[at-l] book recommendation

[gaudet@mediaone.net (Arthur Gaudet)]

Funny, I don't remember the Yeti story from this book. What I do 
remember is the story of how the book came to be written. Rawicz, in 
London (or somewhere in England) at least 10 years after his trek, 
started to have trouble with disturbing dreams and memories. I think 
this coincided with his wife passing away but I might be entirely 
wrong on that detail. Anyway, he attempts to revive his story from 
his memory banks, and is only partially successful. For instance he's 
very fuzzy on details of his crossing the Gobi Desert, eating snakes 
that fortuitously show up along the way. But he has lots of details 
when he's in the Gulag making cross country skis for the Soviet Army. 
Once he arrives in India he's hospitalized for quite a while 
recovering from the physical/emotional/psychological trauma. He 
relates that initially in the hospital he and the others couldn't 
help a compulsion to hord food - so they tucked bits in all the 
places around their beds for awhile. (I used to do this when I got 
back from the AT!)

www.chesslerbooks.com has it in on their website:
THE LONG WALK Rawicz, Slavomir $12.95 1984 [1956]. 240 pp. One of the 
most exciting narratives of survival and adventure. The author 
escaped from Siberia and made a daring escape across Mongolia, the 
Gobi Desert, Tibet and the Himalaya to India. Paperback.

>>The Long Walk: the True Story of a Trek to Freedom , by Rawicz, Slavomir
>
>I enjoyed this book also.  I'm not sure if the author's encounter 
>with the Yetti makes me more or less convinced that his account is 
>100% factual.  Perhaps he is just another in a long list of good 
>writers with a great tale that couldn't help but to embelish a story 
>that needed no embelishment.  Like Mike Barnickle and Bill Byson.