Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) was America’s greatest adven- turer and one of the most successful adventure travel writers of the twentieth century. Through a life spent chasing horizons and concocting ever more daring schemes – from swimming the length of the Panama Canal to flying around the world in an open cockpit plane or crossing the Alps on an elephant – Halliburton dazzled the Western world. His final adventure, sailing a junk across the Pacific, was also his last. Halliburton disappeared in March 1939 and was never seen again. A great and original traveller, his wild adventures live on in the books that have capti- vated millions of readers and inspired generations of writers. ‘From the Jazz Age through the Great Depression to the eve of World War II, he thrilled an entire generation of readers. Clever, resourceful, undaunted, cheerful in the face of dreadful odds, ever-optimistic about the world and the people around him, always scheming about his next adventure… a spokesman for the youth of a generation.’ James O’Reilly Tauris Parke Paperbacks is an imprint of I.B.Tauris. It is dedicated to publishing books in accessible paperback editions for the serious general reader within a wide range of categories, including biography, history, travel, art and the ancient world. The list includes select, critically acclaimed works of top quality writing by distinguished authors that continue to challenge, to inform and to inspire. These are books that possess those subtle but intrinsic elements that mark them out as something exceptional. The Colophon of Tauris Parke Paperbacks is a representation of the ancient Egyp- tian ibis, sacred to the god Thoth, who was himself often depicted in the form of this most elegant of birds. Thoth was credited in antiquity as the scribe of the ancient Egyptian gods and as the inventor of writing and was associated with many aspects of wisdom and learning. THE FLYING CARPET Adventures in a Biplane from Timbuktu to Everest and Beyond Richard Halliburton Foreword by Tahir Shah TPP TAURIS PARKE PAPERBACKS New paperback edition published in 2012 by Tauris Parke Paperbacks An imprint of I.B.Tauris and Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 First published in 1933 by Geoffrey Bles Ltd Foreword copyright © Tahir Shah, 2012 Cover image: © Mary Evans Picture Library / Onslow Auctions Limited All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978 1 84885 914 2 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Printed and bound in Sweden by ScandBook AB CONTENTS New foreword by Tahir Shah 1 I. The Flying Carpet 7 II. From Here to Timbuctoo 11 III. The City of the Storks 22 IV. The Two Slaves 32 V. The Foreign Legion—Yea and Nay 39 VI. The Legion Marches 49 VII. Heinrich and Gerhard 58 VIII. La Brave Légion 68 IX. Gulbeyaz 76 X. Over the Matterhorn—? 85 XI. Three Venetian Moonlights and the Grand Canal 91 XII. The Ghosts of Santa Sophia 96 XIII. Galilean Days 104 XIV. The Holy Sepulchre 111 XV. After the Manner of Joab 116 XVI. Matilda’s Marriage 125 XVII. The Enchanted City 130 XVIII. Brief Landings 139 XIX. The Prince of Bagdad 144 XX. From a Persian Prison 153 XXI. The Princess 164 XXII. The Story of Gabriel 171 XXIII. The Flying Fräulein 180 XXIV. In the Tracks of Alexander 186 XXV. A Return to the Taj 191 XXVI. The Goddess Mother of the World 195 XXVII. The Moth and the Flame of Ice 202 XXVIII. Concentrated Trouble 209 XXIX. The Queen of Borneo 214 XXX. Wild Men 225 XXXI. Head-Hunters at Home 232 XXXII. Chef Koh and the Be-Loon 241 XXXIII. The Flying Carpet Comes Through 245 Maps showing the route of the Flying Carpet are on pages 24–5 and 184–5 FOREWORD Great travel writing is all about evoking an atmosphere of adventure. But more than that, it’s about storytelling, plain and simple. Far too many works of travel slip into obscurity because the writing is lacklustre, dated, or downright dull. Trawl the shelves of the London Library and you’ll find miles and miles of books that are all but forgotten. And many of them deserve to be left there – deep underground. Yet from time to time you come across an author whose work is a beacon of originality. The American adventurer, Richard Halliburton, whose life was snuffed out at far too early an age, was one such writer. Although his work has a small but devoted following, his books warrant a far greater readership – and are the kind of travel literature that have withstood the test of time, and continue to inspire the youth to achieve. Born in 1900, in Brownsville, Tennessee, Halliburton was always destined for great things. His family were wealthy enough to send him to Princeton, a springboard into the Ivy League lifestyle so fêted in the rip-roaring Twenties. A contemporary of Hemingway, the young Halli- burton had none of the melancholy and all of the passion. Brimming with charm, good looks and natural charisma, he was the kind of man to whom both men and women were drawn. While others were languishing on the terrors of the Great War, Halliburton was setting about making a name for himself by criss-crossing crumbling empires by any means possible. Making use of the media with impressive foresight, one can only imagine the heights he would have soared to given the technologies we all take for granted today. To grasp Halliburton’s celebrity, it helps to understand the time in which he lived. His playground was the world caught in a no-man’s-land between