The Meadow

The shocking true story of a brutal kidnapping high in the mountains of Kashmir that marked the beginning of modern terrorism. In July 1995, ten backpackers take a trip of a lifetime. They journey into the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, trekking to a place known as the Meadow, one of the world's most idyllic campsites. They have come in search of many things -- nirvana, exhilaration, a sense of self. But over the course of the next week, Islamic extremists hunt them down, taking them hostage and sucking them into an alien world of jihad. The Meadow charts how the lives of a small group of tourists and their kidnappers became entwined on the mountain trails they followed and in the cramped shepherds' huts where they hid. It tells of the terrifying escape of one, the heart-rending secret letters written on birch bark and hidden by another, and how -- with a brutal beheading -- the hostage takers took an irreversible step into the abyss. Written with access to diaries and letters, personal recollections and classified police reports, as well as secret tape recordings of Indian government negotiations and interviews with the jihadis themselves, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark's book is a startling true story told from the perspectives of all involved. Packed with explosive revelations, The Meadow provides the first definitive answers as to what happened to the missing backpackers and reveals how this kidnapping changed the face of modern jihad.