Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime by Stephen Alter.

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BECOMING A MOUNTAIN: 

HIMALAYAN JOURNEYS 

in search of the 

SACRED 

and the 

SUBLIME 

by STEPHEN ALTER. 

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Much of the book, at least in the first chapter - after having described explicitly, in gory detail, a horrendous and murderous attack against himself and wife by intruders demanding money - author attempts to reconcile his feelings about mountains he sees from Flag Hill, with those of India in her reverence and love for Himaalaya, and at its extreme opposite, with his atheist stance, that's really a compromise he found - between his conversionist ancestry from missionaries and his birthplace, India, with a cultural treasure as rich as the landscape of Himaalaya and its rivers enriching Indian land. 

The parts about his surgical reconstruction are vaguely familiar, and after a while one recalls having read them in another work, on Himalaya, by the author. 

Strangely enough, or perhaps aptly, for all that, the most gripping account isn't where he strives to convince West that he hasn't 'gone native', but still sticks to Macaulay - on the contrary, it's his personal account, not so much of the assault against the couple but that of his attempted climb, told at the very end. This, despite all the pull exerted by Kailash, regardless of his attempts to render it devoid thereof. 

The climb account jolts one with an electric shock, furthermore, because he isn't providing dates. It segues into the storm-flood-landslides horrendous events of 2013 in upper Ganga regions. 

But his efforts to go on a high gear offensive against mainstream India are not easy to ignore. 

"Stepping over plastic bags and empty juice packets, I find myself getting angry and frustrated. Like everything else on this journey, it seems symbolic of something greater, a paradox that defines the contradictions of human nature. ... "

He forgets, plumbing is only a couple of centuries old even in West, and it was far more filthy then than India; but as to the garbage litter, a large part of the problem is industrial era and its packaging. Even in the cleanest of societies West, garbage collected has the disposal problem not quite solved, merely pushed away out of sight. US has a mountain of it in Eastern coastal states, and Pacific ocean has an island of it due to US litter disposed, but that's without counting the scrap US sends to Asia for disposal at a cost - paid by US in currency and by Asia in environmental erosion. 

" ... The high peaks of Garhwal and Kumaon are some of the most regulated ranges in the world, with all kinds of restrictions, especially for foreigners like me. The Person of Indian Origin (PIO) card, which allows me to stay in India without a visa, states clearly that it isn’t valid for ‘missionary activities, mountaineering and research’. Somehow, I feel as if they’ve singled me out but after making inquires, Rimo tell me that Bandarpunch is an ‘open peak’ for which special permission can be granted on payment of exorbitant climbing fees."

"The Bhagirathi tributary, full of silt washed down from the mountains, is the same colour as the strong, thick tea brewed at roadside stalls. Just above Uttarkashi, we pass Gangori, where the traditional route to Bandarpunch cuts off and climbs to Dodital. A year ago, flash floods on the Assi Ganga washed away the bridge and a dozen buildings. The military Border Roads Organization has replaced the bridge but Gangori still looks like a disaster zone. Hundreds of people died in last year’s floods, many of them undocumented labourers working on a hydro-electric project along the Assi Ganga, trying to harness the power of the river, which turns lethal in the monsoon. Five weeks ago, training for my climb to Bandarpunch, I trekked up this route to Dodital and the Darwa Pass."

" ... Many of the newer buildings stand well below the high-water mark of earlier floods, inviting disaster. The Ganga View Hotel on the outskirts of Uttarkashi has its foundation in the riverbed. The town of Bhatwari is sliding into the Bhagirathi and may disappear within a couple of years. ... "

Alter speaks of "religious chauvinism" of Hindus, without mentioning the word Hindu. He gets downright abusive. It's easy and cheap, when mouthing off is only against India and against Hindus. 

"The Himalayas are often depicted as the pristine seat of spiritual enlightenment, the fountainhead of Hindu tradition, the reclusive retreat of sages and sadhus. But along these valleys, where an increasing number of pilgrims travel in a continuous caravan of zealous fundamentalism, the politicized face of Hinduism has evolved into a grotesque visage spouting dogma, prejudice and venal theologies. The mountains themselves rise above the Ganga, which flows resolutely on, washing away the filth of millions who pollute its waters, even as they chant her praises and call her ‘mother’. Natural phenomena are turned into religious metaphors and then debased by the tawdry embellishments of faith. Even ancient myths lose resonance here."

Inquisition, anyone remember, wasn't an institution of India, or of Hinduism. Nor is the concept of 'convert or kill', used for ethnic cleansing in Kashmir in January 1990. 

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"Just below Dolma La is another pond, slightly larger than the Mirror of Yama but no more than 9 metres across. Hindus call this Gauri Kund and Buddhists refer to it as the Lake of Compassion. For much of the year it remains frozen but in summer the water melts to a chalky green colour. The snow-capped ridge above is reflected in the surface. Being several hundred feet below the pass and surrounded by steep cliffs and rocky slopes, the lake is seldom visited by pilgrims, who follow a trail that circles above Gauri Kund. Some yatris brave the difficult descent to bathe in the water but most take darshan from a distance, allowing their prayers to reflect upon the jade-like surface of the pool."

Alter gives here story of birth and a bit more of Ganapati, presumably for purposes of entertainment of non-Indians, non-Hindus. 

" ... This myth is a familiar episode in Hindu mythology and I have visited more than one place that is said to be the setting for this story. Here in Tibet, well above the range of any elephants, ... "

Alter forgets that the legend belongs to before Himaalaya was quite so high, and that Kailash is far older, geologically; that there's no reason to presume that at the time of the legend coming into being, everything was as is now, and elephants avoided the surroundings for some mysterious reason despite its being completely accessible! He doesn't say why that would have been so, even though elephants are natural from Assam to Kerala, and were natural to most of ancient Indian land. Tibet hadn't been lifted quite so high then. And if China hadn't finished off everything in sight by eating, elephants might have existed in Tibet, China, even Mongolia. But then, China finished off even cattle, something so vital and essential to an agricultural land in tropics. Chinese cuisine, unlike India or Europe, has no dairy product component. 

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"Brown trout are not a native species of the Himalayas. Salmo trutta were brought to Garhwal from Scotland a century ago. Aaron has researched their genealogy and DNA testing traces the fish back to Loch Leven, one of the primary sources of trout for stocking throughout the British Empire. Though forest department records confirm brown trout have been swimming in these waters for a century or more, the exact process by which they arrived is still unclear. Whether eggs or fingerlings were carried by ship to India, a journey of several months, including the slow riverboat passage up the Ganga, and then transported by mules or porters into these mountains, it is hard to imagine how the translocation of this species was accomplished. One theory is that brown trout were brought here by the Himalayan entrepreneur and adventurer, Frederick ‘Pahari’ Wilson. After deserting the East India Company army, he supported himself by hunting musk deer in Garhwal and later cut a deal with the Maharaja of Tehri to fell timber in these mountains and float it down the Ganga. He is also credited with building the first bridge across the Bhairon Ghatti Gorge so that pilgrims could reach Gangotri (after paying him toll). Wilson spent part of the year in Mussoorie, where he acquired several properties by extending mortgages to British officers and then foreclosing on their loans. Kipling modelled his title character in ‘The Man Who Would be King’, on Pahari Wilson. It seems likely that the trout in Dodital and rivers downstream may have been brought here from Scotland by this imperial renegade, considered ‘beyond the pale’ of colonial society, because he married not just one, but two Garhwali women."

What other evidence does anyone need of the British and European caste system, far more rigid than anything of India? 

This man who caused major environmental damage that only snowballed as time went by, and robbed not only India but British too, was branded only for adapting to the land they colonised, in marrying locally - instead of ordering a British bride, or picking one from the shiploads that arrived on each boat, tells quite enough about British caste system!

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"FLOODED MOUNTAINS 

"Within twenty-four hours the rain becomes a torrential monsoon storm that lasts for three days and three nights without cessation, dumping four times the normal rainfall, almost 400 mm of precipitation every twenty-four hours, setting records for the month of June. Rivers rise more than 15 metres, gouging out long sections of the road. A huge reservoir in the sky has burst its banks, inundating the Central Himalayas in a sudden onslaught of moisture. Homes collapse and fields are washed away. Villagers flee to higher ground, only to find the ridges above them sinking into the valleys. Hotels built along the banks of the Ganga are torn from their moorings and swallowed by the flood. Statues of Hindu gods made out of reinforced concrete are swept away in the relentless current. Billboards fall like playing cards and whole sections of riverside towns disappear into the Ganga. For some it must seem like the end of the world. Others never know what hit them, killed instantly beneath mud slides or drowned in their sleep. ... Roofs collapse, walls implode and foundations drop away into whirlpools. Ninety-three bridges, some of which have stood for more than a century, are consumed by the rivers they span. Water rises so high that pylons on either side are ripped free from the rocks. Buses and cars are carried away in the flood, tossed about as lightly as flotsam. Power lines and telephone cables snap and communication towers fall. Trees are torn from the earth and whole sections of the mountains slough off, avalanches of earth and forest."

"Unaware of what is coming, Titu and I hire a jeep from Sukhi and drive downriver through heavy rain for most of the night, escaping only a few hours ahead of the flood. By the time we reach Mussoorie, much of the Bhagirathi Valley is cut off. If we had continued with our attempt on Bandarpunch, we would have been stuck on the mountain in the storm. Suddenly, our expedition and adventure becomes meaningless, set against the cataclysm of the flood. All of the four main sources of the Ganga and their temples, visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year, have become totally inaccessible. The worst damage is at Kedarnath, where a glacial lake bursts several kilometres above the temple, sending a deadly slurry of mud and rock streaming into the heart of the pilgrim complex, burying resthouses where yatris lay asleep, filling rooms to the ceiling with dirt and debris. The main temple, made of stone, remains undamaged, though all around it every other structure is flattened.

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"INVOKING TRAGEDY 

"The devastation in Uttarakhand was headlined as a ‘Himalayan Tsunami’ by journalists and politicians hard-pressed to describe the scale of destruction. The comparison is not far-fetched, for huge waves of water poured down the valleys. Narrow gorges added to the velocity and force of the current, which had nowhere else to go. Though the violent storms took everyone by surprise, there was nothing new about these floods. Only last year, the Assi Ganga overflowed and washed out sections of Uttarkashi. Similar catastrophes have occurred in the past. In 1978, a landslide near Gangnani blocked the river for a couple of days before it burst and swept away parts of the towns and settlements downstream. Hundreds died and survivors were said to be picking fish out of trees as if they were fruit. In 1880, Pahari Wilson, who built his palatial home in Harsil and floated deodar logs down the Ganga, was rumoured to have drowned in a similar flash flood on the Bhagirathi. Presumed dead, his obituaries appeared in the papers. A week later, however, Wilson came sauntering down the Mall Road in Mussoorie, just as his two wives had gone into mourning."

" ... In hindsight, a great deal might have been done to limit the damage and suffering, but the flood itself was as inevitable as earthquakes, a violent process of erosion that has, over countless epochs, created these valleys and sculpted the mountains.

