我在2022年给自己立了一个flag：至少完整阅读10本英文原著。

这周完成了第4本：

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

英文名：A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

中文名：《走过兴都库什山:深入阿富汗内陆》

语言：英语

作者：Eric Newby

我最近读的书是根据地域来选的。今年读的第1本书，故事发生在西班牙，第2本书讲的是法国，第3本是关于南美洲的，第4本讲的是作者在阿富汗的经历。

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush 是由英国旅行作家Eric Newby于1958年出版的游记。全书是对他从英国出发，到伊朗，到阿富汗东北部山区攀爬Mir Samir的探险记录。

拿到书后，我不太清楚书名里的Hindu Kush是什么地方，还以为在印度。上网查了一下，给自己扫盲了。

Hindu Kush 是一片山脉，位于中亚，在喜马拉雅山脉以西，大部分位于阿富汗境内。

在那个交通不便，公路不通的年代，作者和他的朋友敢一路深入中亚，我挺佩服的，那个时候的Hindu Kush，属于“未知地区”，而且他们的目的是攀爬无人征服的山峰：Mir Samir，难度可想而知。

有时候读着他们旅途中大大小小的磨难，我以为自己在看《西游记》。

作者Eric Newby在踏上这趟旅程之前，正值壮年(36岁)，在高定时装时尚行业工作，地处伦敦。在他已经厌倦时装行业的当头，恰逢外交官朋友Huge Carless来信，邀请他去Hindu Kush，于是欣然应邀，辞去工作，开始为旅程做准备。

据说在Newby这趟旅程之前，上一次英国人去往Hindu Kush这个偏远地区，还是60多年前。

但他登山经验为零，no qualifications at all，和朋友去威尔士做了简单培训之后，就从伦敦飞往土耳其，一路向东，经过伊朗的德黑兰，阿富汗的喀布尔，再去往Hindu Kush。

旅途的前半部分还能打飞的和自驾，到了阿富汗首都东北方向约150公里处的Panjshir Valley，就只能步行了。途中遇到的大大小小的困难，都被作者以英式幽默勾画出来，举几个例子：

“I was heavily involved on all fronts: with mountaineering outfitters, who oddly enough never fathomed the depths of my ignorance; possibly because they couldn’t conceive of anyone acquiring such a collection of equipment without knowing how to use it…”

We were accompanied up the Chamir Valley by a Tajik to whom some strange mutation had given pink eyes and a blond mustache. With this Albino, the Thanador (literally the Keeper of Nothingness) of the Nawak Pass, the keeper of the Pass retained at a salary of 500 Afghanis a year to oversee it, we never got on good terms. He came at his own request, 'to protect us from brigands' as he put it. How he was to do this unarmed without recourse to bribery was not clear.

All through the afternoon we rested, moving from rock to rock to escape the sun as it spied us out. Hugh read The Hound of the Baskervilles; I studied the grammar of the Kafir language.

Apart from the pamphlets on mountaineering, this was the only serious book the expedition possessed. (Put to other uses our library was disappearing at an alarming rate.) Both of us had already read all John Buchan, who in the circumstances in which we found ourselves had been found wanting, the mock modesty of his heroes becoming only too apparent, the temptation to transport them in the imagination to the Hindu Kush too great to resist. 

Remarks something like 'Though I say it who shouldn't, I'm a pretty good mountaineer, but this was the hardest graft I ever remember,' cut very little ice with people in our position about to embark on a similar venture with no qualifications at all.

在这本书里，我也学到了一些很有画面感的表达。比如：

puffs of white cloud floated at regular intervals in the deep blue sky

读到这句话的时候，我想起小时候有一次在上学路上看到的，碧蓝碧蓝的天空和像棉花糖一样的白云，内心极为震撼，就站在山间小路上痴痴地望着天空，舍不得挪步。可惜那时候没有智能手机，记录那一刻的美好。

Mulberry trees, loaded with fruit, shaded the abominable surface of the road 果实累累：loaded with fruit

vines grew in profusion 有一种“枝叶繁茂，郁郁葱葱”的之感

everywhere there was running water, dancing in the sunlight and gurgling in the irrigation ditches 这句话里gurgling这个词，相当于中文的“流水潺潺”。

with a range of desolate mountains to the westdimly seen in the flying sand 没什么植被，光秃秃的山 desolate mountains

and we pointed to it as we swept past, smothering them in dust... until we knew that the river was salt and we were shamed into stopping 

at times the river was soinsubstantialthat it tapered into nothingness, sometimes it became a lake, shivering like a jellybetween earth and sky. 河流时而宽阔，时而又成为涓涓细流， tapered into nothingness，宽阔之处形成湖泊，湖面在烈日下波光粼粼。

读到后面，就越来越理解作者为什么义无反顾地和朋友，跨越半个世界去Hindu Kush，那就是follow your heart，找到自己的人生地图。

人生就一次，为什么不遵循自己的内心，活成自己理想的样子呢？