Table of Contents

Foreword – Gerda Pauler  

Preface 

I Food and Equipment 

II Karachi to Abbottabad 

III The Approach March 

IV Gilgit—Arrival and Departure 

V The Jaglot Approaches 

VI The Two Ridges 

VII The Dainyor Nallah 

VIII The Kukuay Glacier 

IX Chalt to Misgar 

X Misgar to Tashkurghan

XI Muztagh Ata

XII To Kashgar

XIII Another Way Home

XIV The Oxus Source

XV Sarhad to Ishkashim—Open Arrest

XVI Ishkashim—Close Arrest

XVII Destination Unknown

XVIII Faizabad and Freedom

About the Author

Harold William ‘Bill’ Tilman (1898–1977) was among the greatest adventurers of his time, a pioneering mountaineer and sailor who held exploration above all else. Tilman joined the army at seventeen and was twice awarded the Military Cross for bravery during WWI.

After the war Tilman left for Africa, establishing himself as a coffee grower. He met Eric Shipton and began their famed mountaineering partnership, traversing Mount Kenya and climbing Kilimanjaro. Turning to the Himalaya, Tilman went on two Mount Everest expeditions, reaching 27,000 feet without oxygen in 1938. In 1936 he made the first ascent of Nanda Devi – the highest mountain climbed until 1950.

It was perhaps logical then that Tilman would eventually buy the pilot cutter Mischief – not with the intention of retiring from travelling, but to access remote mountains. For twenty-two years Tilman sailed Mischief and her successors to Patagonia, where he crossed the vast ice cap, and to Baffin Island to make the first ascent of Mount Raleigh. He made trips to Greenland, Spitsbergen and the South Shetlands, before disappearing in the South Atlantic Ocean in 1977.