"Of course, none of this mitigates the loss of life and property that occurred during the 2013 Uttarakhand floods, but as I read or listened to news reports and heard helicopters flying over our house in Mussoorie, I couldn’t help but think of the bones at Roopkund. Five hundred years ago, an anonymous party of pilgrims died in the Himalayas, seeking a path to god. Since then, many others have lost their lives, including victims of altitude sickness at Mount Kailash, their spiritual quest ending in physical anguish and mortal finality. ... "

Alter expounds on mistakes here, but doesn't compare the disaster with say, houses on California coastal areas being brought down due to landslides. 

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"We climb toward Taktsang, the Tiger’s Nest, in Bhutan. ... This cliff-top monastery is built around a cave where Guru Padmasambhava meditated, after flying here from Tibet. His consort turned herself into an airborne tigress so that she could transport him over the Himalayas. Prayer flags are draped across a precipice, fluttering shreds of sacred texts that mark the trajectory of the guru’s flight."

In addition to his other shortcomings, in Alter there's an unfortunate manifestation of racism and a need to distance himself from anything that might provide anyone to hang an illusion that this person could be seen as belonging or even attached to India or her ancient culture - which manifests in a strange and repeated copy, sometimes exact, of the last scene of a European film about Hungary one recalls having seen some time in early to mid eighties, a good film completely marred by that last scene, strangely alike a post-impressionist artist's work in a NY city museum one saw later, in 1983. 

Amusing to notice that Alter treats Buddhist lores with far more respect, never branding them as myth, while he never faults doing so several times per paragraph about lores and legends of ancient Indian culture by any name, as if terrified thst he might be accused of having lost caste - racial, that's caste by caste system of West, of course - and 'gone native', the most supreme sin for anyone of ancestry from Europe. 

But then, Buddha was of India in every way possible, and merely one of a long tradition of Divine descent on earth in a live girl, recognized as such; also, he didn't convert to anything abrahmic, although he did of course precede the later abrahmic faiths which are conversionist. 

So why does the disdain bordering on open, compulsory disrespect for India that's routine from writers of West, not extend to Buddhism? 

Is it because Buddhism is seen in context, not of its very Indian teaching and roots, but the military prowess of its far more numerous followers in East Asia? 

Of course, West respects brutal force, however idiotic and ignorant, overcoming and destroying other, however far more advanced, cultures. 

"My flags won’t pray for a better life next time round or forgiveness for sins I don’t regret—evil thoughts, perhaps, but not the daily transgressions that I’m supposed to confess. ... "

Does Alter realise this is a choice, a freedom India gives, but abrahmic creeds don't, and in saying this more than in anything else, he's unconsciously proved himself true, not to his ancestral distance from ancient culture of India, but to his birth and early years, his growing years, of India? 

"For close to fifty years, I haven’t prayed. Others have performed the task on my behalf. But on this walk the wind and trees seem to tug words from my soul. At Taktsang, I watch a Bhutanese family prostrating themselves in front of the guru’s image. A girl of four or five mimics her parents, flattening herself to the floor, as if doing calisthenics. The teenaged monk who unlocks the sanctuary for us trickles holy water into my palm from a silver vessel adorned with peacock feathers. I baptize my face and head, wondering what these rituals mean."

If that's not bring foreign, what is? 

Was he kept away, assiduously, from possible contamination of Indian thought, by family? 

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"BURNT OFFERINGS 

"This morning, before breakfast, Phurbu begins building a cairn of ten large rocks placed one on top of the other. The uppermost stone is tapered like an arrow, pointing toward the mountains. In front of this, he constructs a small stone altar, where he stacks a pile of dry twigs collected from around our camp. The shape of the cairn is similar to a Tibetan chorten, a tiered spire that also serves as an emblem of the peak we hope to climb. 

"Once Phurbu is ready, he calls us together for a pooja. Soop Singh has brought a tray on which are placed a husked coconut, an apple and a pomegranate, along with cashew nuts and raisins. Each of the men has decorated the cairn with wildflowers—yellow buttercups, saffron potentilla and white anemones. The fire is lit with birch bark tinder and white smoke begins to billow up in loose strands, braiding itself around the cairn.

"Phurbu settles himself in front of the altar. He props up a pocketsized triptych of Buddhist deities, at the centre of which is a photograph of the Dalai Lama. Opening a well-thumbed prayer book, he begins chanting softly in a low voice, as steady and muffled as the stream that flows nearby. I sit beside him, listening and watching without comprehension and yet in complete awareness of the purpose of this ritual. We celebrate a simple harmony of elements—earth and fire, water and air—the stones, the flames, the burbling stream and the clean, white smoke that makes the wind visible. During the ceremony, each member of the team assumes an attitude of devotion, though there is no formality. Some sit, some stand, one or two fold their hands. From time to time, Phurbu gets up and adjusts the burning twigs without interrupting his throaty incantations. I can see that others are praying too, lips moving silently in several languages."

Again, one notices - Alter isn't abusive of Buddhist rituals, while he won't let an opportunity to abuse Hinduism go waste, but indulges in copious verbal stone-pelting, as if afraid he'd be burnt at stake by his ancestors too, if he held back. The only exception is the title, here. 

"Eventually, Phurbu gestures to Soop Singh and directs him to take out coals with a ladle and put them on a flat stone directly in front of the cairn. Then a sprig of juniper is placed on top and it begins to smoulder. Each of us is called forward and we place more juniper on the fire. The smoke has a sweet, resinous fragrance, the purest incense in the world. Closing my eyes, I feel its warmth caress my face. Phurbu sprinkles tsampa flour and kernels of rice on the flames. He gives us each a pinch of tsampa, which we throw together on to the burning altar. Some of the nuts and other offerings consigned to the fire are wrapped in birch bark. Finally, Phurbu takes a cup of water from the stream and uses a juniper sprig to sprinkle water on the altar. With the same sprig, he anoints each of us, after which we are given water in our palms to drink. Soop Singh distributes prasad, blessed fruit and nuts as well as halwa. The entire ritual takes twenty minutes, though the burnt offerings and juniper keep smouldering for most of the morning. At the end, in deference to Hanuman’s presence on Bandarpunch, everyone shouts ‘Jai Bajrang Bali!’"

Very like a routine Havan - or more properly pronounced, Havana (every a short, all equal) - of India, of far older than Vedic era onwards right upto current times, except for the materials used. 

One could say Yajna, but that's more serious; an Havan or a Havana is more of a routine ritual, comparatively. 

"The rituals are comforting, intended to give us confidence to face the mountain. Today, again, is a rest day, our final acclimatization before we move on up towards the summit. ... "

"The altitude hasn’t bothered me so far, but lying down and reading, I begin to feel breathless. As soon as I get up and walk around, the feeling passes and I wonder if it’s nothing more than anxiety. The snow chute still worries me, a recurring fear of falling that I can’t shake out of my head. ... "

Sounds more like altitude induced pulmonary edema. 

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"4.15 a.m. My wakeup call comes earlier than expected. I have forgotten to adjust my watch to Nepal time, a quarter of an hour ahead of India. Throughout this journey there will be continuous uncertainty about time, as if clocks are meaningless. All of China operates on Beijing time, two hours and fifteen minutes ahead of Kathmandu, though our Nepali guides and Sherpas refuse to advance their watches. Adding to the ambiguity, after crossing the border we will be travelling 800 kilometres westwards. According to Chinese clocks, sunrise at Mount Kailash can be as late as 10 a.m.

"Before departure, a group of pilgrims gather in front of our buses and perform a brief pooja. They sing ... and recite a Sanskrit incantation, led by one of the elderly women. At the end, they cry out in praise of Shiva: ‘Jai Gaura Shambhu! Bam Bam Bholey!’ The ritual is improvised and awkward but satisfies a need to invoke blessings for our journey."

" ... One of the travel agents briefs us in English and gives us a lecture on the rigours of the journey and the importance of maintaining a ‘positive attitude’. He tells us that yatris come in three varieties: those who see the trip to Kailash as a spiritual journey; those who are interested in nature; and those who feel they are buying a chance to boast about having been to Mount Kailash. The third category, he explains, are the ones who cause the most problems. We are instructed to travel light and leave behind unnecessary items. Our clothes and other belongings must fit into a small duffle bag provided by the agency. The rest of our luggage will be left at the hotel in Kathmandu. Our duffle bags are numbered for easy identification, since they are transported by truck. My number is 51. I am permitted to carry a day pack with me. The tour operator then recites a litany of rules. We will not be allowed to bathe for the duration of the trip and shaving is discouraged. The guest houses where we will stay have no running water. ... "

Author describes a comment by tour operator to the effect that tibetans aren't hospitable. This is a horrible comment, considering that their position is no different from that of Jews in Germany during WWII, except thst Tibetan people are suffering this in their own homeland, so perhaps one should compare them to natives of the so-called 'New World', where European migrants and conquistadores claimed they'd discovered the new continents - even as original residents suffered genocide at hands of the new arrivals claiming the land in name of a monarch in Europe or an abrahmic creed. 

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"Beyond the town, we ascend through moist green shadows, trees overhanging the road. Near the river grow elms, alders and rhododendrons, after which we move up into conifer forests of cedar and hemlock. One variety of spruce has purple cones as big as mangoes. At places the road has washed away. Labourers are rebuilding walls as bulldozers remove debris. Across the valley, we see precipices extending thousands of feet up and down, like scroll paintings: brushstrokes of bamboo, a cragged profile, clouds of negative space, and waterfalls that drop as silver threads down moss-covered slopes. The humid warmth of the valleys gives way to a damp chill. When we stop at a checkpoint, the armed guards are wearing quilted uniforms. In the gorge below, the Bhote Kosi writhes and roars like a chained dragon."

"The story of Nain Singh Rawat and his fellow ‘pandits’ is one of the great adventures of Himalayan exploration. Being secret agents of the British Raj, Rawat and other men from the border villages of Uttarakhand were recruited by officials of the Survey of India. They were trained in techniques of cartography and equipped with sextants hidden in boxes with false bottoms. Disguising themselves as Ladakhi merchants, they worried strings of prayer beads specially adapted to count their strides—100 beads instead of the usual 108. The maps they produced are remarkably accurate, though their equipment was unsophisticated. To gauge the level of the horizon, they carried bowls of liquid mercury. Altitude was calculated by measuring the temperature of boiling water, a procedure that required precision and patience, as well as plenty of yak dung for fuel. The pandits mapped the course of the Tsangpo and discovered that it became the Brahmaputra beyond the impenetrable gorges of the eastern Himalayas. Captured and jailed on several occasions, they returned to India with valuable intelligence. Their reports were published by the Royal Geographic Society in London but their names were erased from the records, anonymous explorers in ambiguous lands."

Sheer racism by British, exploiting talent and giving no credit, as per Macaulay policy. 

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" ... Soon a crowd of women and children gather, begging for food and money. One of the women has a bracelet made out of a conch shell, which looks like a white gauntlet on her wrist. A few of the yatris give the younger children biscuits and one of the Gujarati women sticks bindis on the foreheads of the girls. The herdsmen’s clothes are tattered. None of them seem to have washed their faces for days, though there is plenty of water nearby."

