The Long Walk

Slavomir Rawicz

When I first heard about this book, I could not believe it. When I read it, I had no difficulty believing it--but only because it is told so bluntly. Someone told me of this story about a Polish political prisoner in Russia right before World War II broke out. The man, Slavomir Rawicz, with five other friends and one tag along walks his way out of Northern Siberia all the way to India.
Think on this for a while.
They leave the prison camp in the middle of winter because it is the only time they have to escape. They are already malnourished and suffering from the heavy labor they have been working at. They are ill-equipped--I'm sorry this is an understatement--they have nothing. Only small bits of food, horrible clothing, in short, they should all have died.
But they don't.
Rawicz retells his story of marching through the snowy Siberian forests, along lake Baikal, into Outer Mongolia, across the Gobi desert, into the high Himalayan plateau and finally through the Himalaya themselves to India. By far the most incredible part of the story is their endurance in the Gobi desert. Talk about hell...
But Rawicz has such a matter-of-fact voice in relating his story, you would think he were doing nothing more adventurous than going for a hike or maybe just talking a walk in the neighborhood park. The man is flirting with death, going for weeks without food, days without water, suffering the worst the elements have to cast down on him, and he simply says they kept walking. The quiet title does justice to this book.
On a different note, there has been some controversy as to the authenticity of the tale, which Rawicz vows to be a truthful account of personal events. Several famous mountain climbers have commented on the impossibility of these escapees' feat as well as the fact that the amount of time given for certain portions of the journey are simply impossible. And the little bit about the yetis in the Himalaya is of course bound to spark criticism. Damn people don't understand that the Yeti is real...
But do not let this last little disclaimer taint the book for you. Whatever the case, Rawicz is a man to be admired.