the Wars. The British Empire still ruled the seas, ferocious tribes inhabited the endless African plains and the seething jungles of the Amazon and Borneo; and motor cars were a jeu du jour for tin-pot 1 dictators, Maharajahs, and for anyone else with the means to afford them. But most of all, it was a time in which great marvels were still to be found, and in which new technologies suddenly put great holy grails of worldwide travel within reach. And, there was no piece of ma- chinery more revolutionary in the arena of modern exploration than the aeroplane. A pioneer, a trailblazer, not to mention a media junkie, Hal- liburton understood the power of making a splash. In the vein of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, he tantalized his readers with jaw-dropping accounts of intrigue, exploration and awe. Of the handful of books he published, there is one that stands out as a monument to the time in which he lived, as much as it is a chroni- cle of everything Halliburton stood for. The Flying Carpet is a rare and enthusing tale of Boy’s Own bravado. It’s one of those books that stays with you, not so much because of the intoxicating roll call of adventure, but because of the frantic sizzle of the tale. Halliburton may have been thirty but he was gripped as ever by the raw enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old. Longing to once again be, as he put it, a ‘footloose vagabond’, he searched for an aeroplane capable of crossing deserts and jungles, oceans and seas. Without hardly any preparation, and almost no background knowledge of flight, he bought one on the spur of the moment – a Stearman biplane. Shiny and small, with an open cockpit, he christened it ‘The Flying Carpet’. The only thing needed now was a pilot. By a stroke of luck he was introduced to a young Stanford graduate named Moye Stephens, who was employed to fly passengers over the Rockies. Sharing the same lust for daredevil adventure, Stephens read- ily agreed to pilot them both on a circumnavigation of the globe – ‘to all the outlandish places on earth’. He was promised no pay, but unlimited expenses. His only question was when they were to leave. ‘In half an hour,’ Halliburton replied casually. And, pulling him to the door, they did. The journey was the kind of feat that people are drawn to recreate today, but with a rigid safety net of support. And yet the alluring thing about Halliburton and Stephens’ epic flight, was the absolute lack of safety, and the child-like zigzagging of wonders of the old world. Flying by the seats of their pants, and with almost nothing in the way of prepa- ration, the pair set off into the unknown. Halliburton was dead set on visiting Timbuktu first. Lured by the mystery of the name and by its seeming inaccessibil- ity, all he knew was that it was somewhere in Africa. To reach it, they traversed the United States eastwards from California, headed south through Europe, and into the mysterious hinterland of Morocco. Soaring 2 high above the Atlas, they climbed to fifteen thousand feet, to avoid pot shots from the tribesmen eager to bring down a shiny little plane like theirs. And, then, laden with extra fuel, they began the gruelling flight southwards, with the endless dunes of the Sahara laid out in an endless ocean beneath. Warned time and again about sand storms, but taking no notice, they flew headlong into one after the next, their faces and The Flying Carpet rasped raw. Causing immense excitement as it came to land at Timbuktu, the little biplane assured the two Americans immediate celebrity. They were received by Père Yakouba, the so-called ‘White Monk of Timbuktu’ – the first of many intriguing locals they encountered. Flying on eastwards, they reached the Algerian Sahara, where they were welcomed into the folds of the French Foreign Legion, at Colomb- Béchar. Amazing all they met with acrobatics and tall tales of their jour- ney so far, they flew back up to Europe. In an era in which travel was far more leisurely an activity, they took off and landed where they liked, when they liked. Reaching Italy through the Simplon Pass, they made a beeline for Venice, where they spent a month. Then they wondered where next. Halliburton wrote: Once more we unrolled our world map. Moye suggested Berlin. I voted for Malta. We compromised on Constantinople. A few hours later The Flying Carpet and its crew were in the air. Our first stop was Vienna. Then to Budapest – to Belgrade – to Bucharest – through storms, across plains, over mountains – on to Constantinople and the Golden Horn. On and on they flew – across Turkey, down through the Holy Land, to Cairo and the Pyramids, over the Nabatean ruins of Petra, and east- wards over the great basalt desert to Baghdad. The frequency with which they landed must have reflected the trying conditions of low altitude open-cockpit flight. Yet always gung-ho in style, Halliburton’s writing brushes aside the air-sickness from what must have been roll- ercoaster flights. But their eagerness to land was inspired, too, by a genuine delight in witnessing new realms. At a time when the globe was not yet homogenized by mass media and equally mass travel, Halliburton and Stephens observed first-hand the last vestiges of the old world order. And wherever they went, their celebrity status was enough for the doors of palaces, monasteries, and jungle longhouses to be flung open for them. No one, it seemed, wanted to be left out. 3