That last sentence is from someone whose race persecuted poor Indian students relentlessly about restrictions they imposed regarding bathing no more than once a week - which the said poor Indian students flouted, as often as they could, having been used to bathing at least once a day, every morning, apart from routine washing before and after meals! 

So Alter criticising poor Tibetans for not washing - "though there is plenty of water nearby" (there never was a shortage of water in England, was there? Why did English persecute Indians for bathing?), even if implicitly, is merely

racism.

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"The pronunciation and spelling of the word ‘Himalayas’ has been a matter of dispute from the time it was first translated into English. In Sanskrit ‘hem’ or ‘him’ means snow and ‘alaya’ denotes the ‘place of’. ... "

In Sanskrit, 'Hima' with a short 'a' at the end is snow (or ice, too?), but 'Hema' with a short 'a' at the end is gold, not snow or ice. 

" ... When I was a boy, we were taught to stress the second syllable (Himaalaya), rather than swallowing the vowel (Him’laya) as many people do. We believed this was the correct pronunciation, though it differed from the original Sanskrit. ... "

No, it's not different from original Sanskrit. Indeed its a very mathematical language, and 

Hima+Aalaya=Himaalaya, 

as per Sanskrit rules of joining words. 

The pronunciation he claims he was taught is, indeed, the correct one, and it's as per rules of Sanskrit. Whoever told him that "it differed from the original Sanskrit" was either lying or an egotistical illiterate idiot. 

" ... As for spelling, many purists assert that Himalaya, without the ‘s’, is more accurate and gives the mountains a singular grandeur. ... "

More accurate, certainly. Grandeur of the very term is inherent in the original nomenclature, cheapened by anglicising with the 's'. 

" ... Common usage has devolved into the plural form that I have chosen for this book. My purpose is simply to avoid confusion amongst readers who may not be aware of the arcane nuances of this debate. ... "

Or simply racism, preferring readership amongst West ' and bootleggers thereof? 

" ... In the end, of course, no matter how we transliterate their name, the Himalayas will always rise above the perverse inadequacies of language."

Himaalaya is always above, risen from ocean millions of years ago, as witnessed and recorded then by India. 

As for the 'perverse inadequacies of language' that's author's, India rose above it, tolerating its myriad - and silly - shortcomings and faults, and more. 

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"The fifth century Sanskrit poet Kalidasa opens his epic poem Kumarasambhava with lines in praise of the Himalayas. He proclaims them a ‘proud mountain-king!’ crowned with a ‘diadem of snow’ in this early translation by British orientalist, Ralph T. H. Griffith, author of Specimens of Old Indian Poetry: 

""Far in the north Himalaya, lifting high 

"His towery summits till they cleave the sky, 

"Spans the wide land from east to western sea, 

"Lord of the Hills, instinct with Deity. 

"For him, when Prithu ruled in days of old 

"The rich Earth, teeming with her gems and gold, 

"The vassal Hills, and Meru drained her breast, 

"And decked Himalaya, for they loved him best, 

"While Earth, the mother, gave her store to fill 

"With herbs and sparkling ores the royal Hill…""

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" ... Krishna replies: ‘Those who set their hearts on me and ever in love worship me, and who have unshakable faith, these I hold as the best Yogis. But those who worship the Imperishable, the Infinite, the Transcendent unmanifested; the Omnipresent, the Beyond all thought, the Immutable, the Neverchanging, the Ever One; who have all the powers of their soul in harmony, and the same loving mind for all; who find joy in the good of all beings—they reach in truth my very self.’ (12:1-4) 

"Ralph Waldo Emerson understood this when he gave up his parish in New England to seek a transcendent path through the woods. And yet, the most important step towards becoming a mountain is to close the books that others have written and read only those texts imprinted upon rock and ice or in the forests and streams that cascade from above. ... "

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"A primal sense of spiritual longing draws us towards the mountains, just as skeins of geese and other migratory birds are guided by magnetic forces emanating from the earth. Even the most pragmatic climbers speak at times of mysterious forces they encounter at great heights. More than any other range on earth, the Himalayas contain a rarefied atmosphere of sanctity. Most seekers are content to find their gods on the lower slopes and passes as well as in the valleys below these peaks. But some believe that they must ascend into the snowy heights in order to achieve transcendence. An extreme example was Tulshuk Lingpa, a Tibetan shaman who led a devoted band of followers across Sikkim and on to the slopes of Kanchenjunga, promising that he would open a portal to the ‘promised land’, a beyul or valley of immortality that Tibetans believe exists beneath the surface of the landscape. Claiming supernatural powers of navigation, Tulshuk Lingpa interpreted events following the Dalai Lama’s exile as an auspicious moment when the gates of the promised land would open for those who believed. In October 1962, he set off with three hundred true believers to find this hidden paradise. Thomas Shor has written an account of their ill-fated journey in A Step Away from Paradise. The conclusion of this quest leaves open the question of whether Tulshuk Lingpa achieved his goal, even as the mountain opened up and drew him in.

"Equally passionate and irrational was the bizarre story of Maurice Wilson, a quixotic Yorkshireman who flew his single engine plane to India in 1934 and sneaked into Tibet, following in the footsteps of the first British Everest expeditions. He believed that the true path to God lay up the highest mountain in the world and, if he could reach the top, he would be lifted into heaven. Disguising himself as a pilgrim, Wilson reached the Rongbuk Glacier accompanied by a band of porters who finally abandoned him below the North Col. Wade Davis tells this tale in Into the Silence, a tragic history of the early expeditions to Everest. With barely any equipment and no experience of mountaineering, Wilson made a remarkable effort to achieve his spiritual goal. His frozen corpse was discovered the next year by British climbers above the glacier at an altitude of 6,400 metres. Earlier, while pioneering the same route, George Mallory achieved a form of immortality when he and Sandy Irvine disappeared beneath the summit of Everest, their fate a cause for eloquent obituaries suggesting they became one with the mountain, part of an imperial dream and a fatal catharsis following the devastation of World War I."

Wasn't body of Mallory found in recentdecades, sans the photograph of his wife which he had securely zipped in his coat, intending to leave it at the top? 

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As usual with this author, written with some flourish but wrong as far as knowledge of languages of India, especially Sanskrit goes - even at its simplest! 

"Amongst all of its muscular and esoteric contortions, yoga includes the tadasana, or mountain stance. It is one of the simplest of all physical postures in which a person stands erect with his or her feet firmly planted on the ground, arms held at the sides, palms facing inward. The chest is pushed out and the chin raised, no different than a sentry standing at attention. In this way, an adept practitioner of yoga takes on the mountain’s lofty demeanour, its resilience and dominating stature. Breathing is controlled and eyes are closed. Sinews and skeleton, nerves and blood vessels, mucous and bile, every gland and organ becomes an integral part of a somatic metaphor while the practitioner focuses on a mental image of a perfect mountain, unattainable yet fully realized in mind and body."

All very nice, except - the name tadasana is derived from the word Taada, pronounced Taad, which isn't a mountain; it's one of the species of palm trees, and its fruit is shaped a little like a water chestnut, but much larger, and not as dry or floury. The connotation of the name of the yogasana named after this tree is illustrated by the description provides above. 

If it were named after a mountain, the pose would have ones arms raised at least halfway to, if not completely, horizontal.
................................................................................................

"‘When the sage climbs the heights of Yoga’, the Bhagavad Gita explains, ‘he follows the path of work; but when he reaches the heights of Yoga, he is in the land of peace’. (6:3) 

"The Katha Upanishad echoes these thoughts with the exhortation: ‘Awake, arise! Strive for the Highest, and be in the Light! Sages say the path is narrow and difficult to tread, narrow as the edge of a razor.’

"Challenging his followers to engage in a physical and spiritual renaissance, Swami Vivekananda, the great Hindu reformer who helped introduce Hinduism to the West, has written: ‘You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the Atman when your body stands firm upon your feet and you will feel yourselves as men.’

"Arjuna’s dilemma in the Gita is how to reconcile his duty as a warrior with the battle he must fight against his kinsmen. Through their discourse on the field of war, Krishna, his divine charioteer, reveals the higher purpose of Arjuna’s actions and the illusory nature of life and death, which leads to the final annihilation and absorption of the soul, the atman, becoming one with the cosmic whole, with brahman. 

"Emerson paraphrases lines from the Gita in his poem, ‘Brahma’: 

""If the red slayer think he slays, 

"Or if the slain think he is slain, 

"They know not well the subtle ways 

"I keep, and pass, and turn again."

"These verses were originally published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1857, a year in which India saw its first rebellion against British rule, and plenty of redcoats were killed, after which they retaliated with vengeful slaughter. The same lines, as translated by Juan Mascaró in 1962, offer a somewhat different gloss. ‘If any man think he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows the ways of truth. The Eternal in man cannot kill: the Eternal in man cannot die.’ (2:19) Profoundly ambiguous, these lines resurface, word for word, in the Katha Upanishad, translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester: ‘If the slayer think that he slays, if the slain think that he is slain, neither of them knows the truth. The Self slays not, nor is he slain.’"

" ... But though the verses remain opaque, steeped in enigma and paradox, I find them strangely comforting."

................................................................................................

" ... the sky was brightening and I could begin to see the profiles of the ridges around me, the layered shadows of surrounding mountains. By now a dawn chorus of bird calls had begun: the burbling whistle of green pigeons and the cackle of laughing thrushes, the single, plaintive note of a hill partridge and the wailing of barbets. At no other time of day do the mountains seem so alive, so full of sounds and smells, the sour-sweet odour of mouldering oak leaves and the resinous scent of pines. The air at daybreak seems as if it has never been breathed before and the light is young, full of unseen possibilities. Sitting on a grassy knoll, huddled in my canvas jacket against the cold, I listened and waited, alert and silent. 

"Below me in the valley, I could hear the murmuring whisper of a stream falling over rocks. In the sky, the last few stars were burning out and the moon was sliding beyond the ridge behind me. Grass was brittle with frost and I could see my breath condensing in the air. Across from me, the opposite side of the valley rose up a hundred metres away at its closest point, extending high above me to the ridgeline. ... Gradually, shapes began to coalesce—oaks and rhododendron trees forming out of the darkness. The day was brightening far above me but the valley had still to emerge from the night. ... "

" ... My eyes scanned the opposite ridge as my fingers tightened around the cold gunmetal and wooden stock. The stillness at dawn is like a meditative trance. It holds us in perfect stasis, as if time has stopped, and breathing slows, while the current of blood in our veins is no longer seething but moves without a pulse. I felt totally connected to the mountain, transfixed within its vastness, as well as in the immediacy of this particular spot, the moist earth and dead grass beneath my feet. 

"And then, I saw the slightest movement across from me, as if a single leaf had turned over on the breeze. A shadow seemed to rustle within the foliage, the indistinct form of an animal still hidden from view. My eyes strained to confirm its presence even as I began to lift the rifle—slowly. It was there and not there. I saw patterns shifting and, a moment later, a goral stepped into view, its grey coat nothing but a smudged blur in the half-light, with a faint white patch on its throat. The animal’s ears flicked nervously as it looked across at me. In that moment, we were each alone in ourselves, yet one with the mountain."

