Three Cups Of Tea, Greg Mortensen
Rating: 
Finding himself stranded and close to death after an attempted summit of K2 in the Karakoram range of the Himalayas, Greg Mortensen is nursed back to health by local Pakistani villagers who live at elevations where I think I’d probably find it hard to breathe, let alone reside. As he leaves for his home in the States once rehabilitated, Mortensen makes a pact with the villagers to return with supplies and funding to build a bridge over a nearby ravine to end the separation from trade routes they’ve endured for centuries. The project morphs into a bridge and a school, and the Central Asia Institute is born with the goal of bringing education to the children of the Karakoram, most of whom would have previously lived their lives as illiterate and secluded mountain dwellers. Mortensen’s is quite an uplifting story, and was a little closer to home for me as he writes about his time in the States during each Pakistani winter, when he lives in Berkeley and San Francisco. Interesting to read a different perspective on the Pakistani people when we live in a time where the media typically paints Pakistan linked to terrorism or war. And also a diametrically different insight into the world of Islam than that presented as part of Infidel.