The Flying Carpet

"I've just given myself an airplane and I want you to fly us to all the outlandish places in the world, Turkey, Persia, Paris and - Pasadena. We're going to fly across deserts, over mountains, rescue imprisoned princesses and fight dragons. We must have the world. We can have the world!"
Thirsting for a new adventure and announcing that 'an adventure not in the air is obsolete', Richard Halliburton hired pioneer aviator Moye Stephens in 1931 and fearlessly set out to circle the world in an open cockpit biplane optimistically named The Flying Carpet. For Halliburton it was the ultimate in romantic, risky exploration and was a means of seeing the world in a way that few had ever seen it before.
True to form, his journey was breathtakingly audacious. They performed aerobatics in Fez, landed in mysterious Timbuktu, spent time with the French Foreign Legion in Algeria and explored Cairo, Damascus and Petra. In Iran, they met legendary aviatrix Ella Beinhorn and gave Princess Mahin Banu a ride. In Iraq, it was the turn of King Faisal's young son, Ghazi, who was escorted by two RAF fighter planes. In India, they flew over the Taj Mahal - upside down - and, soaring over the Himalayas, Halliburton took the first aerial photograph of Everest. In Borneo they were entertained by Sylvia Brooke, the 'White Queen of Borneo', and by the chief of the Iban Dyak headhunters, who gave them dozens of shrunken heads.
A journey as dazzling as Halliburton himself and, with the world at war less than a decade later, marking the end of an era, the story of The Flying Carpet is as captivating today as it was to the world 80 years ago.

Richard Halliburton (1900-39) was America's greatest adventurer and one of the most successful adventure travel writers of the twentieth century. Through a life spent chasing horizons and concocting ever more daring schemes, Halliburton dazzled the western world. His final adventure, sailing a junk across the Pacific, was also his last. Halliburton disappeared in March 1939 and was never seen again. A great and original traveller, his wild adventures live on in the books that have captivated millions of readers and inspired generations of writers.

A new foreword by Tahir Shah
I The Flying Carpet
II From Here to Timbuctoo
III The City of Storks
IV The Two Slaves
V The Foreign Legion - Yea and Nay?
VI The Legion Marches
VII Heinrich and Gerhard
VIII La Brave Legion
IX Gulbeyaz
X Over the Matterhorn-?
XI Three Venetian Moonlights and the Grand Canal
XII The Ghosts of Santa Sophia
XIII Galilean Days
XIV The Holy Sepulchre
XV After the Manner of Joab
XVI Matilda's Marriage
XVII The Enchanted City
XVIII Brief Landings
XIX The Prince of Bagdad
XX From a Persian Prison
XXI The Princess
XXII The Story of Gabriel
XXIII The Flying Fraulein
XXIV In the Tracks of Alexander
XXV A Return to the Taj
XXVI The Goddess Mother of the World
XXVII The Moth and the Flame of Ice
XXVIII Concentrated Trouble
XXIX The Queen of Borneo
XXX Wild Men
XXXI Head-Hunters at Home
XXXII Chef Koh and the Be-Loon
XXXIII The Flying Carpet Comes Through