This is an amazing book written by a truly remarkable man! The Long Rider author was a Scottish medical missionary who had become Tibetan in all but his broad Highland brand of personal enthusiasm. Relying both on his companionship with God and on his own strength, he undertook a life few can have known, and a journey of emergency across the wildest parts of Tibet. In 1950 the Communists advanced into Tibet, and a warning had to be taken to India. The only way to achieve this was by riding through the Himalayas! "Though it was winter Patterson chose a 300-mile route to Sadiyah, in northern Assam, which hardly anyone had completed before. The snows on the high passes might beat him, but at any rate he would be travelling first-class by Tibetan standards. He knew how to behave if the Tibetan winter would let him. If he could find the villages he had authority to commandeer relays of food and transport, the headmen would be (and were) beaten up if these were not forthcoming. As for his companions of the Khamba tribe, he could beat them at most of their own games. He was a superb horseman, he loved their horseplay and their ribaldries, his body was an engine as efficient as theirs for mobile operation in low temperatures at 20, 000 feet, he could forget about baths for two months as happily as they could for their whole lives." said London's The Times. This classic narrative matches in sheer virility the equestrian journey it records.