................................................................................................

"Nanda Devi is often translated as the ‘bliss-giving goddess’, though the Sanskrit word ‘ananda’ at the root of her name is better understood as ‘contentment’. ... "

One, author should consult someone before making pronouncements on Sanskrit. He's generally wrong, and it's due to lack of knowledge coupled with a hubris. 

Here, he's already wrong more than once. 

Ananda, pronounced and in Indian languages, written 'Aananda', is not the root; if anything, Nanda is closer to the root, while aa added as prefix amounts to 'with, until, upto', ... 

Equally wrong is his interpretation. Aananda is Bliss, neither contentment nor jumping about, but more than joy and felicity both, a complete experience, that's bliss. 

" ... Bliss and joy are forms of happiness that suggest the kind of ecstatic faith that often borders on insanity. ... "

Alter is wrong. 

" ... However, the darshan I seek releases me from discontentment rather than evoking euphoria. Most importantly, darshan does not require the intercession of a priest, which is why it appeals to me. The act of darshan is unencumbered by liturgies, pious rhetoric or moralizing. As an atheist, I can appreciate the spiritual experiences others claim through darshan without accepting the theology and dogma."

" ... And on a midsummer morning in the gardens of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City, I received darshan from a snow-white peacock that appeared out of nowhere like a bird from a fairy tale. ... Or in the autumn forests of New England, where shimmering leaves of gold made me feel I was hallucinating, dazzled by the fiery blaze of dying foliage.."
................................................................................................

"My search for Nanda Devi begins at the Kuari Pass ... Trail crosses over into the Dhauliganga Valley above Joshimath. At an altitude of 4,264 metres, the pass is relatively low by Himalayan standards, but it opens on to a spectacular panorama of snow peaks, which rise to almost twice that height. The challenge of Kuari Pass is to reach there as early in the day as possible. Clouds often gather by mid-morning and soon there is nothing to be seen."

"Kuari Pass overlooks the inner core of the Garhwal Himalayas, which form an arc of 180 degrees, from Chaukhamba, the four-pillared mountain, across to Nilkanth, Mana and Kamet. Directly in front of us are Ghori and Hathi Parbat, the horse and elephant peaks, caparisoned with fresh saddles of snow. And, farther east, Dunagiri’s white pyramid cleaves the sky. Seated next to a cairn that marks the pass, I feel as close to the mountains as I can be without actually setting foot on their slopes. The only disappointment is that Nanda Devi is hidden behind the Pangarchula Ridge. We will have to wait until we descend a thousand metres below the pass before the goddess reveals herself."

"The traditional approach to Nanda Devi, before motor roads cut their way through the valleys of Kumaon and Garhwal, was to walk from Ranikhet or Almora, across the foothills and over the Kuari Pass to Lata, which is the last village before the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. ... "

"In his memoir, Upon That Mountain, Eric Shipton extols the pleasures ... on their way to Nanda Devi in 1934: 

"" ... Our way led over ridge after ridge of forest-clad hills; not the oppressive rain forest of the Eastern Himalayas, but gentle wooded slopes interspersed with grassy glades, moss and bracken and splashing streams. The rhododendrons were in bloom, and many kinds of Alpine flowers. Above were the sparkling white peaks of Trisul and Nanda Ghunti. The soft music of running water, the murmur of a light breeze in the trees, the summer note of the cuckoo, these were the sounds we awoke to each morning. With such a small party, we could camp far from the dusty villages, wherever we chose. We rarely bothered to pitch a tent, but lay, instead, on a luxurious bed of deep grass, beside a huge log fire. We lived with a sense of perfect freedom and deep physical and mental well-being. We wanted nothing."

"At Chitrakantha, which means picturesque point, we finally catch sight of Nanda Devi emerging above the ring of peaks that guard her sanctuary. The steepled summit is like a vast cathedral that has taken millions of years to carve, buttressed by eroded ridges and corniced with ice. By this time clouds obscure all of the other mountains and only Nanda Devi is visible. In the sky above her floats a gibbous moon so faint that I mistake it for a scrap of cirrus. The same colour as the peak, pale white and blue, it looks as if it has chipped off the mountain, and is now orbiting her sacred summit."

................................................................................................

"ILLUSIONS OF CONQUEST

"Eric Shipton described the first ascent of Nanda Devi, in 1936, by Bill Tilman and Noel Odell as ‘the finest mountaineering achievement ever performed in the Himalayas’. Two years earlier, Shipton and Tilman, along with Angtharkay, Pasang and Kusang, were the first men to find a route up the Rishi Ganga Gorge into the natural sanctuary at the foot of this mountain, a bowl-like valley that is all but inaccessible. During the early years of Himalayan exploration, Nanda Devi remained an elusive summit, frustrating the skills and determination of the best mountaineers of that generation, including Dr Tom Longstaff and his Italian guides, the Brocherel brothers. Virtually unapproachable, Nanda Devi and her sanctuary are protected by a chain of peaks over 6,000 metres that guard the innermost sanctum of her domain."

" ... Houston, Tilman and Pasang Kikuli completed an epic crossing of Longstaff Col, a near vertical route out of the sanctuary, which brought them into the Gauri Ganga valley.

"Severe floods in Garhwal and Kumaon in 1936 coincided with Tilman and Odell’s successful climb. Many believed that the conquest of Nanda Devi provoked the wrath of the goddess. Whether it was the tin of corned beef or those first bootprints on the summit, climbing Nanda Devi amounted to a form of sacrilege in the minds of many Hindus who believe that the upper reaches of the Himalayas are sacrosanct, the domain of deities, not human beings."

" ... Following the creation of Nanda Devi National Park in 1981, mountaineers have been refused access to the sanctuary. Now that entry up the Rishi Ganga Gorge is forbidden, recent expeditions have focused on Nanda Devi East, which stands 400 metres lower than the western summit and is accessible from the Milam valley and Longstaff Col. Nanda Devi East was first climbed by a Polish team in 1939.

"In 1993 a joint expedition of the Indian Army Corps of Engineers and naturalists from the Wildlife Institute of India undertook an environmental survey of the sanctuary and removed more than a ton of garbage from the area near base camp. Several members of this team also successfully reached the summit. Following their report of widespread pollution, poaching and destruction of juniper, yew and birch forests, the sanctuary remains closed to trekker"

................................................................................................


"PATHFINDING HERO 

"Nobody alive today has more first-hand experience of Nanda Devi than Dorjee Lhatoo, who has climbed the mountain on three occasions and reached both summits—east and west. His first encounter was during the Indo-French expedition in 1975 when he stood on top of Nanda Devi East along with Yves Pollet-Villard and Walter Cecchinel. The following year, he returned to the mountain with an Indo-Japanese expedition, in which two Japanese team members successfully climbed both summits and completed a traverse of the connecting ridge. Lhatoo supported the Japanese climbers by ascending from the west and replenishing their oxygen and other supplies. Bad weather intervened to stop him from attempting a traverse in the opposite direction. His third and final encounter with Nanda Devi was in 1981, when he participated in the joint Indian men’s and women’s expedition. One of the country’s most distinguished mountaineers and a member of the elite community of Sherpa climbers in Darjeeling, Dorjee Lhatoo summited Everest in 1984, and successfully ascended a number of other major Himalayan peaks.

"Despite his many excursions, today Lhatoo is reluctant to leave his home in Darjeeling, where he was an instructor at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute from 1962 to 2000. A dignified, soft-spoken man in his seventies with a trim, athletic build, Lhatoo looks as if he could still climb a mountain with ease. His manner is casual but cultured, almost courtly ... His living room contains climbing mementoes and pictures on the walls, including one of himself as a young man, standing between his mentors, Tenzing Norgay (the first man to climb Everest) and Nawang Gombu (the first man to climb it twice). Lhatoo is taller than both, with a rakish hairstyle that makes him look a little like Elvis Presley.

"On the opposite wall is a large photograph of the snow peaks one can see from Darjeeling: a dramatic panorama with Everest and Lhotse to the west and Kanchenjunga massif in the centre. The panorama extends eastward to Chomolhari, a 7,315 metre peak on the border of Bhutan and Tibet, which Lhatoo climbed in 1970.
................................................................................................


"This mountain has special significance for him because it overlooks the Chumbi Valley, his ancestral home. A narrow corridor between Sikkim and Bhutan, this strip of land is part of Tibet, one of the many anomalies of Himalayan cartography, where borders never follow a straight or predictable line. Until Nepal opened up, the Chumbi Valley was the only route to Everest, travelled by George Mallory and other climbers in the 1920s and ’30s. Lhatoo was born in Yatung, a small settlement along the caravan road from Gangtok to Lhasa. His father was caretaker for the Himalayan Club dak bungalows on this route. When Spencer Chapman led the first successful expedition to Chomolhari in 1936, he stayed with Lhatoo’s family.

"‘Chomolhari is considered a sacred mountain by the Bhutanese,’ he explains. ‘In Thimpu, before we set off, the king gave us an ornate copper pot called a yangu, and asked us to place it on the summit. It was very beautiful and contained all of the different minerals known to man, including gold and diamonds. I put it in my backpack and carried it to the top. All along our route, villagers came out to see who was carrying the yangu and they pressed their foreheads to my pack as I walked by.’

"Lhatoo smiles hesitantly. ‘I’m not a religious person. ... Having been asked to carry the yangu, I was determined to fulfil my responsibility, whether I believed in it or not.’

"Like Nanda Devi, Chomolhari is named after a goddess who is both protective and full of wrath, a paradox that symbolizes the unpredictable and ever-changing elements of Himalayan mountaineering, where disaster often follows in the footsteps of success. Though Lhatoo and another Indian climber reached the summit, their second team vanished completely.
................................................................................................


"Five years later, Lhatoo made his first ascent of Nanda Devi East as part of an Indo-French expedition attempting a traverse. That year there was a lot of snow at lower altitudes, which made the difficult entry into the sanctuary even more treacherous than usual.

"‘In retrospect it may seem like a great experience but while you are climbing in and out of the sanctuary it is very difficult, very exposed, with rocks falling from above, and then, below you…’ Lhatoo gestures to indicate a fall of 1,000 metres or more.

"Concerned about the safety of their porters, the French team fixed ropes all the way from Dharali into the Rishi Ganga Gorge. The Indian team leader, Colonel Balwant Sandhu, organized helicopter drops of supplies from Joshimath, which reduced the need for porters.

"Lhatoo explains how the Indian team provided food up to base camp, after which French cuisine took over. ... "

" ... The expression he chooses most often to describe a climber’s death is that he ‘disappeared on the mountain’, a gentle, respectful euphemism for the bone shattering tumble down unyielding rock and ice."

"Being a refugee from Tibet, Lhatoo expresses ambivalence towards the experience of exile. India is very much his home, yet he has vivid memories of what lies beyond the ranges. A few years ago he accompanied a Canadian film crew to Everest base camp in Tibet. They had hoped to enter the Chumbi Valley but, at the last minute, permission was refused by the Chinese authorities."

