with all of the author’s geographical observations. For more information, please go to Barnes & Noble or Amazon.co.uk.
Journey with Loshay George Patterson ISBN 1590481682	This is an amazing book written by a truly remarkable man! The Long Rider author was a Scottish medical missionary who had become Tibetan in all but his broad Highland brand of personal enthusiasm. Relying both on his companionship with God and on his own strength, he undertook a life few can have known, and a journey of emergency across the wildest parts of Tibet. In 1950 the Communists advanced into Tibet, and a warning had to be taken to India. The only way to achieve this was by riding through the Himalayas! “Though it was winter Patterson chose a 300-mile route to Sadiyah, in northern Assam, which hardly anyone had completed before. The snows on the high passes might beat him, but at any rate he would be travelling first-class by Tibetan standards. He knew how to behave if the Tibetan winter would let him. If he could find the villages he had authority to commandeer relays of food and transport; the headmen would be (and were) beaten up if these were not forthcoming. As for his companions of the Khamba tribe, he could beat them at most of their own games. He was a superb horseman; he loved their horseplay and their ribaldries; his body was an engine as efficient as theirs for mobile operation in low temperatures at 20,000 feet; he could forget about baths for two months as happily as they could for their whole lives.” said London’s The Times. This classic narrative matches in sheer virility the equestrian journey it records. Please email us for details.
Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan Isabella Bird ISBN 1590481625 and 1590481534	A small ship made its way up the Tigris river in the winter of 1890. Bound for Baghdad, the steamer Mejidieh was carrying what would prove to be a historically significant load of singular humanity. On board were two of the most important equestrian travellers of the Victorian era – Lord Curzon and Isabella Bird. Though he would later become the most celebrated Viceroy of India, George Curzon had initially made a name for himself by becoming the first Englishman to ride through the remote Pamir mountains of Central Asia. The Long Rider turned politician was now entering Persia to ascertain its political importance to the British Raj. Isabella had already survived so many mounted adventures that the Times of London had dubbed her “the boldest of travellers.” She was intoxicated with the freedom she discovered on horseback and praised the “charm of the nomadic life” she had chosen to lead. The story she weaves in “Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan” celebrates the indomitable horsewoman’s mounted explorations in this once enchanted portion of the world. It is replete with both the dangers and observations Bird was famed for. Meeting the Shah of Persia by chance, cantering away from ruffians, or wandering the bazaars in disguise were all part of her daily fare. Though her quest for equestrian adventure was to turn her into a compulsive traveller, Isabella’s ride across Persia remains a forgotten equestrian travel classic. It is presented in its original two-volume set, complete with delightful drawings. Click here to go to Amazon.co.uk or Barnes & Noble.
Khyber Knights CuChullaine O’Reilly ISBN 1590480007	Few places on Earth were more dangerous in 1983 than Peshawar, Pakistan. With a savage war being waged a few miles away between the Soviet Union and the Afghan mujahideen, Peshawar had become the new Casablanca. When she wasn’t being bombed, her narrow streets hosted a swirling human cocktail of turbaned freedom fighters, tight-lipped foreign mercenaries, naïve foreign aid workers, cruel Pathan warlords, and more spies than ever lurked in Berlin. Riding through this fiery forge was CuChullaine O’Reilly. The journalist who turned equestrian explorer was already familiar with Peshawar and the surrounding lawless portions of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. A convert to Islam, the wandering horseman was unfazed by religious obstacles, fluent in the patois of the tribesmen, and able to partake of any local offering from luke warm goat fat to sullied ditch water. Setting off from Peshawar, O’Reilly began an equestrian odyssey into a mediaeval portion of the world devoid of mercy and machinery. His mission was to ride over some of the world’s highest mountain ranges, thread his way through untamed tribes, and miraculously get back to war-torn Peshawar. Yet the adventure he sought demanded a high