I am very grateful to reader Christian Winkler for pointing out to me that Willie Read, the mysterious hunter I successfully identified last year following my trip to Kashmir, also wrote up his travels for a prestitious magazine. His article, spread across three pages, was featured in the Country Life edition of 11 April 1914. Country Life is the magazine of the landed gentry and in the time before the First World War often featured pieces written by hunters who had travelled in remote places.

There is little in the article that we do not already know. Read writes that he set off from Srinagar on 15th May 1912, meeting his shikari Rahima in Bandipur, downstream on the River Jhelum. “Our route was via Gurais, the Burzil Pass, Godhai, Gilgit, the Kaujut Valley to Merenski”, he writes. He crossed the Killik Pass and after spending 10 days hunting for big sheep and ibex in the Pamir Mountains, made for Kashgar and then Aksu in Chinese Turkestan. From Aksu he entered the Muzart Valley and crossed the pass into the Tekkes Valley in the Tian Shan Mountains before heading on to Kuldja in October. The article is illustrated with some of the images from his magic lantern slides.

It always surprised me that I could not find any article or book that mentioned Read’s journey, which took the best part of seven months and involved a journey of almost 3,000 miles through some of the toughest terrain on earth. Now at least we know that he recorded the journey for posterity in the pages of Country Life.