Three Cups of Tea

Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Credit: Steven Winslow

In Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson, and acclaimed journalist David Oliver Relin, recount the unlikely journey that led Mortenson from a failed attempt to climb Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain, to successfully building schools in some of the most remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.   

By replacing guns with pencils, rhetoric with reading, Mortenson combines his unique background with his intimate knowledge of the third-world to fight terrorism with books, not bombs, and successfully bring education and hope to remote villages in central Asia.  Three Cups of Tea is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at a time.

K2 in Pakistan is the second highest mountain in the world.

In 1993 Mortenson was descending from his failed attempt to reach the peak of K2. Exhausted and disoriented, he wandered away from his group into the most desolate reaches of northern Pakistan.  Alone, without food, water, or shelter he eventually stumbled into an impoverished Pakistani village where he was nursed back to health. 

While recovering he observed the village’s 84 children sitting outdoors, scratching their lessons in the dirt with sticks.  The village was so poor that it could not afford the $1-a-day salary to hire a teacher.  When he left the village, he promised that he would return to build them a school. 

Mortenson and award-winning journalist David Oliver Relin have written a spellbinding account of his incredible accomplishments in a region where Americans are feared and hated. In pursuit of his goal, Mortenson has survived an armed kidnapping, fatwas issued by enraged mullahs, repeated death threats, and wrenching separations from his wife and children. Yet his success speaks for itself.  This year the schools will educate 24,000 children.