That Untravelled World E-Book

Eric Shipton

• Herausgeber: Vertebrate Digital
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

'It is often from our setbacks, even our weaknesses, that we derive some of our greatest blessings.' That Untravelled World is the autobiography of one of the greatest adventurers of the twentieth century. Eric Shipton was a pioneering explorer, journeying to places that did not feature on maps and to unexplored mountains, such as the High Dauphiné. Shipton describes early childhood days filled with adventures; his first encounter with the high mountains on a visit to the Pyrenees, and the onset of his climbing career inspired by travels in Norway with a friend. He reminisces on first meeting infamous explorer H.W. 'Bill' Tilman, and their first expedition together to Mount Kenya. Tilman and Shipton were later to become one of the most famous climbing partnerships of all time. Filled with anecdotes from different periods of his life, Shipton takes us on his journey from Kilimanjaro and Mount Stanley alongside Tilman, his discovery of the route to the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, summiting Mount Kamet with mountaineering icon Frank Smythe, and multiple expeditions to Everest. First published in 1969, That Untravelled World is the story of an adventurer who, inspired by Edward Whymper, travelled to feral landscapes across the globe, and has in turn inspired generations of climbers and mountaineers.

Leseprobe

That Untravelled World

The autobiography of a pioneering mountaineer and explorer

By Eric Shipton

www.v-publishing.co.uk

– CONTENTS –

CHAPTER ONE: Early InfluencesCHAPTER TWO: MountainsCHAPTER THREE: East AfricaCHAPTER FOUR: Himalayan Hey-DayCHAPTER FIVE: The KarakoramCHAPTER SIX: KashgarCHAPTER SEVEN: KunmingCHAPTER EIGHT: Everest from NepalCHAPTER NINE: Patagonia and Tierra Del FuegoCHAPTER TEN: Boundaries, Tortoises and BearsCHAPTER ELEVEN: The Springs of Enchantment

– CHAPTER ONE –

Early Influences

Childhood experiences we are told play an important, indeed a decisive, part in the shaping of our individual characters. This can hardly be denied; but I find it less easy to believe that their effect can be confidently predicted in terms of good or bad, success or failure, happiness or misery. Children are remarkably resilient and readily accept as normal the most preposterous situations to which they are accustomed; but, as with adults, one child may benefit by a traumatic ordeal, which would warp the development of another. Churchill’s parents, for example, seem to have broken every rule in the book, and it is evident that the young Winston was bitterly resentful of their neglect. Is it not probable that this provided the stimulus for the fanatical determination to make good which characterised his early career, and that had he been pampered as a child we might well have been deprived of our wartime leader? The early struggles of David Livingstone, which resulted in the development not only of a tenacious explorer but also of a great humanitarian, might have broken a less robust spirit. The course of our lives is steered by a complex interaction of influences, and it is often from our setbacks, even our weaknesses, that we derive some of our greatest blessings.

I was born in 1907 in Ceylon, where my father was a tea planter. He died before I was three, so that I have no recollection of him; nor have I the slightest idea what he was like. That I did not attempt to discover something about him was due mainly to the fact that my mother was extremely reserved and never encouraged intimate discussion. She never mentioned him, and as I had no reason to suppose that a father was in any way essential to my existence, his absence and with it his character had no particular significance. That my lack of curiosity about him persisted throughout adolescence and early manhood is less easy to explain; but early habits of thought become securely lodged. My sister, two years older, believes that my mother was afraid that she would be unable to cope adequately with my upbringing alone, and her reticence may well have been due to her fear that by talking about my father I would come to miss him. I do not even know the cause of his death. Recently, however, I have learned two facts about him: one, that he was a devoted husband, the other, that he spent a great deal of his spare time in the jungle watching birds – a passionate interest of his – and that he had a remarkable ability to attract them to him. Presumably he, too, had been born in Ceylon, for his father, a doctor, had come to live there about 1870. His mother I vaguely remember as a sweet old lady.

For several years after my father’s death we were constantly on the move, travelling between England and Southern India and Ceylon, where my mother retained close ties; and also in France, where she had many friends and where her mother had a house on the South Coast. We were never in one place for long and had no settled home, which is generally thought to be essential for the psychological welfare of children. So far as I remember, I found this nomadic existence wholly delightful; I revelled in the thrill of train and ship travel and in each change of scene. One of my earliest recollections is of arriving somewhere after a particularly exciting journey and asking eagerly how long it would be before we set off again; I was told that we would be staying a fortnight. Four nights seemed an awful long time to wait; and when I discovered that the word meant two weeks I wept bitterly. Of course my memories of this period are scattered and quite unrelated in time and place; nonetheless some of them remain vivid, exquisite gems of delight framed in mist: steep sun-drenched valleys around Sospel, inland from Menton; a path running between green cliffs to a little bay of coral sand shaded by coconut palms; a whale spouting and an island volcano belching smoke. (Later I thought this an unlikely combination until, a few years ago, I saw a whale at very close quarters near Stromboli, which I must have passed several times as a child.)