James Nash, adventurer who travelled from Istanbul to Jerusalem with horse and cart – obituary

James Nash, who has died aged 86, was an adventurer, gourmet and scholar in the cast of a latter-day Richard Burton, the Victorian explorer and orientalist.

From 1959 to 1965 Nash served as a political officer in the Western Aden Protectorate (WAP), based in forts in its mountainous hinterland. The living conditions were hard, the climate unrelenting and the landscape magnificent but brutal. The people were an endless source of delight and frustration –  turbulent, entertaining and anarchic.

Nash knew each tribe and each family. He even knew most of the rebels, and when a particular revolt came to an end they would sit together to feast on sheep or goat, light-heartedly discussing the battles in which they had been shooting at each other.

He served as political adviser to the rulers of Beihan, Dathina and, most importantly, the Audhali Sultanate, which had suffered severely from armed Yemeni incursions since the end of the First World War. Its ruler, Sultan Salih, was pro-British and one of the few Protectorate chiefs who supported the South Arabian Federation, the successor to the Federation of Arab Emirates of the South.

The day-to-day administration of his sultanate, however, was left to his brother, Naib Ja’abil. He had already brokered his own peace deal with Yemen, and his defection in 1964 marked a turning point in British and Federal fortunes.

Nash was based at Mukeiras, at 7,000 feet the highest village in the WAP and within sight of the Yemen. On rare visits to Aden, his ebullience sometimes got free rein. At one New Year’s party at the Aden Club, he arrived with a cartridge belt slung across his bare, dyed- in-woad chest and a dagger stuck in his belt.

As the evening wore on, he became embroiled in a drunken melee which necessitated an emergency visit to hospital. There he chased the nurses around the ward brandishing the dagger and yelling tribal war-cries.

The Egyptian-backed National Liberation Front insurrection began in the Radfan mountains in 1963. Nash was given responsibility for the political aspects of the military response. After its inconclusive cessation in 1964 he was handed the unenviable task of conducting covert counter-terrorist operations against dissidents.

He converted his bazooka-scarred house in Dhala, a target for regular attacks, into an armoury for weaponry and mines and a headquarters for his own gang of tribal “heavies”. Yet this unremittingly hazardous life inevitably took its toll.

An overzealous detachment mistakenly brought down friendly fire on his house, wounding eight of James’s tribal guards. It nearly caused a mutiny, and when the incoming Labour Government proscribed offensive military action and counter-dissident operations, a whiff of perfidy hung in the air.

James Gardiner Nash was born on July 30 1934 at Saint Paul’s Cray, Kent. His father commanded a battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment in 1940 during the BEF’s retreat to Dunkirk before being taken prisoner.

Young James and the rest of his family were shipped out to New Zealand for the duration of the war. Having completed four years at Stowe, he left before his 17th birthday, foregoing the prospect of university.

A spell in the family’s paper manufacturing business preceded National Service but an attack of non-paralytic polio left him with a damaged leg. This made marching a challenge and he opted for the 12th Royal Lancers, serving mainly in Malaya during the Emergency. This was followed by 12 years with the Derbyshire Yeomanry (later the Leicestershire and Derbyshire Yeomanry).

Work in the family business was not his style, and in late 1956 he embarked on a two-year solo walk from Venice to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. He joined the Colonial Office in 1959.

He was appointed MBE in 1965, and on leaving Aden transferred to the Foreign Office, in which he served for two years. He then made a brave career switch, qualifying as a chartered surveyor and working in the City of London from 1969 to 1988, with a three-year spell in Cairo.

In 1988, aged 54, he set off with a horse and cart from Istanbul to Jerusalem to raise money for the Knights of Saint John’s Eye Hospital. He bought two horses from a riding club and Yusuf, a heavily moustached Kurd, was recruited to look after them. Nash was no horseman, and he broke a rib and a wrist while acquiring something short of the most rudimentary skills.

Progress was slow. One of the horses bolted and distributed the contents of the saddlebags over the mountainside. The other had to be dragged out of a quagmire, and when they strayed into a military area, Yusuf was arrested.

The cart had shiny red bodywork enlivened with roses and a lake with mountain scenes and swans. When this overturned on a mountain track it was replaced with a more practical vehicle and fitted with a brake.

The people, with few exceptions, were inexhaustibly helpful and hospitable. The accommodation could be rather primitive. At night, his body, he recalled, became a favourite mosquito restaurant, while on one occasion there was an earthquake and all the pictures fell off the walls.

Several changes of horses and grooms took place during the journey through Turkey, Jordan and Syria to Israel which took eight months and covered more than 1,100 miles. An account is vividly described in his book Quixote in a Cart.

In 2002, with horse and cart and his younger son on foot, Nash undertook his last major adventure, the 800-mile pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

He settled in a Somerset village. His writings included two slim volumes of poetry. In his declining years, he never lost his robust sense of humour and over a few drinks he would fondly recall his days in South Arabia, a land he loved with a passion.

James Nash married Sally Randall in 1965 (dissolved 1984). His second marriage, to Ann Allen in 1991, brought him great happiness. She survives him with two sons of his first marriage.

James Nash, born July 30 1934, died August 24 2020