Book Club: Three Cups of Tea

We are nearing the end of our discussion on the book "Three Cups of Tea", by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin. Several folks in the group had read it already and thought it would be something we'd all enjoy. I am close to finishing it. I can say that while my attention wandered at times, I really started to get sucked into it toward the middle to 3/4 through.

Greg Mortensen, a mountain climber, gets lost on his way down from a failed attempt on K2 - which is, according to "Planet Earth - Disc 1" - the "most dangerous mountain in the world". He ends up in Korphe, a tiny town at something like 18,000 feet in Baltistan, northern Pakistan. I had never heard of the the Balti people before reading this book - they are often the porters/guides on the K2 and other Karkoram range treks undertaken by westerners.

After seeing the children do their lessons with sticks in the dirt, he gets the inspiration to go back to the US and raise money to build schools.

Not telling you the whole rest of the story, the part that I found most interesting was when the school-building started to pick up, and at the same time, the politics and unrest in that area of the world started to unravel (rise of the Taliban, India-Kashmir fighting, 9/11, etc.). It is an inspirational story at the same time as it is a recent history and geography lesson on central asia. It's definitely worth reading. It's not at all religious, overtly or otherwise, but is inspirational all the same.