Himalaya: Adventures, Meditations, Life (Revised & Expanded Edition)

One of the best books ever published on the world’s greatest mountains, now in a revised and expanded edition and a new look. ‘Eclectic pickings you may otherwise encounter in a lifetime of reading…[This anthology is] a delicious hoard.’—India Today. With over fifty essays, this comprehensive volume brings together a dazzling range of voices in an unparalleled panorama. Here you will find stories of great and thrilling ascents and descents; strange epiphanies and hallucinations; the madness of war on the ‘world’s highest battlefield’; tales of exploratory derring-do; and a mutiny up on a mountain. A seeker has an intense spiritual experience on Mount Kailas, another among shamans on a mountaintop in Nepal; and, looking for the snow leopard in Ladakh, an author finds himself. A resident of a Sherpa village writes a heartfelt account of the aftermath of an avalanche which killed porters and climbers on Everest; and residents of Langtang record an oral history of the earthquake which wiped out their village. A matriarch describes her life and family in Almora of a bygone time; a prisoner in Dehra Dun jail draws solace from visits by birds and small animals; and the fragrance of lime makes a traveller’s night in a remote Garhwal village memorable for all time.Edited by acclaimed writers Ruskin Bond and Namita Gokhale—who have a deep and lifelong connection with the Himalaya—this classic anthology—in a revised and expanded edition—spans the entire range, from the foothills to the highest peaks, and from its easternmost to its westernmost ends. It will keep you riveted.