"Lhatoo’s final experience on Nanda Devi was in the summer of 1981, with an Indian expedition that succeeded in putting the first women on the summit: Chandraprabha Aitwal, Harshwanthi Bisht and Rekha Sharma. Following an extended stay in the sanctuary to acclimate, they moved up the mountain to Camp IV. The men and women were paired off and roped together. After having been stranded at high altitude for four days because of high winds and severe cold, the team set off at 4 a.m. Lhatoo was climbing with Rekha Sharma and they were the last to leave camp. With so many recent expeditions on the mountain, ‘there were ropes fixed all the way up Nanda Devi, like telephone lines,’ he recalls. Yet, progress was slow. Lhatoo and Rekha finally reached the top at 5.30 p.m. Ordinarily, the climbers would have turned back well before, but they knew this was the only opportunity they would have."

" ... An Indian Army paratroop expedition was on its way up Nanda Devi as they were coming down. One of the climbers was a former student of Lhatoo’s from HMI, an officer named Lakha Singh. ‘Sandhu told us to leave our fixed ropes behind for the paratroopers, as well as our tents and extra supplies of fuel and food. They would bring the equipment down for us after they finished. But Lakha didn’t like Sandhu and he insisted that they would fix their own ropes.’

"The paratroopers seemed overconfident on the mountain. If three ‘girls’ had climbed Nanda Devi, they believed it would be easy enough for them. Caught in a storm on his descent from the summit, Lakha died of exposure. Another paratrooper was killed while rappelling down the rope that Dorjee had fixed just below the summit.

"‘There was no knot at the end, nothing to stop him. He came down jumping, the way they teach them in the army, though the Sherpas warned him to be careful. When he reached the end of the rope, he just kept going…’"

................................................................................................

"MATERNAL HYMNS

" ... this region recognizes Nanda as the chaste daughter of the mountains who is given in marriage to Lord Shiva, the supreme ascetic and master of the universe. Nanda lives most of the year with her husband in his remote and inhospitable home on Mount Kailash, but she longs to return to the familiar comforts of her natal village in Uttarakhand. Pilgrimages like the Raj Jat Yatra re-enact the ritual journey of the bride leaving her parents’ home and being carried away in marriage. Pilgrims literally and figuratively ‘escort’ the goddess with songs and prayers. Her leaving is accompanied by sadness and mourning, while her return is greeted with joy and thanksgiving."

................................................................................................

"DAUGHTER OF THE MOUNTAIN"

The chapter is titled inappropriately, being about a girl named after, not daughter of, the mountain, if it's about Himaalaya and Nanda Devi. 

"In 1948 two young Americans who had recently survived the war against Hitler stood by the side of US Route 66 in Los Angeles, heading east. They carried rucksacks, ropes, ice axes and a cardboard sign that read: ‘Swiss Alps’. What they didn’t tell anyone as they hitchhiked across the United States, then caught a freighter to Europe, was their real destination—the Himalayas. Willi Unsoeld and his companion had summited most of the major peaks in the Pacific Northwest but they were determined to gain entry into the competitive fraternity of international mountaineering.

"After kicking around Switzerland for a couple of months and scaling peaks like Jungfrau and the Matterhorn, they ran out of money. Undeterred, the first post-war American Himalayan expedition headed to Gothenburg, Sweden, where they got jobs in an iron foundry to pay for their passage to India. Eventually, working as deckhands, riding third-class trains from Bombay to Delhi and on to Dehradun, swapping stories for meals, they reached their ultimate destination: Nilkanth, a 6,596-metre peak in the Garhwal Himalayas that stands near the Tibetan frontier. Edmund Hilary tried to climb it once but gave up, claiming it was ‘too bloody steep for me!’

"Bad weather and dysentery kept Unsoeld from reaching the summit, but standing on Nilkanth, he looked across to see what he would call ‘the most beautiful mountain in the world’—Nanda Devi, two spires of rock and snow that remained an obsession for the rest of his life. Though Unsoeld failed on Nilkanth, he returned to the Himalayas several times and became one of the first Americans to reach the top of Everest in 1963, pioneering a first ascent of the difficult West Ridge. This expedition almost cost him his life as he and three other climbers were forced to spend a night huddled together at 8,500 metres without sleeping bags or tents. Unsoeld sacrificed eight of his toes to frostbite on Everest. Settling in Oregon, he went on to become an advocate of wilderness preservation and adventure learning, a guru of the outdoors, whose passion for the mountains became a spiritual quest. When his wife, Jolene, gave birth to a daughter, Willi Unsoeld named her Nanda Devi after his favourite mountain and the bliss-giving goddess who watches over her slopes.

"In 1976, Unsoeld returned to the Garhwal Himalayas, leading an Indo-American expedition, intent on climbing Nanda Devi. Willi had recently turned fifty. Arthritic hips and missing toes made it unlikely that he would reach the summit but he had ambitions for his daughter, who was a member of the team. Nanda Devi Unsoeld was clear about the significance of this climb: ‘I feel a very close relationship with Nanda Devi. I can’t describe it, but there is something within me about this mountain, ever since I was born.’

"Though the lead climbers, including John Roskelley, made it to the summit, the Unsoelds’ obsession with Nanda Devi ended in tragedy. Trapped in a blizzard at 7,300 metres, Devi developed acute abdominal pain complicated by altitude sickness. Unable to carry her down from the mountain, Willi and others desperately fought to save her life, giving her mouth to mouth resuscitation until ‘her lips turned cold’. In an article for The American Alpine Journal, Unsoeld recounts the moments after his daughter’s death:

""As our faculties gradually returned to us, we discussed what was to be done. We agreed that it would be most fitting for Devi’s body to be committed to the snows of the mountain for which she had come to feel such a deep attachment. Andy, Peter and I knelt in a circle in the snow and grasped hands while each chanted a broken farewell to the comrade who had so recently filled such a vivid place in our lives. My final prayer was one of thanksgiving for a world filled with the sublimity of the high places, for the sheer beauty of the mountains and for the surpassing miracle that we should be so formed as to respond with ecstasy to such beauty, and for the constant element of danger without which the mountain experience would not exercise such a grip on our sensibilities. We then laid the body to rest in its icy tomb, at rest on the breast of the Bliss-Giving Goddess Nanda."

"Devi’s death and the strained relationship between Roskelley and Unsoeld flared into controversy. Roskelley’s book, Nanda Devi: The Tragic Expedition, describes an acrimonious team, and he accuses his fellow climbers of being undisciplined and irresponsible. Reflecting on his daughter’s death, Unsoeld recounted part of this experience in a lecture to outdoor educators: ‘In the face of reality, it’s difficult to know what to say. Upon our return to Delhi I was asked at the news conference, “Do you have any regrets?” and my answer was startled out of me—“No!” And then I wondered, “How can I say that?”’ Later, Unsoeld became more philosophical. ‘… this experience has opened my life to the reality of death and I can never look at it in quite the same way. Intellectually, I feel I’ve handled it. But emotionally, how does one handle the death of such a surpassing human being? And my answer is—you don’t. It handles you. It rubs your nose in the reality of your mortality. We are helpless before death’s onslaught and I guess therein lies a very great lesson that’s difficult for us control-types to learn. We’re not in charge in the face of reality and nature, and in the final analysis, I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

"Three years later, Willi Unsoeld was killed in an avalanche on Mount Rainier. 

"Near base camp in the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, Indian climbers have erected a memorial to the American girl who died on the mountain for which she was named. The inscription is taken from her diary and speaks of a personal moment of communion: ‘I stand upon a windswept ridge at night with the stars bright above and I am no longer alone but I waver and merge with all the shadows that surround me. I am part of the whole and am content.’"

................................................................................................

"DESECRATION"

That subtitle betrays the church roots of the authors ancestral roots, despite his stance of atheist conviction proclaimed repeatedly, as often as that of his being born and brought up in India. 

No one with roots deep in ancient Indian culture would use that title or have that feeling on the topic, and this despite a deep, real reverence for Himaalaya as land of Gods and Goddesses. 

"According to M. S. Kohli and Kenneth Conboy’s book, Spies in the Himalayas, the clandestine expedition to Nanda Devi began at a cocktail party in Washington. Speaking with US Air Force Chief of Staff, General Curtis Lemay, Barry Bishop, a National Geographic photographer and climber who took part in the first American ascent of Everest, is said to have proposed the idea of putting an early warning device atop a Himalayan summit. Initially, Kanchenjunga was proposed but Nanda Devi was ultimately chosen as a more viable option."

" ... When news of the lost sensor reached India’s Parliament more than a decade later, it caused political uproar, partly because of cooperation with the Americans but also because of fears that the plutonium would pollute the headwaters of the Ganga."

" ... The spymasters who set the plot in motion, B. N. Mullik and R. N. Kao, are no longer alive. Tucker Gougelmann, the CIA’s station chief in Delhi and a paramilitary expert in Vietnam, is long gone. So is Barry Bishop, whom Kohli once disguised in a turban, pretending he was the Maharaja of Patiala, while they chatted up girls at a bar in Anchorage, Alaska. Lute Jerstad, Harish Rawat and Sonam Gyatso are also dead. By some accounts, several of the Sherpas who carried plutonium up the mountain died of cancer caused by radiation. M. S. Kohli is one of the last survivors of the Nanda Devi mission and he tells the story with relish."

"After their training sessions, the Indian climbers did some sightseeing, including a visit to the New York World’s Fair. Kohli says that he initially opposed the plan to plant a listening device on Nanda Devi because it was a difficult peak to climb. He suggested Nanda Kot instead. After the first sensor was lost, the Americans finally took his advice and Kohli successfully planted another sensor on Nanda Kot, a peak he’d already climbed on one of his first Himalayan expeditions. Though commissioned as a naval officer, Kohli was deputed to the newly formed Indo-Tibetan Border Police, a paramilitary force that guards India’s Himalayan frontier.

"‘A year after it was installed, the device on Nanda Kot stopped working, and we had to go back up,’ he recalls. ‘It was buried under snow, but because of the plutonium power source, the ice around it had melted, forming a cave.’ He describes the weird scene they discovered as if it were a miraculous phenomenon: a radioactive totem enshrined in a cavern of ice."

"In an effortless segue from espionage to religion, he tells me how he was camped high up on a mountain. In the middle of the night he heard the sound of horse’s hooves and saw a vision of Guru Gobind Singh, the martial saint of Sikhism, riding a white stallion. ‘Immediately, energy flowed into me,’ he says. ‘I woke up my men and told them, chai banao! (make tea), and then I put on my crampons and set off, kicking steps in the ice, making my way up the mountain.’"

................................................................................................

" ... Soon after I bought my watch, I can’t remember when exactly, I made a decision that I would keep it for the rest of my life. To own only one watch seemed a wise and frugal choice, but more than that, it symbolized a resistance to change that appealed to my conservative nature. 

"But in 2003, I lost my watch. We were living in Reading, Massachusetts, and I was teaching at MIT. ... "

Funny how he disdains mentioning, teaching what, exactly. 

"About three weeks later, when I was about to tear down the signs I’d posted, and several heavy spring downpours made me think my watch could never have survived, I came back home from work to find it lying on the steps of our house. My HMT Quartz had been placed there carefully by someone, I don’t know who. It was working perfectly, the second hand circling like a spider weaving its web, the scratched crystal intact. Someone had returned it to me, an anonymous neighbour who did not want to claim the reward, or answer questions. ... "

................................................................................................

