Sir Francis Younghusband and Johnny Walker

Just finished reading the biography of Sir Francis Younghusband by Patrick French. I guess very few people would remember who he was and what is his claim to fame even among trained historians. In fact even for me it was a geat discovery of sorts. All I had read about him in all my years of "doing" history can be summed up in a this subtitle "Younghusband's Expedition to Lhasa". Till now I was much impressed by the fact that at the turn of the century an Englishman with troops had acutally marched to Lhasa walking across the formidable Himalayas.
After French's excellent biography, I realised that the man was much more daring, verging alomst on insanity, than I had thought him to be. The famous expedition to Lhasa started at the far end of Himalayas in Sikkim consisted of a large troop of Sikh and Gurkha soldiers and coolies [8 coolies per soldier] lead by Brigadier McDonald. Old McDonald was a soldier while the title of Colonel was conferred upon Younghusband, and by some machination the civilian had forced the senior army officer to report to him [civilians always have their say, even today!].
But the fascinating part of this story was not this trek through areas which were sometimes 30 degrees C below freezing, but there were no existing maps.
If you are impressed by this, it may interest you to know that Younghusband had practiced well for this trip and in his younger days as an officer of the Raj had walked from Manchuria to India [Kashmir] through the dreaded Gobi desert. And also crossed most of the impossible passed in the Pamirs. If you look at the distance between manchuria and kashmir through gobi desert, you will realise that the expedition to Lhasa was a small change for him.
Amazing character.
I wonder what the Johnnie Walker guys were doing those days, they could not have got a better model for their slogan "Keep Walking" that Younghusband.
In case you are interested the book is titled Younghusband and would be available in any large second hand book shop in Delhi. I do not lend my books.