'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 Drawing on his unpublished diaries.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

Praise for The Danakil Diary: ‘…a revelation. The diaries get us as close as we can now come to the camp fire around which Thesiger told his best stories’Anthony Sattin, Sunday Times Praise for Life of My Choice: ‘One of the most engrossing life stories I have ever read’Richard Holmes, The Times

• Another travel classic from the author of Arabian Sands, Marsh Arabs, Life of My Choice, My Kenya Days and The Danakil Diary. • Wilfred Thesiger is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest travellers Britain has ever produced. • Includes previously unpublished material from Thesiger’s travel diaries and photographs. • Life of My Choice (1987) sold 17k in hardback, My Kenya Days (1994) 9k to date.