"LAKE OF SORROWS 

"Seeking Nanda’s darshan, I follow another path, east of Kuari Pass. This trek ... leads in a different direction, towards a small, high-altitude lake called Roopkund. Unlike my trek in November, when the panorama of snow peaks were clear and close at hand, this journey takes place during the monsoon, nine months later, when the mountains are covered by clouds.

"Few places in the Himalayas have aroused as much speculation, dispute and exaggerated expectations as Roopkund, a glacial pond at 5,029 metres above sea level, which remains frozen most of the year and only melts between July and September. During these few weeks, when the ice and snow recede, hundreds of human bones are revealed in the shallow, green waters of the lake and along its rocky shoreline. The presence of skeletal remains is a mystery. Nobody knows for sure why they are there.

"Carbon dating suggests that the bones are at least five hundred years old. According to popular lore they can be traced back to the fourteenth century. The most plausible explanation is that a cataclysmic storm or avalanche killed a party of pilgrims who were trying to cross Junargali, the pass of death, directly above the lake. This pilgrimage, which reenacts the bridal procession of the goddess, is the longest and most arduous ritual journey in Uttarakhand, beginning at Nanda’s natal home in the village of Nauti, then circling through the watershed of the Pindar and Nandakini rivers. Roopkund is the penultimate stage of this pilgrimage, beyond which the goddess in her palanquin crosses Junargali and descends into Shila Samudra, the ocean of rock, a seemingly endless expanse of glacial moraine at the foot of Trisul."

But on Google maps, photographs show more. It might be an archeological site, although unexplored as yet. 

................................................................................................

" ... Unlike the staid and relatively comfortable pilgrimages to shrines at the primary sources of the Ganga, which attract pilgrims from all across India, the Raj Jat Yatra is held only once every twelve years, and the participants are primarily from this region. Many devotees complete the 280 kilometres barefoot, protected from sun and rain by parasols of split bamboo or birch bark. The Raj Jat Yatra takes place at the end of the monsoon, when the mountains are obscured by mist and trails washed out by landslides. The yatra culminates at the source of the Nandakini River, a tributary of the Ganga that flows out of Shila Samudra. ... "

"On earlier monsoon treks, during the months of July and August, I have remained wet for days on end, soaked through by constant showers, until it is impossible to tell the difference between perspiration and precipitation. Nothing stays dry and my sleeping bag becomes a clammy cocoon. With each cloudburst, paths turn into rivers and you find yourself wading upstream or down, over slick boulders or through channels of mud. No matter how many layers of plastic, nylon or Gore-Tex you wear, the enveloping dampness seeps into your skin. Walking through mist, the air becomes so saturated with moisture, it seems almost too thick to breathe.

"But when it clears, as it always does, after a few hours, a day or a week, the brilliant green of the forests and mountains is so vivid, it feels as if everything is alive, even the soil and rocks beneath your feet. On our way to Roopkund, we set off from Lohajang, a village whose name means ‘battle of iron’, though it is a quiet wayside settlement with no evidence of military history. The night we arrive, however, a violent thunderstorm echoes with the sounds of warfare—the clanging of giant swords and booming of cannons.

"By dawn the sky is bright and still. Above us, we can see the snow-blanched face of Nanda Ghunti, the veil of the goddess, one of the many peaks that hide Nanda Devi from view. The mountain is like a wedge of ice driven into the upper end of the forested valley. Our destination lies close to the foot of Nanda Ghunti, amidst cliffs and snow. From Lohajang the broad ... trail descends into a forest of oak and rhododendron, our path festooned with peacock orchids and wild begonias. Though it isn’t raining, my boots are soon soaked by flowing streams that follow our route. Groups of schoolchildren, dressed in neat uniforms of blue and white, are coming up the path from nearby farms. Some of them carry their shoes so they won’t get wet. Book bags are heavy with homework. One of the girls warns us about a landslide that blocks the way on ahead, though she has made it across.

"In the first hour, we drop 300 metres. The opposite slope of the mountain grows steeper as the valley narrows, and it is obvious that we will soon be forced to regain altitude. Below us, hidden from view by a canopy of foliage, the Bedni Ganga roars in the depths of its gorge. Descending into one of the side valleys, we cross a bridge over a lesser stream that falls in a torrent between banks of bamboo and tree ferns that rise above our heads. The arched branches on either side of the bridge are draped with polypods and moss.

................................................................................................

"The landslide turns out to be less of an obstacle than we imagined. Scrambling across grey mud and shale, we come to a series of abandoned terraces, overgrown with weeds. The path disappears as we bushwhack through thickets of marijuana 3 metres tall, resinous florets dangling over us like limp green tassels. Soon after we have battled our way through this fragrant jungle, the foliage turns to stinging nettle and we are forced to retreat and take a detour through another field. Eventually, after vaulting over a stone wall we re-join something that looks like a path. A hundred metres ahead is another stream where the bridge has washed away and we will have to wade across.

"As soon as I begin to unlace my shoes, I realize that my feet and ankles are covered in leeches. They look like black stitches coming undone, fastening and unfastening themselves to my skin. No matter how quickly I pick them off, others appear. They cling to my fingers as I try to flick them into the stream. After counting at least twenty-five, I lose track of numbers. Fortunately, because the bridge is washed out, we have been forced to stop and remove our shoes before crossing the stream, otherwise our feet would have become sieves of blood. Several leeches have already gorged themselves and fallen off. Red welts on my calves and between my toes are oozing red. ... "

"One of my companions, Titu, has worked as a trekking guide and completed the basic and advanced courses at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering. I have hiked with him before and know that he is a strong walker and resourceful when it comes to setting up camp. More to keep him company and allow me to be alone whenever I choose, I have also hired a friend of his, Akshay, who has little trekking experience but seems eager for the adventure.

"Though I crave the solitude of trekking alone, there is still a residual fear from our attack, an uncertain, uncomfortable feeling of being vulnerable and exposed, unable to defend myself. Having Titu and Akshay with me is reassuring. They help lighten my load and will be there if we face an emergency."

That's the normal prudence of India - which, if the couple had learnt in the first place, they wouldn't have opened the door to a bunch of intruders in pre-dawn dark of night in the first place. 

................................................................................................

"Soon after we ford the stream our path crosses a bridge over the Bedni Ganga and the climb begins. From here to Roopkund is a steady ascent of 3,000 metres. Over the course of three days we pass through every variety of Himalayan botany, from semi-tropical foliage full of liverworts and mosses, ground orchids and ferns, through various bands of deciduous forest marked by different species of oaks—banj, moru and kharsu. Each of these trees provides fodder for cattle at different times of the year, as the dairymen move their herds up and down the slopes during spring and fall. The conifers change too with altitude, chir pines giving way to cypress and cedar, then spruce and fir, and finally thuner, the Himalayan yew, a hardy tree with delicate needles and papery bark. An experienced naturalist can gauge the elevation without an altimeter simply by marking the presence of different species. Once you climb above the treeline at 3,000 metres, bugyal meadows provide a lush zone of grass and wildflowers, layered between forest and crags. These summer pastures attract herdsmen with their cows, buffaloes, goats and horses. For trekkers, the bugyals provide a brief respite from the relentless climb, their rolling slopes less steep and strenuous, before the final ascent into rock and snow."

" ... As she escapes from the buffalo demon and takes refuge in the forest, Nanda curses the turmeric and potato plants which offer no protective shade, banishing them underground. Tripping on the stubble of a wheat field, her tears of sorrow and anger leave the soil barren. Nanda also curses the pines, because their needles fail to hide her from the demon. Their branches will never regenerate themselves after they are cut. However, as consolation, she grants the pine a boon to serve as the flagpole at her shrines. After finally hiding behind a kunju shrub, a thorny bush with dense foliage, Nanda blesses this plant, saying that it will never lose its leaves: no goats or cattle will eat kunju for fodder, and men will not cut it for fuel or timber."

................................................................................................

"Ali Bugyal is one of the largest alpine meadows in Uttarakhand, rolling fields of grass that spread for 30 square kilometres across the upper flanks of a broad ridge that leads on to Bedni farther up. Thin curtains of mist begin to drift across the meadows as we wade knee-deep through fields of anemones, potentilla and lousewort. Wild salvia and thistles grow along our path, which converges with dozens of other trails, trod out of the meadow by cattle and sheep. Animals are grazing all around us, appearing and disappearing in the mist. During the monsoon, bugyal meadows are peaceable, plentiful pastures where the mountains provide an abundance of food until they are covered by snow in winter. At one place, half a dozen horses seem to race the retreating mist. Two of them are foals testing young limbs as they chase their mothers. We can hear cowbells as we walk, a gentle, clanging sound from somewhere in the clouds. These meadows are the summer gardens of the goddess, a symbol of her fertility."

"Bedni, where we spend the night, is one of the primary halts on the Raj Jat Yatra. Here we join the main pilgrimage route that comes up from a village called Wan, which has a large temple dedicated to Latu, Nanda’s bodyguard. For most of the year, above this point, the path is covered with snow and ice. The bugyals at Bedni have plenty of water. An artificial lake has been created with the help of a concrete dyke, converting a marshy wetland into a sacred pond. Trekkers’ huts and a makeshift tea shop stand nearby, along with a forest department outpost. These haphazard structures and mangled strands of barbed wire mar the natural sanctity of the bugyal. Yet, Bedni has an eerie beauty, particularly after a storm. We arrive in the rain and take shelter in a trekker’s hut, a domed structure made of fibreglass and tin, with a wooden floor. By early evening the clouds begin to disperse. I watch as they slough off the cliffs, spilling across high ridges like milk boiling over the rim of a pan.

"A few minutes later, I can just make out the shape of a snow peak emerging from the mist. Its silhouette is barely visible at first but gradually takes shape before my eyes, until I recognize the scalloped summit of Trisul. ... From  Bedni the three points of the trident are not clearly evident but there is no mistaking Trisul’s towering crest that rises 7,120 metres above sea level. Eventually, the entire mountain is revealed, though the clouds keep it wrapped in shadow, while the sunset picks out more distant ranges to the west. Far off, beyond a fretwork of ridges, I recognize Chaukhamba glinting in the waning daylight.

"Near the lake at Bedni stands a small Nanda Devi temple, as well as a shrine for Latu. Made entirely of rock, no mortar holds the stones in place, though moss has grown between the crevices. The central niche of Nanda’s shrine houses two small idols of the goddess, carved from stone. Next to these is a single conch shell, white as a lump of snow. ... "

" ... Devi’s idols are bathed in the pond and devotees are cleansed by submerging themselves in its cold, spring-fed waters. Her images are worshipped at this shrine, which serves as a transitional shelter during the Raj Jat Yatra, the ‘big pilgrimage’ that occurs every twelve years, when the goddess is carried on to Roopkund and Shila Samudra Glacier."

