High Caucasus by Tom Parfitt review – one man and a mountain range | Travel writing
Tom Parfitt is full of questions, guilt and regrets; a good man. Brought up on a Norfolk farm, Russia lover, adventurer and correspondent, this complex narrator is both at the heart and at the edge of a remarkable attempt to uncover the wildest and least known frontier of Europe. Brave, stubborn but amusingly self-effacing, he sets himself a 1,000-mile walk from the Black Sea to the Caspian, along the string of mountainous republics that make up Russia’s southern border. Across dramatic landscapes, he engages with a…