The sun went down behind the peaks and it became bitterly cold. the shadows in the ravines grew wider and wider, crept further and further up. The summits of the Korakorum glowed like gold, turned violet and then ice-green. Blasts of cold, black night came up at me with every step.
It was no longer any use looking for horse droppings or splodges of blood. It was only skeletons that could show the way.
Most people don't consider that there's anything nice about a skeleton, and you would hardly expect one to be an edifying sight for a lone, hungry and dog-tired poor wretch stumbling along in the semi-darkness among the boulders in Mintaka Pass, but whenever I saw a white gleaming structure of bones in all that blackness, it caused no chill of apprehension, but a thrill of joy; 'Keep going, Willie! You're on the right track.'
whether the skeleton was of man or beast was all one to me, as long as there were bones . . .

When Wilfred and his friend Andrew leave occupied Oslo for Sweden it is the start of a very long journey. Since they are low on the list to be sent to the RNAF training camp in Little Norway in Toronto, five of the young men decide to make their own way to Canada, across Asia, aiming to get a lift from a Norwegian ship from either India or Hong Kong. It takes much longer than envisaged as both the Russian and Chinese authorities keep delaying them while checking their paperwork. Since most of the people he meets have never heard of Norway, and assume he must be either German or English, he usually ends up saying that he is English, but finds that threatening Chinese officials with the Russian consul, usually does the trick. There are other problems too, as one of them gets pneumonia and has to be taken off to hospital, and later Wilfred is separated form the others when he breaks his back in an accident. After spending three months in hospital in Sinkiang (Chinese Turkestan), he continues to Kashgar, where the British consul arranges for him to be met at the Indian border.

Eventually Wilfred makes it to Bombay, from where he catches a Norwegian ship to New York via Cape Town, and eventually makes it to Toronto, while his friends also made it to Bombay but caught a ship from there to London. I'd say that going from Norway, via Sweden, Finland, USSR (Russia & Kazakstan), China (Sinkiang is in the far north-west), India and South Africa, to London or New York is going a very long way round!

This is the story of a great adventure, undertaken by a man who was a 19-year-old apprentice in Oslo when it started.

PS: An oread is a mountain nymph (in case you, like me, wonder what he is on about near the end). ( )