" ... After a few wrong turns while crossing the meadow, we reach the main pilgrim trail, which is easy to follow. Chunks of slate are placed vertically as rough cobblestones, creating a path that doesn’t get mired in mud or dung. With the next Raj Jat Yatra only a year away, work has started on improving the trail and I can see where fresh sections of stones have been laid. 

"Our climb grows steadily steeper as we follow the contours of the ridge. Trisul remains hidden behind clouds. All I can see are precipitous slopes of grass falling away from the side of the trail and disappearing into the mist. ... Eventually, we reach a place called Pathar Nachuni, where the exposed rocks look like the ruins of a giant amphitheatre.

................................................................................................

"Climbing steadily, we pass several shrines. One of these lies at a pass called Kelu Vinayaka, where a new stone structure has been built containing an image of Ganesh ... As the eldest child of Shiva and Parvati, Ganesh is revered throughout India. ... "

Wrong again! 

Why this repeated racist hubris by someone who claims birth and growing up in India? It's easy enough to ask and correct these mistakes that Alter insists on committing! 

No, Kartikeya is the elder, being the reason Gods helped Parvati succeed by sending Madana and Rati to disturb the Dhyaan Samaadhi of Shiva, so thst he'd become aware of Parvati, marry her, and Kartikeya born of this marriage would defend Gods and defeat their adversaries. And so it came so be. 

Ganapati is younger, but smarter and wiser, according to more than one amusing legend, but even generally it is so understood. 

................................................................................................

" ... The breeze is cold but the mist has evaporated and there is a clarity to the air, as if the storm has polished the atmosphere into a perfect lens that magnifies everything in sight. What startles me most of all are the greenish white blossoms of the brahmakamal flower, which grows in profusion. I can’t believe I didn’t notice them the day before. Known as Brahma’s lotus, they are considered a sacred bloom. Dried brahmakamal are often suspended above the doors of temples in Garhwal. The flowers look more like giant poppies than lotuses, though the crepe-like petals are cupped together in the shape of a supplicant’s folded hands. 

"Brahmakamal grows above 3,500 metres, one of the last plants found on any Himalayan climb. Most times I have seen no more than a dozen scattered amongst the rocks but at Bhugubasa thousands of brahmakamal cover the slopes, as if they have all burst forth in the aftermath of the storm. Their pale, luminous shapes are as delicate as Chinese lanterns, fields upon fields of blossoms that seem to have appeared overnight, a spontaneous miracle of nature."

................................................................................................

"Eventually, we come to a crumbling staircase of stones that brings us to a loose rockfall, where I can see traces of a path. Scrambling up this slope, I keep my eyes on the ground in front of me, to avoid looking at the drop below. A short distance on ahead, the rocks turn to gravel as we traverse an unstable stretch that looks more like a landslide than a passable trail. Just as I begin to wonder if we have taken a wrong turn, we crest the rise and there below us lies Roopkund, not more than 12 metres long and 6 metres across. Ice-scarred rocks form a natural chalice beneath the cliffs and its jade waters have a poisonous tint. A dense ceiling of clouds hangs above us, obscuring all but the closest crags. To our right lies a glacier of dirty ice, worming its way through a notch in the ridge. Westward, the lower slopes of Nanda Ghunti are streaked with snow, though most of the mountain remains hidden. Only below us is an unobstructed view of the rain-scoured valley extending to Bhugubasa and beyond."

"Descending to the lake, a short glissade down steep funnels of debris, we carefully avoid the mud, which is a morbid grey colour, contrasting with the green water. Most accounts of Roopkund describe hundreds of skeletons, though it is hard to imagine how anyone could have counted the bones, which are scattered and mixed together like a conglomerated bed of fossils. I estimate no more than thirty to forty victims of whatever catastrophe occurred, though it’s possible that members of the Himalaya Enjoyment Association, and other visitors like them, have carried off grim souvenirs.

"Only a dark rind of ice remains at one end of the lake, from which a trickle of water spills through the rocks. The cliffs above are fiercely toothed and wreathed in fog. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... Once when I was in high school, I became miserably depressed and angry for some reason that I can no longer recall. Returning home from school, I said nothing to my parents but picked up a 20-gauge shotgun and half a dozen shells, setting off into the forest on my own. Walking until it grew dark, I improvised a bivouac for the night, under a grove of wild cinnamon trees in the valley near a stream. I remember clearly how upset I was, the helpless misery bordering on the suicidal that comes out of adolescence. But I had taken the shotgun more out of habit than because I considered shooting myself. In fact, I did not even fire the gun, though several pheasants flew up in front of me. I had no matches to light a fire and no way of cooking the birds. This was late spring, warm and dry enough, so I needed no tent. Sitting alone on a sandy patch of ground near a shallow stream, beneath the branches of the cinnamon trees, I stayed awake all night. By this time the walk had settled my mind and I felt much better for being alone in the forest. At some point, an owl began to call, the only creature sharing my solitude. For a while, the moon came out and its pale aura filtered through the trees, but it soon gave way to darkness again. I had no watch with me, nor any kind of torch. 

"Hours later, when the first light of another day began to outline the ridges to the east, I climbed into one of the trees and peeled some of the cinnamon bark before scrambling out of the valley. By the time I got back home, breakfast was on the table. My parents must have been worried but somehow they understood and did not press me to tell them where I’d gone or why. I said nothing about my night alone. By this time, the sadness and anger had lifted. I felt cleansed by my aimless walk through the forest, those hours spent in darkness and the sweet perfume of cinnamon still lingering on my fingertips."

................................................................................................

"ENTERING THE MANDALA 

"Driving across western Tibet, somewhere between Lhasa and Mount Kailash we approach the crest of an unmarked pass, roughly 4,500 metres above sea level. All at once, a low canopy of clouds dissolves into rain, a rare moment of precipitation in this arid landscape. ... "

"At the beginning of our journey, the rolling steppes seemed almost colourless, like monochromatic tints in a sepia photograph. But as we travel over the Tibetan Plateau, mountain light reveals a range of mineral hues in the soil, from rust to ochre, amber and gold, as well as the whiteness of salt. Wherever there is a hint of water, living shrouds of muted green unfold within the valleys. Sand dunes glow like burnished copper. Bruised and dented, the surrounding ridges are varying shades of purple or indigo, their pigments changing with the shafts of sunbeams that slant in across the high Himalayas."

"A few minutes later, descending from the pass, we cross a shallow draw, where two gazelles race off into a canyon. Suddenly, several hundred metres ahead, I see a rainbow. It marks the edge of the storm, a perfect arch of primary colours like strings of prayer flags erected by luminous vapours in the atmosphere. Appearing as if out of nowhere, the rainbow could be a window to another world. Our road passes directly beneath this ethereal gateway, as if built to celebrate our passage. The driver, Sonam, guns the engine on his Land Cruiser, accelerating toward the rainbow. I expect it will disappear before we get there, vanishing because of the angle of the sun or a gust of wind. But there it is in front of us. The bow remains taut, an invisible arrow pointing our way to a hidden land… Shambala? Sunlight gilds the slopes beyond.

"Our vehicle leaps and plunges over the rutted road. Sonam will not slow down. Seconds later, we drive through the arch, cheering as we cross this gaudy frontier of light. All of us laugh with excitement, shaking hands, congratulating ourselves. Sonam grins and blows his horn. After hours and days of tedious driving, this is a brief moment of exhilaration and delight that makes us feel as if we have finally reached our destination, though we are only halfway there. 

"When I look behind us, the bright bands of colour are gone."

................................................................................................

"Tibetan mythology and folklore explain that the land itself has many guises. Rainbows represent the auras of saints and teachers who have passed away, or numinous markers leading to promised lands. What we see around us is only the surface, beneath which lie hidden realities—lost cities, subterranean lakes and buried treasure. In one account, the undulating highlands of the Trans-Himalaya are actually the body of a female demon (some would call her a goddess) who lies asleep beneath our feet. Another myth describes the mountains as tent pegs that hold the sky in place. Countless stories of Shambala promise the discovery of a secret, peaceable kingdom, closer at hand than we think, just beneath the taut dry membrane of these barren steppes. Only those who are blessed with sacred access can find the invisible gateways and forbidden caves that lead us into this idyllic country. Our ignorance makes us blind to sheltered valleys and neighbouring worlds."

"Before setting off for Kailash, if I had been told that I would be travelling for two weeks with a group of forty Hindu pilgrims from Gujarat and Maharashtra, driving ten to twelve hours a day over unpaved, dust-smothered roads, and sharing accommodation, sometimes as many as ten of us in a room together, beds crammed end to end and side by side with no privacy or ventilation, and no baths for the duration of the journey, I might have reconsidered my options. However, the decision to travel to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar was impulsive. Making arrangements at the last minute, I had no choice but to let a travel agent in Kathmandu squeeze me into a group that was already organized and approved by Chinese authorities."

"Kathmandu itself was unknown territory. Though I have lived most of my life in the Indian Himalayas, I had never visited Nepal before this trip. Just as my fellow pilgrims began their spiritual quest at Hindu sites in the city, I made my rounds of Kathmandu’s major shrines, starting with Pashupatinath temple, where Shiva is worshipped behind silver doors that are closed to foreigners. ... After circumambulating Boudhanath stupa in the Tibetan quarter of the city, I took darshan of the Maitreya Buddha at another shrine. ... All of this seemed the appropriate thing to do before setting off for Kailash, though I felt more like a tourist than a pilgrim, pursuing the exotic instead of the divine."

................................................................................................

"Geographically, Kailash and Manasarovar have immense significance, for they lie at the centre of the high tablelands of western Tibet and mark the watershed of South Asia’s greatest rivers. From the slopes of this mountain and the glaciers that feed this lake, the Indus and Sutlej flow westward through the Himalayas, before crossing into Punjab and Sindh, on their way to the Indian Ocean. The Karnali River also originates near Kailash, carving its way southward through the mountains of Nepal to become a major tributary of the Ganga. And draining to the east is the Tsangpo, or Brahmaputra, which flows in a huge arc across Tibet before entering northeastern India and setting its course for the Bay of Bengal."

"For me, Tibet has always represented a forbidden country. My hometown of Mussoorie is one of the places in India where Tibetan refugees have settled. Accompanying the Dalai Lama into exile in 1959, they established a displaced community and culture outside their homeland. In 1962, when I was an impressionable six-year old, India and China fought a war over disputed Himalayan boundaries and these regions became inaccessible to most civilians, especially foreigners. I had always imagined that entering Tibet would be like crossing a closely guarded frontier, traversing a dangerous, unyielding border that might close behind me without warning, like mountain passes buried in a sudden avalanche of snow."

................................................................................................

"4.15 a.m. My wakeup call comes earlier than expected. I have forgotten to adjust my watch to Nepal time, a quarter of an hour ahead of India. Throughout this journey there will be continuous uncertainty about time, as if clocks are meaningless. All of China operates on Beijing time, two hours and fifteen minutes ahead of Kathmandu, though our Nepali guides and Sherpas refuse to advance their watches. Adding to the ambiguity, after crossing the border we will be travelling 800 kilometres westwards. According to Chinese clocks, sunrise at Mount Kailash can be as late as 10 a.m.

