By the same author of The Royal Road to Romance, The Glorious Adventure, New Worlds to Conquer. Illustrated. Richard Halliburton could be counted on to lead his readers into strange places, hilarious difficulties, and bizarre adventures. He had already proved that you could see the world without a dime in your pocket, and have a whale of a time doing it. Yet after various adventures on land and by sea, America's most dashing traveler decided there was only path left open for him - the sky itself. "The Flying Carpet" was Halliburton's fourth and most famous book and details his epic adventures flying a bi-plane through remote parts of the globe. It recounts how Halliburton landed in Timbuctoo, passed over Mt. Everest, flew over the Taj Mahal upside down, and dropped down into the jungles of Borneo to visit native head hunters. "Stephens," Halliburton told the pilot, "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!" If one book can summarize all the reckless love of life and romance that symbolized Richard Halliburton, then this is the book.

Richard Halliburton was a self-described vagabond of the clouds. In Flying Carpet he brings Moye Stephens Jr. along as pilot/captain and mechanic. Their journey takes them through the far reaches of North Africa and East Asia. They followed Alexander the Great's path into Egypt, over Alexandria and through Babylon. They stop for a month or two in ever location and submerge themselves in the culture. Like on the island of Borneo, trying to impress the tribal chief with a plane ride. My favorite section was when they visited the Taj Mahal, calling it "the one perfect thing on earth."
A tough portion of Halliburton's memoir is his treatment of "Negros" and the buying of young slaves. He explained it away by saying his grandfathers were slave owners in Tennessee. He bought two ten year old children to wash dishes and fight the overpopulation of bats in Timbuctoo.
Halliburton seemed like a fun guy to hang out with. He brought a portable record player and liked to dance. He was bold enough to compete for the love of a woman with whom he could not communicate. He opted to live as a prisoner in Teheran "just to see" what it was like.
As an aside, Flying Carpet was the name of the plane Richard Halliburton flew.
As an another aside, I wonder what Halliburton would think of the traffic jams of Mount Everest today. In Halliburton's time it was forbidden ("irresistible, unattained, and inviolate"). In 1920 Nepal and Tibet had staunchly refused foreigners. Only the Dalai Lama was able to allow English climbers to enter from the Tibetan side. That might have been the beginning of commercial tourism. Halliburton and Stephens were finally allowed to gain access to the airspace around Everest (at 18,000 feet) only because they impressed the Mararajah of Nepal. ( )

Haliburton purchases an airplane, names it The Flying Carpet, hires a pilot and set out to travel around the world. They leave from Hollywood, California flying to the east coast. Timbuctoo (Timbuktu) is his first destination after sailing across the Atlantic on a ship. They fly across the Sahara Desert through sand storms, refueling at fuel drops that are left beside the single track they are following. To lose the track means a painful death from lack of food and water.

As mentioned by another reviewer on this site, Haliburton buys two young salves in a slave market justifying the purchase as not being shocking since both his grandfathers had been slave owners. While in the desert, they also spend considerable time embedding themselves in the French Foreign Legion by which we learn much about the life of a Legionnaire in the 1920's Legion,

Some of the other adventures include flying over the Matterhorn in Switzerland, visiting Venice, Budapest, Belgrade and Istanbul. They spent time in Palestine and Egypt before embarking on flights across Saudi Arabia to Syria and Persia (Iran). It is intriguing to note that they fly into these countries where they tour safely whereas today they would have difficulty crossing many of these frontiers and be in danger once they landed.

They continue their trip east spending time in India, Burma, Thailand, Sumatra and Borneo. In the latter area, they lived with a tribe of headhunters and were given a dozen shrunken heads as gift to take home. Their flying journey ended in the Philippines where they again boarded a ship to take them and their plane home to California.

While this is a memoir of a rich young white man's journey through many primitive lands in the early part of the 20th Century, he recorded sights that were due to disappear in the next ten years so for that we must be grateful. The part of the trip that impressed me was how this primitive aircraft made the journey. While there were moments when the Carpet seemed to be ready to fail them, it always came through. The day they tried to fly over Mount Everest was an especially difficult test for the plane which if it had stopped working in the severe conditions they put it through, would have been been sure death for them. Haliburton took the first aerial photograph of Everest. ( )

I have read three other books by Richard Halliburton and thoroughly enjoyed them... which really just added to my disappointment with "The Flying Carpet." It no way lives up to his three prior travel books, which were funny, interesting and chock full of enlightening anecdotes.

I have to say the book went right off the rails early on, when Halliburton and his friend purchase African children as slaves, justifying this with "well, my grandfather was a slave owner." This is the 1930's.... and this American traveler should have known better at that point. Not to mention his absolute anguish in a later story about a nightingale trapped in a cage. Ugh.

Additionally, most of the stories in this book, which covers his flight around the world in the plane "The Flying Carpet" lack the spark that made the other books good. The most interesting tales are very reminiscent of prior adventures (he loves to swim in places he shouldn't...) so the story seemed a little tired

I probably will read his fifth and final book (mainly because I'm a completist. If I had started with "The Flying Carpet," I never would have read anything else by Halliburton. ( )

An excellent travel adventure. It starts a bit weak, especially compared to Halliburton's "Royal Road to Romance," but quickly gets much better.

From Europe, Halliburton and his pilot/mechanic Moye fly across the Sahara to Timbuctoo, then spend time with the Foreign Legion. They fly over the Matterhorn, swim down the Grand Canal in Venice, then fly to Constantinople where Halliburton spends the night in Santa Sophia. Next to Jerusalem, where they explore a historical fountain and marry off a Christian cat. Then to Petra, to Baghdad where they give a ride to the prince, to Tehran where they give a ride to two princesses, and are guests in the Shah's prison for political prisoners. He releases a nightingale over Hafiz's grave. They encounter Elly Beinhorn, a German aviator, and they fly together to the Taj Mahal, and then into the Himalayas to view Mt Everest. Then to Borneo, where they are given human heads in return for flying the chief. With a few more difficulties they make it to Manila.

It's an amazing travel story. ( )