6: The Story of John Wood with Paul Young as John Wood
Narrator John Rowe with Garard Green
In December 1837 John Wood , a young Scottish marine surveyor, found himself in the remote Uzbeg capital of Kunduz on the banks of the Oxus. The idea occurred to him that there was a chance of following this fabled river to its source. The idea became an obsession, . the great object of my thoughts by day and my dreams by night
By the following February Wood had reached his goal. Or so he believed. He was. he wrote. the first European since Marco Polo to contemplate ' the noble but frozen sheet of water. from whose western end issued the infant river of the Oxus'. The hazards of the fearsome winter journey, alas, had been endured in vain.
This series, adapted by JOHN KEAY from his book When Men and Mountains Meet (Publishers John Murray ), recounts the adventures of the extraordinary hand of men who early in the 19th century were among the first Europeans to explore the Himalayas.
Producer ALAN HAYDOCK