Sławomir Rawicz was a Polish Army lieutenant who found himself imprisoned by the NKVD following the German-Soviet invasion of Poland. His story, encapsulated in the ghost-written book The Long Walk, narrates an incredible tale of escape and endurance. According to Rawicz, in 1941, he along with six others managed to escape from a Siberian Gulag camp and embarked on a grueling journey on foot.

Their journey, spanning approximately 6,500 kilometers (or 4,000 miles), led them through the harsh terrains of the Gobi Desert, across Tibet, and over the Himalayas, ultimately culminating in British India in the winter of 1942. This remarkable story of survival and human spirit was later met with skepticism.

In 2006, a BBC report, grounded on former Soviet records including statements purportedly made by Rawicz himself, revealed that he had been released as part of the 1942 general amnesty of Poles in the USSR. He was subsequently transported across the Caspian Sea to a refugee camp in Iran, casting doubt on the veracity of his claimed escape to India. Moreover, in May 2009, Witold Gliński, a Polish World War II veteran residing in the UK, contested Rawicz's story, asserting it was, in fact, his own experience. However, Gliński's claims have also been met with skepticism.

Further complicating the narrative, the son of Rupert Mayne, a British intelligence officer in wartime India, recounted an instance in 1942 where his father interviewed three emaciated men in Calcutta. These men claimed to have escaped from Siberia, a story Mayne believed mirrored that of The Long Walk. Despite these intriguing connections, concrete evidence to support the escape narrative remains elusive.