Table of Contents

Foreword by Tony Howard; Preface; Chapter 1 Traveller or Passenger?; Chapter 2 To Urumchi; Chapter 3 Bogdo Ola; Chapter 4 Bogdo Ola: South Side; Chapter 5: Bogdo Ola Again; Chapter 6 To Kashgar; Chapter 7 Chakar Aghil Reconnaissance; Chapter 8 Chakar Aghil; Chapter 9 To Misgar; Chapter 10 To Chitral.

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. Born in Cheshire and sent to boarding school at eleven, Bill 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 coffee grower. Alongside episodes of big game hunting and gold mining, Tilman 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 without oxygen in 1938. In 1936 he made the first ascent of Nanda Devi – the highest mountain climbed until 1950. He was the first European to climb in the remote Assam Himalaya, he delved into Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor and he explored extensively in Nepal, all the while developing a mountaineering style characterised by its simplicity and emphasis on exploration.

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, to Baffin Island to make the first ascent of Mount Raleigh, and into the Arctic Circle. He made trips to Greenland, Spitzbergen and the South Shetlands, and, although not all of his voyages were successful, they were a prime example of what could be done in a small and old boat. Tilman was a man with a huge number of stories to tell – and there remains no writer quite like him in the mountaineering, travel or sailing worlds.