Sam Leith Sam Leith

A horse ride from Buenos Aires to New York? No problem!

A review of Southern Cross to Pole Star: Tschiffely’s Ride, by Aimé Tschiffely. If you can brave bandits, disease and revolution in search of ‘variety’, you might be a doublehard bastard

Aimé Tschiffely with Mancha and Gato. The strongest emotional bonds he formed on his epic journey were with his horses [Getty Images/Shutterstock/iStock/Alamy] 
issue 14 June 2014

Aimé Tschiffely was what I have seen in other contexts called a ‘doublehard bastard’. In the middle of the 1920s, this Swiss-born schoolteacher at the age of 30 feared that he was getting stuck in a groove and that he wanted ‘variety’. So he set out on a solo horse-ride from Buenos Aires to New York City.

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