Truth is stranger than fiction... this book is good evidence! He could pack in the crowds in his day, telling yarns of his exploits in remote Central Asia. Not really a household name any more! Sic transit...

The basic puzzle this book works to solve is: how to mesh the early part of Younghusband's life to the later part. In the early part, he was an imperial adventurer, carry the British flag to remote places, along with enough troops to keep it flying. The weak Asiatic races should be happy to be ruled by the robust White Man. In the later part, Younghusband is praising Ramakrishna, providing a speaking platform to Suzuki, and recommending that Britain exit India ASAP.

Younghusband had a couple mystical experiences that signaled his transition. But he was traveling everywhere, meeting everyone. Maybe the mystical experiences were simply a way to integrate these experiences into a fresh outlook.

Emerson's slogan "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" fits here, for sure. Younghusband kept moving and never looked back.

One facet of his life... he was practically bankrupt in his later years... well, in his earlier years, too! But that hardly got in his way.

We read here about Charles Lindbergh flying Younghusband around in India. The whole book is like that. Unbelievable but true! ( )

Very, very clearly an outstanding biography. Superb detail blended with the author’s informed opinions turn this into a pure gold mine for anyone interested in the man, the times, the Great Game, India, or free-thinking. Written with a passion rarely seen in an author today and twas his first book! I’m reading more Patrick French! I have been carrying this book with me now for about 8 years, finally read it in Malta, and glad I did. Finished 19.03.20. ( )

Lieutenant Francis Younghusband stared forlornly over the edge of the frozen cliff. Wali, mistaking this solemnity for stoicism, began to edge his way out onto an ice ledge. It had not occurred to him to turn back. With a grim ardour, Wali 'hewed steps across the ice slope which led to the precipice,' Younghusband wrote afterwards in a private letter. Without boots, ropes, ice-axes or crampons, Wali was trying to descend an ice precipice. Younghusband decided to follow him. 'I freely confess that I myself could never have attempted the descent and that I - an Englishman - was afraid to go first.'

The descent of the Mustagh Pass was to assume a mythic importance in Younghusband's career. I noticed that in old age, his daughter Eileen referred to a crucial turning point in her own life as 'my Mustagh Pass'. This rite of passage, the crossing of the watershed, the baptism of fire, the epiphany of ice, convinced him that he had a special purpose in the world, and was a key moment in the development of his own ambition; he was now an explorer.

Patrick French's travels in Younghusband's footsteps don't intrude too much on the biography, and he successfully conveys how exciting it was to travel through the borderlands of Central Asia in the late 19th century. I can well understand how Younghusband was so keen on wangling himself an exciting role as an explorer, map-maker and spy rather than the more restricted role of a junior army officer.

Younghusband flitted between military and civilian postings and expeditions, which had a deletorious on his career, although his friendship with Lord Curzon the Viceroy of India, meant that he was given some good postings, including the residency of Kashmir late on in his career, even though his actions during the invasion of Tibet had confirmed his reputation in government circles as a loose cannon.

But the main reason that this book is so interesting is that Younghusband never stopped changing. Once he was back in England he didn't sink in to middle age, but became president of the Royal Geographical Society, organised the Everest expeditions of the early 1920s, and was a prolific author of books about both Asia and mysticism. This soldier and explorer, brought up as an Evangelical Protestant, became a mystic after two experiences earlier in his life, and set up the Word Congress of Faiths, was interested in world peace (although never a pacifist), and came to believe strongly in the necessity for Indian Independence.

A fascinating book about a fascinating man, who I'd only vaguely heard of before. ( )