Customer Reviews

The Himalayan Letters of Gypsy Davy and Lady Ba

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I read this book years ago when I was in college. It was a delightful discovery. This obscure book from the 1920s is a collection of letters, many written for young readers, by an eccentric, enlightened and talented pair of travelers. The Barretts, alias Gypsy Davy and Lady Ba, traveled to exotic locales not as casual tourists but as serious students. This book grew out of a multi-year caravan with pack animals through Ladakh in 1923-24. The letters include vivid descriptions of the area's terrain, the history and the people they met and got to know, including Tibetan monks and Muslim explorers. The adventures tend to be low-key but the setting and content are fascinating in and of themselves. The overall tone reflects a love of life and respect for people of all types. All in all, this book is a rare and precious curio.

The Barretts wrote other books, even more obscure, about travels in other lands, too. After falling in love with this book, I read all I could find and deem them worth a read as well.

Hiking in that part of the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California in the early 1940s, I met Robert Barrett on the trail when I was 14 years old. Invited into their home, I spent many hours listening to "Sahib" and "Mem-sahib" talk about the adventures written about in "The Himalayan Letters of Gypsy Davy and Lady Ba." After 60 years, both come alive again in these pages. When I knew them, Katherine Barrett was crippled from severe arthritis, and was barely able to walk. She describes being carried by litter over high passes and swaying footbridges by stout Ladakhi porters. Katherine's clear descriptions of the Himalaya landscape and people balance Robert's unabashed romanticism. Readers are advised to proceed slowly, bookmark the "Caravan Vocabulary," in the back for quick reference, and augment the fold-out maps by going on-line for recent cartography and pictures.