Mountains of the Mind (2003)
“ARTHUR RANSOME, SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS, 1930 The most exciting map I have ever held was a photocopied sheet which supposedly represented the far east of the Tian Shan mountains, near where Kyrgyzstan borders China and Kazakhstan. It was exciting because it was so rudimentary – there was a cross to signify a peak, a circle for a lake and a line for a ridge. No contour lines curling around the mountains. No shading to represent dangerous cliffs. And definitely none of those reassuring Ordnance Surv...ey acronyms: FB for footbridge, PO for post office and PH for pub.
In the centre of the map was outlined the Y-shaped valley carved out of the mountains by the Inylchek glacier. This central highway of the Tian Shan was well enough known. It had first been penetrated by the Russian explorer P. P. Semenov in 1856 and 1857 (he became known afterwards, in the literal way of nineteenth-century Russian nomenclature, as Semenov-Tian-Shanskii). Undeterred by the bands of Kyrgyz brigands which roved the territories around Lake Issyk-Kul, Semenov had pushed as far east as the Santash pass.MoreLess
In the centre of the map was outlined the Y-shaped valley carved out of the mountains by the Inylchek glacier. This central highway of the Tian Shan was well enough known. It had first been penetrated by the Russian explorer P. P. Semenov in 1856 and 1857 (he became known afterwards, in the literal way of nineteenth-century Russian nomenclature, as Semenov-Tian-Shanskii). Undeterred by the bands of Kyrgyz brigands which roved the territories around Lake Issyk-Kul, Semenov had pushed as far east as the Santash pass.MoreLess
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