price. His horse died and was eaten by eager natives. He was kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned in Pakistan’s most infamous prison, and met murderers, bandits, whores, and princes. Yet despite these setbacks, O’Reilly never lost hope that he would complete his mounted exploration of the remote and dangerous heart of Asia. Lavishly illustrated with dozens of drawings and maps, the resulting book was compiled from the field notes, maps and diaries the author brought back from his travels. It includes an in-depth glossary of native words, and the largest collection of ethnological, historical, political, sexual, and religious information ever gathered about life in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. “Khyber Knights” is thus a rare talisman against a world grown soft and predictable. Its pages burn with a bawdy portrayal of the darkest secrets of this cruel and beautiful region. It is a tissue of mishaps and romantic adventures, poetic passages and natural beauties, set to the echoing of horses’ hooves. Told with grit and realism by one of the world’s foremost equestrian explorers, “Khyber Knights” has been penned the way lives are lived, not how books are written. It makes every effort to rip the reader’s nerves to rags with its ruthless devotion to the unvarnished truth about life in the North West Frontier. You do not read “Khyber Knights”. You survive it! Go to Amazon.co.uk or Barnes & Noble for more details
The Marching Wind Leonard Clark ISBN 1590480600	Leonard Clark was a lifelong enemy of fear, common sense, and all the other elements that usually define “normal” people. During The Second World War he headed the United States espionage system in China. When that global conflict came to a peaceful conclusion, Clark turned his relentless energy towards exploring the most dangerous and inaccessible places on the globe. Case in point was his decision to lead a mounted expedition of Torgut tribesmen into Tibet! The official reason for Clark’s decision to “invade” this mountainous kingdom on horseback in 1949 was his decision to prepare an impregnable base for General Ma Pa-fang, a violently anti-communist Moslem general. Yet romantic adventure ran deep in Clark, which helps to explain why he was journeying through one of the world's least known and most forbidding regions in the center of Asia. He was also eager to find and measure a mysterious mountain in the Amne Machin range rumored to be higher than Mount Everest. The only problem was that the sacred mountain was guarded by the fearsome Ngolok tribesmen. “The Marching Wind” is thus the panoramic story of Clark’s mounted exploration in the remote and savage heart of Asia, a place where adventure, danger, and intrigue were the daily backdrop to wild tribesman and equestrian exploits. Amply illustrated with Clark’s photographs, as well as maps he drew in Tibet, this rediscovered classic was originally published soon before the author’s death from injuries he received while exploring the Amazon rainforest. “The Marching Wind” is sure to be of interest to students of both horses and history. Go to Amazon.co.uk or Barnes & Noble
Mongolian Adventure Haslund Henning ISBN 1590480511	It was the kind of country that sheltered nomads and harbored renegades. It was wild. It free. It was Mongolia in the early 1920s, that legendary magnet for foot-loose sons of the horizon like Henning Haslund. Descended from a 19th Century Danish explorer, when young Haslund reached Mongolia in 1923 he discovered a lost equestrian world left largely untouched since the Middle Ages. Cruel Buriat warlords ruled a vast grass covered kingdom inhabited by freedom-loving Mongols, tight-lipped Russian mercenaries and the human riff-raff of a dozen countries. It was a world where traditions of poetry and hospitality ran side by side with extreme cruelty. Into this realm of horsemen rode Haslund Henning. He originally planned to journey to Mongolia to help other Danes set up an agricultural cooperative. Yet the dust of the steppes got into his blood. There was always some reason not to return to the boring safety of Europe, some horse to ride, some legend to explore. “Mongolian Adventure” is Haslund’s story of these early adventures. It is an epic tale inhabited by a cast of characters no longer present in this lackluster world, shamans who set themselves on fire, rebel leaders who sacked towns, and wild horsemen whose ancestors conquered the world. Amply illustrated, it remains a classic of equestrian adventure. Go to Amazon.co.uk or Barnes & Noble.

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