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kittiwakeLieutenant Francis Younghusband stared forlornly over the edge of the frozen cliff. Wali, mistaking this solemnity for stoicism, began to edge his way out onto an ice ledge. It had not occurred to him to turn back. With a grim ardour, Wali 'hewed steps across the ice slope which led to the precipice,' Younghusband wrote afterwards in a private letter. Without boots, ropes, ice-axes or crampons, Wali was trying to descend an ice precipice. Younghusband decided to follow him. 'I freely confess that I myself could never have attempted the descent and that I - an Englishman - was afraid to go first.'
The descent of the Mustagh Pass was to assume a mythic importance in Younghusband's career. I noticed that in old age, his daughter Eileen referred to a crucial turning point in her own life as 'my Mustagh Pass'. This rite of passage, the crossing of the watershed, the baptism of fire, the epiphany of ice, convinced him that he had a special purpose in the world, and was a key moment in the development of his own ambition; he was now an explorer.
Patrick French's travels in Younghusband's footsteps don't intrude too much on the biography, and he successfully conveys how exciting it was to travel through the borderlands of Central Asia in the late 19th century. I can well understand how Younghusband was so keen on wangling himself an exciting role as an explorer, map-maker and spy rather than the more restricted role of a junior army officer.
Younghusband flitted between military and civilian postings and expeditions, which had a deletorious effect on his career, although his friendship with Lord Curzon the Viceroy of India, meant that he was given some good postings, including the residency of Kashmir late on in his career, even though his actions during the invasion of Tibet had confirmed his reputation in government circles as a loose cannon.
But the main reason that this book is so interesting is that Younghusband never stopped changing. Once he was back in England he didn't sink in to middle age, but became president of the Royal Geographical Society, organised the Everest expeditions of the early 1920s, and was a prolific author of books about both Asia and mysticism. This soldier and explorer, brought up as an Evangelical Protestant, became a mystic after two experiences earlier in his life, and set up the Word Congress of Faiths, was interested in world peace (although never a pacifist), and came to believe strongly in the necessity for Indian Independence.
A fascinating book about a fascinating man, who I'd only vaguely heard of before.
The descent of the Mustagh Pass was to assume a mythic importance in Younghusband's career. I noticed that in old age, his daughter Eileen referred to a crucial turning point in her own life as 'my Mustagh Pass'. This rite of passage, the crossing of the watershed, the baptism of fire, the epiphany of ice, convinced him that he had a special purpose in the world, and was a key moment in the development of his own ambition; he was now an explorer.
Patrick French's travels in Younghusband's footsteps don't intrude too much on the biography, and he successfully conveys how exciting it was to travel through the borderlands of Central Asia in the late 19th century. I can well understand how Younghusband was so keen on wangling himself an exciting role as an explorer, map-maker and spy rather than the more restricted role of a junior army officer.
Younghusband flitted between military and civilian postings and expeditions, which had a deletorious effect on his career, although his friendship with Lord Curzon the Viceroy of India, meant that he was given some good postings, including the residency of Kashmir late on in his career, even though his actions during the invasion of Tibet had confirmed his reputation in government circles as a loose cannon.
But the main reason that this book is so interesting is that Younghusband never stopped changing. Once he was back in England he didn't sink in to middle age, but became president of the Royal Geographical Society, organised the Everest expeditions of the early 1920s, and was a prolific author of books about both Asia and mysticism. This soldier and explorer, brought up as an Evangelical Protestant, became a mystic after two experiences earlier in his life, and set up the Word Congress of Faiths, was interested in world peace (although never a pacifist), and came to believe strongly in the necessity for Indian Independence.
A fascinating book about a fascinating man, who I'd only vaguely heard of before.
