Road to Kathmandu
Author: Patrick Marnham
Category: Nepal   
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About  .

The Book

Kathmandu is fabled city – mystical , magical rich in myth and legend. For centuries the diverse culture and staggering natural beauty of nepal have lured travelers from Europe, In the 1960s and ‘70s, the overland route from Europe to Asia became popular with disillusioned westerners seeking what they saw as the paradise of the East. Their journeys and now the stuff of travel legend.

Road to Kathmandu is the part-factual, part-fictional account of Patrick Marnham’s own pilgrimage from Turkey to Nepal in 1968. He traveled over three thousand miles, passing through Ankara to Ararat, Tehran and Mashad, Heart, Kandahar and Kabul, Peshawar, Lahore and Varanasi…before finally reaching Kathmandu.

His journey is a kaleidoscopic blend of tortuous train journeys and lethal truck drives; wild deserts, mountains and isolated villages his nights were often spent sleeping by the roadside of his days searching for the next ride. Among the way, he met a colorful and eclectic cast of characters: the lightly-fictionalised and enigmatic ‘Rat’; shiftily, hashish trading Thor; Grigoire and Armenian, Mr Singh and fortune-teller, Jake the Afghan truck-driver, Eik the wandering Dane and the President of the Indian National Rifle