Customer Reviews

The Seven Mountain-Travel Books

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An avid collector of Himalayan subject matter, I have also been lucky enough to have wandered around the upper Langtang Valley on several occasions in the last few years. Not only is Tilmans book still accurate in many respects, but it is also highly amusing at the same time. Fact, folklore and quotations are fantastically woven into a single, almost epic tale of discovery. It is, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, and yet one might feel a certain sense of guilt at particular comic moments. Where Tilman describes one of his porters as "slow in mind and weak in leg, and not, one suspects, long down from his tree", it is an hilarious turn of phrase, but in our modern standardised and easily-scandalised society one feels the need to look over one's shoulder to make sure the PC police aren't looking.
I would heartily recommend anyone to read the book, particularly if it is available, the Nepal Himalaya single edition, - great, great books for travelling minds (and soles..) so long as you can cope with the mountain of salt required to see some of Tilmans less emphatic points.

In this anthology Tilman's pioneering travels through central Asia are recounted in his wonderfully laconic voice. This is a great addition to any exploration or mountaineering collection, particularly because Tilman was the first European to visit many of the peaks and places described. The portrait of Nepal he presents I will always treasure.

Tilman and Shipton were the first humans to enter the Nanda Devi sanctuary, a valley surrounded by some of the greatest Himalayan peaks. They were indelibly marked by the experience.

Not only is Tilman's book brillantly written, but his chapter on "Two Mountains and a River," which focuses on the Swiss/British expedition to Rakaposhi and the Kukuay Glacier illustrates all the problems and hardships my uncle, Hans Gyr experienced during his quest for conquering the Rakaposhi in the Karakorum. Thanks to Tilman, I know now so much more about these few trying weeks in snow and ice. I recommend this book to all who like not only mountains, but solitude and the ultimate challenge.

These are not for everyone but they are just simply great stories of a time in mountaineering when it was all first being worked out, before all the answers and major conquests had ever become routine.

Tillman traveled in a time when travel itself was mostly an adventure rather than a packet of guaranteed itineraries; before travel guides could not only put you there but put you on the summit. Tillman and his contemporaries were working out how to even get close enough to attempt summitting major mountains of the Himalayas and other regions. Working out what made up teams that would be successful, what equipment would do the job, what and how food should be packaged to survive the months of transport and adequately feed the team.

Long before Tzening Norgay and Hillary made the summit read about the explorations all the way to the second step, Hillary's step, and even Tzening Norgay's early experience on Tillman and Shipton's Everest exploratory trips.

Of course, these are just the wondrous details, Tillman is also a pretty good story teller, with a wry wit that takes a chapter or two to acclimate to, as well as some of the turns of language used at that time. But, go with it and you'll be trekking the Himalayas and other regions before modern transport, modern mountaineering "strategies" and enjoying the wide open world it was then and laughing more than once at the ironies and travails of travel at the turn of the last century.

The book jacket cites Bill as "a literary master craftsman..", and that is not an overstatement. This compilation of seven books has been hard to lay down for me. Each story is engrossing, and as Bill would have liked it, presents something new and interesting around each turn (or boulder). His wonderful way of turning a phrase has made me laugh out loud several times. He had an insatiable lust for going into the wild, preferably to places he had never seen before. His views regarding how and why mountains should be climbed have no doubt influenced many mountaineers of later generations, as is evidenced in their own books and climbing methods. Bill was not the first to go far and climb high, but his resume of continents travelled, expeditions made (some as leader), and summits attained has to be among the best ever. In one instance he reveals sheepishly that on a "recon" trip to Everest, he and another climber had "degenerated into peakbaggers, collecting 17, all over 20,000 feet". This guy did it the hard way, no sophisticated high tech clothing or gear back then,and he never climbed with supplemental oxygen. He learned to eat what the locals ate (most of the time) so he could travel lighter. His 3000 mile bicycle trek across central Africa and the Congo basin with little money, fewer possessions, and a couple of extra tire tubes amply demonstrates his grit and resourcefulness. He himself had to have been well read, for he gives a detailed history of most of the prior climbs and expeditions that had went before him (if any had),and quotes freely from many authors. I followed his path on Google maps, and that helped me better grasp the story. Overall a great set of stories told by a truly amazing man about his incredibly diverse experiences.