Description:Describes the four-thousand-mile journey across the Gobi Desert and the Himalayas of seven men who escaped from a Siberian prison camp. The harrowing true tale of escaped Soviet prisoners desperate march out of Siberia, through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.;Foreword by Ronald Downing -- Introduction to the Polish edition -- Kharkov and Lubyanka -- Trial and sentence -- From prison to cattle truck -- Three thousand miles by train -- Chain gang -- End of the journey -- Life in Camp 303 -- The wife of the commissar -- Plans for escape -- Seven across the Lena River -- Baikal and a fugitive girl -- Kristina joins the party -- Across the Trans-Siberian Railway -- Eight enter Mongolia -- Life among the friendly Mongols -- The Gobi Desert : hunger, drought and death -- Snake meat and mud -- The last of the Gobi -- Six enter Tibet -- Five by-pass Lhasa -- Himalayan foothills -- Strange creatures -- Four reach India -- Afterword to the 1997 edition.