Description

In 1971 the celebrated traveller Patrick Leigh Fermor accompanied five friends on a remarkable journey into the high Andes of Peru. His adventure took him from Cuzco to Urubamba, on to Puno and Juli on Lake Titicaca, down to Arequipa and finally back to Lima.

The expedition was led by a writer and poet and the party included a Swiss international skier and jeweller, a social anthropologist from Provence and a Nottinghamshire farming squire – all seasoned mountaineers. The other two participants – the author himself and a botany-loving duke – were complete novices. As the group travelled from Lima into increasingly remote parts of the country, Leigh Fermor captured their experiences in a series of letters to his wife.

Whether recounting the thrill of crossing a glacier, the rigours of campsite life under a blanket of snow, their lively encounters with locals or the strangely moving sight of a lone condor circling in the sky, the author vividly conveys the excitement of discovery and the intense uniqueness of the land.

Publisher Review

Patrick Leigh Fermor is an exquisite among travel writers ... Having a polished sense of poetry and a bright sense of humour, he outshines Lawrence ... This is a delicious book * Sunday Telegraph * Bringing the landscape alive as no other writer can, he uses his profound and eclectic understanding of cultures and peoples ... to paint vivid pictures - nobody has illuminated the geography of Europe better * Geographical Magazine * John Murray is doing the decent thing and reissuing all of Leigh Fermor's main books ... But what else would you expect from a publisher whose commitment to geography is such that for more than two centuries it has widened our understanding of the world? * Geographical Magazine * Enthralling and elegant prose ... There could be no better travelling companion than Patrick Leigh Fermor * Daily Mail * Leigh Fermor's use of English is as exhilarating as the stark beauty of the landscape he describes... there is no one so adept at evoking the melancholy of raw wilderness * Daily Telegraph * His grand style perfectly captures the country's generous people and magnificent landscape ... Leigh Fermor has an individual and attractive voice, his tales are charming and his mind open * Financial Times * He makes exotic and entertaining friends wherever he goes, has read everything, been everywhere, known everyone and writes like a dream * The Times *