Great Walks asked a group of adventure travellers to name a book that had a major influence on them when they were young.
Tim Cope, author, adventurer, guide
Arabian Sands, Wilfred Thesiger
Tim: "One book that stands out for me was Thesiger's Arabian Sands. His passion for Bedouin culture, and the relationships he carved with the people in the midst of his adventures in the 1930s across the Empty Quarter (now part of Oman in the Arabian Gulf), had a deep impact on me. It left me craving to transcend the modern era, and connect with the land and people (whether it be Siberia, Kazakhstan or Mongolia, which were the places that interested me) on their own traditional terms."
Matt McClelland, guidebook writer and owner of wildwalks.com
Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia, William J.Lines
Matt: "At uni I stumbled upon this book and it turned my understanding of wilderness upside down. The very events history celebrated as great conquests, this book paints a paradigm of devastation. Lines shows that natural places are not only fragile but also finite. He addresses many issues from deforestation through to over-population. The forward by David Suzuki is a powerful personal story of major environmental change in Suzuki's neighbourhood during his childhood. Sometimes wilderness is lost through large public projects such as dams or logging. However, it seems that much more damage occurs through the many smaller encroachments that chip away at the edge of natural places until they are gradually eroded away. More then 20 years later and the message is perhaps even more relevant."
Robin Boustead, tour guide, author and architect of the Great Himalaya Trail
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
Robin: "With Kim, childhood bedtime reading became part of my life in more ways than I could ever imagine. I loved the story of the orphaned Kim living a chaotic life along the Grand Trunk Road in India and Pakistan. His adventure to the Himalaya in the company of a Buddhist Lama filled my head with images of colossal mountains and wild lands. One of my first trips to Pakistan had to include exploring the streets of Lahore and, later, my own personal journey along the Grand Trunk Road. Now, after more than 20 years of exploring the subcontinent and the multiple ranges of the Himalaya, I can see how Kim seeded my desire for adventure in far-off places and my passion for the mountains."
Brigitte Muir, tour guide, author and the first Australian woman to climb Mt Everest
Tintin et le temple du soleil (Tintin and the temple of the sun), Hergé
Brigitte: "When I was a child, my mother always plonked me on the sofa with a comic book to keep me out of the way while she vacuum-cleaned the house. My imagination ran with this one. It had a Belgian journalist travelling overseas to exotic places (with his dog and a friend), it had mystery, adventures through jungles, mountains, Inca temples… It's no wonder that when I heard later in my teenage years 'we must live our dreams not dream our lives', I became a climber, travelling overseas to exotic places (Yukon, Australia, etc) writing about my adventures, and studying archaeology at university. Unfortunately, the dog could not travel overseas, but he came with me on climbs in France and Belgium!"
Howard Whelan, professional guide and founding editor of Australian Geographic
Annapurna, Maurice Herzog
Howard: "As a boy growing up I was always rattling around the canyons behind the house that lead to some lovely alpine regions. Annapurna opened my eyes to a world as distant as outer space – the Himalaya. When the French travelled to Nepal in 1950 to attempt both Annapurna and Dhaulagari, the kingdom had been closed to westerners. Just finding a way into the mountains was epic. The climb itself was harrowing. Four of the team made it to the summit, but struggled to get down alive. Herzog and Louis Lachenal suffered severe frostbite, losing all their toes to gangrene, but they looked after each other and survived. I was particularly fascinated by the passage where they amputate a couple of Lachenal's toes at an Indian train station and the local curs (mongrel dogs) munched the off-cuts. Herzog is a wonderful writer and well describes the natural beauty, the deadly mountain storms, and their drive to explore. Annapurna was the first book I read that affirmed my own curiosity and desire to see what's around the next bend."
James 'Cas' Castrission, professional adventurer, author, filmmaker and corporate speaker
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, Alfred Lansing
Cas: "How did every single man on that expedition survive in 1915! I still have no idea, but I have ridiculous amounts of respect. Ever since I first heard the story, I’ve daydreamed for hours about what those men endured. Did I have the mustard to survive the cold, the hardships, the uncertainty that those men did? What was that place just a few thousand kilometres south of Australia that more resembled Mars than anywhere else on earth? It was these unanswered questions that set me on a path to put my own big expeditions together. I wanted to experience these places, feel the polystyrene-like snow crunch under my skis, the cold air burn my lungs and the desolate, never-ending landscape to play tricks with my mind. It was Alfred Lansing’s book that truly got me dreaming about these wild places."
Tim Macartney-Snape, professional adventurer, guide, author
Karakoram: The Ascent of Gasherbrum IV, Fosco Maraini
Tim: "One book that profoundly influenced my life was Karakoram, about the 1957 Italian Alpine Club expedition to the Karakoram during which they made the first ascent of one of the world's most beautiful and difficult mountains, Gasherbrum IV in Pakistan. Maraini was an anthropologist by inclination and wrote evocatively about the harsh and stunning landscape of Baltistan and the tough people who farm its valleys, some of whom helped the expedition by carrying their supplies up the mighty Baltoro glacier. I read the book when I was 16. It inspired me to take up mountaineering, but I never dreamed that 15 years later I would go on to make the second ascent of the mountain!"
Di Westaway, owner of adventure fitness company Wild Women On Top
Di: "The book that changed my life was a magazine. As a 14-year-old aspiring gymnast, I regularly devoured Australian Gymnast. One day I saw an advertisement which said: “Would you like to combine gymnastics and academics?”. The answer of course for me was “YES!” I wrote to the advertiser, Walnut Hill School for Performing Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, and they gave me a scholarship to attend. This resulted in an amazing 10-month adventure studying gymnastics and academics overseas. Upon my return to Australia, I became the Elite Level 10 Australian women’s national champion. Nearly 40 years later, I combined my gymnastics with mountaineering to do the world’s highest handstand, on Ama Dablam, 6890m, in Nepal!"