Slavomir Rawicz · 1956 · survival

Slavomir Rawicz's 1956 bestseller, one of the most famous escape stories ever told, and one of the most disputed. He recounts how he and six others broke out of a Siberian gulag in 1941 and walked some four thousand miles south to freedom: around Lake Baikal, across Mongolia and the furnace of the Gobi, over Tibet and the Himalayas, into British India. Soviet records and later researchers cast serious doubt on whether Rawicz himself made the journey, but as a tale of endurance it remains unforgettable.

1. 1
   Camp 303

   Seven prisoners escape a Soviet labour camp into a Siberian blizzard and head south.

2. 2
   Lake Baikal

   Through the frozen taiga, skirting the great lake.

3. 3
   The Gobi Desert

   Across Mongolia and the furnace of the Gobi, where two of them die of thirst.

4. 4
   Tibet

   Over the high Tibetan plateau.

5. 5
   British India

   And over the Himalayas at last, into India and freedom.