"Before departure, a group of pilgrims gather in front of our buses and perform a brief pooja. They sing ... and recite a Sanskrit incantation, led by one of the elderly women. At the end, they cry out in praise of Shiva: ‘Jai Gaura Shambhu! Bam Bam Bholey!’ The ritual is improvised and awkward but satisfies a need to invoke blessings for our journey."

" ... One of the travel agents briefs us in English and gives us a lecture on the rigours of the journey and the importance of maintaining a ‘positive attitude’. He tells us that yatris come in three varieties: those who see the trip to Kailash as a spiritual journey; those who are interested in nature; and those who feel they are buying a chance to boast about having been to Mount Kailash. The third category, he explains, are the ones who cause the most problems. We are instructed to travel light and leave behind unnecessary items. Our clothes and other belongings must fit into a small duffle bag provided by the agency. The rest of our luggage will be left at the hotel in Kathmandu. Our duffle bags are numbered for easy identification, since they are transported by truck. My number is 51. I am permitted to carry a day pack with me. The tour operator then recites a litany of rules. We will not be allowed to bathe for the duration of the trip and shaving is discouraged. The guest houses where we will stay have no running water. ... "

Author describes a comment by tour operator to the effect that tibetans aren't hospitable. This is a horrible comment, considering that their position is no different from that of Jews in Germany during WWII, except thst Tibetan people are suffering this in their own homeland, so perhaps one should compare them to natives of the so-called 'New World', where European migrants and conquistadores claimed they'd discovered the new continents - even as original residents suffered genocide at hands of the new arrivals claiming the land in name of a monarch in Europe or an abrahmic creed. 

................................................................................................

"Beyond the town, we ascend through moist green shadows, trees overhanging the road. Near the river grow elms, alders and rhododendrons, after which we move up into conifer forests of cedar and hemlock. One variety of spruce has purple cones as big as mangoes. At places the road has washed away. Labourers are rebuilding walls as bulldozers remove debris. Across the valley, we see precipices extending thousands of feet up and down, like scroll paintings: brushstrokes of bamboo, a cragged profile, clouds of negative space, and waterfalls that drop as silver threads down moss-covered slopes. The humid warmth of the valleys gives way to a damp chill. When we stop at a checkpoint, the armed guards are wearing quilted uniforms. In the gorge below, the Bhote Kosi writhes and roars like a chained dragon."

"The story of Nain Singh Rawat and his fellow ‘pandits’ is one of the great adventures of Himalayan exploration. Being secret agents of the British Raj, Rawat and other men from the border villages of Uttarakhand were recruited by officials of the Survey of India. They were trained in techniques of cartography and equipped with sextants hidden in boxes with false bottoms. Disguising themselves as Ladakhi merchants, they worried strings of prayer beads specially adapted to count their strides—100 beads instead of the usual 108. The maps they produced are remarkably accurate, though their equipment was unsophisticated. To gauge the level of the horizon, they carried bowls of liquid mercury. Altitude was calculated by measuring the temperature of boiling water, a procedure that required precision and patience, as well as plenty of yak dung for fuel. The pandits mapped the course of the Tsangpo and discovered that it became the Brahmaputra beyond the impenetrable gorges of the eastern Himalayas. Captured and jailed on several occasions, they returned to India with valuable intelligence. Their reports were published by the Royal Geographic Society in London but their names were erased from the records, anonymous explorers in ambiguous lands."

Sheer racism by British, exploiting talent and giving no credit, as per Macaulay policy. 

................................................................................................

"The Land Cruiser’s engine roars back to life and we hurry to reclaim our seats. Three minutes later, we reach the Thong La pass and stop again. Here the wind is much stronger, buffeting the parked vehicles and flapping the massed streamers strung from a flagpole. A man in monk’s robes is selling prayer flags and tiny packets of printed prayers. From the direction of Nyalam, a motorcycle arrives, the rider wearing a heavy woollen cloak, his hair braided with red ribbons. Buying a packet of paper prayers, he tosses these into the air like confetti and shouts into the wind as the multi-coloured scraps scatter across the road and down the hill. Nearby is a line of wooden prayer wheels with cupped propellers that catch the wind. The wheels turn constantly on greased axles, driven by a steady gale at the top of the pass. Our drivers have trouble lighting their cigarettes. They hunker down and shelter their lighters between the upturned collars of their coats. While we are stopped, two Japanese cyclists on mountain bikes arrive at the pass. They look exhausted, having pedalled all the way from Lhasa, but I can see the relief in their eyes as they survey the downhill route ahead. 

"Fifteen kilometres farther on, we turn off the main highway and begin heading west towards Saga, our destination for today. Almost immediately, our progress is interrupted. The Land Cruiser that was having engine trouble earlier has broken down again. We stop at the side of the road to wait. By now the sun is unrelenting and we are stranded on an exposed patch of dust and grass, next to a marshy meadow. Yaks and goats are grazing nearby. A cluster of shepherd’s tents are arranged in the distance. Soon a crowd of women and children gather, begging for food and money. One of the women has a bracelet made out of a conch shell, which looks like a white gauntlet on her wrist. A few of the yatris give the younger children biscuits and one of the Gujarati women sticks bindis on the foreheads of the girls. The herdsmen’s clothes are tattered. None of them seem to have washed their faces for days, though there is plenty of water nearby."

That last sentence is from someone whose race persecuted poor Indian students relentlessly about restrictions they imposed regarding bathing no more than once a week - which the said poor Indian students flouted, as often as they could, having been used to bathing at least once a day, every morning, apart from routine washing before and after meals! 

So Alter criticising poor Tibetans for not washing - "though there is plenty of water nearby" (there never was a shortage of water in England, was there? Why did English persecute Indians for bathing?), even if implicitly, is merely racism.

................................................................................................

" ... Beyond the courtyard wall is a stream banked with green grass and snow peaks to the south, but I can’t appreciate the view. After taking the Diamox, I feel drunk and disoriented. I keep thinking I’ve lost my hat, then realize it’s on my head. Just as we are about to start off again, I take a pair of sunglasses from my pack, which ease the glare. It isn’t the altitude that caused my headache, but the harsh sunlight.

"As we drive on, snow peaks continue to appear to the south, along the border with Nepal. Seeing them I feel even more disoriented, for I am used to having the Himalayas rising up in the north. Everything seems to be turned around and my sense of direction is confused. At times I cannot tell if these are clouds or mountains. Some of the peaks have enormous hanging glaciers and others are broken spires. I feel as if I am hallucinating, seeing an endless panorama of snow fields and summits that may or may not be there. As the landscape grows drier and more desolate, sand dunes begin to appear—waves of gold with rippled patterns. On ahead, a mirage appears—warped sunlight melting the horizon. Conscious of a watery blue surface, I tell myself it is an illusion, my vision distorted by pain. Then, all at once, we come to a large lake, fed by glaciers to the south. The blue expanse of water looks like a patch of sky that has fallen on to the plateau. For a moment, I think we have arrived at Manasarovar, though it is still more than three days’ drive from here. Later on, checking my map, I discover the name of this lake is Paigu Tso. I have lost track of time, delirious, drifting in and out of consciousness, despite the jostling and shaking of the vehicle. When I open my eyes again, there is another lake. This one is completely white. At first, I think it must be frozen, covered with snow, then realize it is salt. Far off on the perimeter, I can see men digging and remember a section of Nain Singh’s journals in which he describes two alkaline lakes where caravans load up to carry this mineral cargo across the Himalayas.

"Soon after arriving in Saga, we discover that the next leg of our journey, a stretch of 250 kilometres to a town called Paryang, is undergoing road work. The police are closing the highway during the day, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. This means that we will be forced to travel at night. Bhim and the Sherpas consult with the drivers and decide to set out at 2 a.m., though the exact time of our departure remains unclear. While our Nepali guides continue to operate on Kathmandu time, the drivers and Chinese officials are functioning on Beijing time and it is impossible to know exactly what to expect."

"Despite the extended misery of today’s journey, I am eager to leave Saga as soon as possible. When I go out to buy my bottled water, a woman with a baby strapped to her back begins begging for money. She is a young Tibetan in her twenties, haggard and dressed in tatters. It seems odd that anyone would need to be begging on the street under Communist rule, with all the promises of a paternalistic state. But almost everywhere we stop, women and children greet us with open hands."

Obviously, that so-called "Communist rule, with all the promises of a paternalistic state" is, in case of China occupying Tibet with brutal force, is limited to not shooting Tibetans down for begging. 

"The pathetic obscenity of this encounter leaves me with a sense of remorse and disgust, particularly the image of the child on the woman’s back, and the futile desperation that must drive her to offer hurried sex to strangers in this wayside town."

Obviously it's because some visitors - although it's unlikely it's any of the pilgrims from India, who are mostly over middle age and in a crowd - do take advantage of it, else she wouldn't have expected a response to such an offer. Equally obviously, she didn't expect her own self touched, so such acceptance must have been from racists. 

This, incidentally, is the fourth account one has been reading of travel to Kailash from India, and none of the other three mentioned this offer by a Tibetan, although two were by males and none by pilgrims. They were, though, all Indian. They did mention the poverty and begging part. At least, one did, perhaps two. 

So the random sample seems to indicate that Tibetans do not make these offers to Indians, the chief visitors to this region of Tibet. 

................................................................................................

"Just after midnight, I am awakened by a banging on our door. The Sherpas bring us tea—lukewarm and over-sweetened. After a couple hours’ sleep, my headache is gone. Only a mild itch of pain lingers around the rims of my eyes, which reassures me that it was caused by the sun, not altitude. Though we set out in the dark, I make sure my Ray-Bans are easily accessible."

" ... We drive another kilometre before the Land Cruiser stops again. This time we are stalled on a steep incline, halfway up a series of switchbacks, where a section of the road has been recently excavated. Huge pieces of earth moving equipment are parked close by, amidst mounds of earth. Every few minutes a truck labours past, sending up a cloud of dust and diesel exhaust. Whatever we might have gained from our early start is lost as we remain stranded at the side of the road, while the drivers disassemble the fuel pump and carburettor. They work in complete darkness, with only a couple of headlamps."

" ... The night sky is a pointillist fantasy, every bead of light shimmering amidst infinite patterns of the universe. I can imagine Nain Singh Rawat on a night like this, trying to get his bearings. Having taken his sextant from its secret compartment, he must have hesitated before fixing his coordinates, with so many stars from which to choose. I try to connect the dots of constellations but the sky is so crowded that all I can recognize is the Big Dipper, and Orion with his belt of stars. Beside him is Canis Major, his hunting companion."

" ... Finally, around 4 a.m., as the sky is beginning to brighten above the ridges to our east, the Land Cruiser miraculously comes back to life and the engine settles into a ragged growl. 

"Now that we are finally moving again, the road is even rougher than yesterday, with hundreds of detours across the rolling steppes. As Robert Fleming explains in his book, Across the Tibetan Plateau, western Tibet is really a series of high valleys and ridges, rather than an open plain. The drivers are exhausted, having been awake all night. Soon after sunrise, they stop for breakfast at a shack by the side of the road. Sonam and the others ignore the pleading of our guides to continue so that we can cross a police checkpoint before it closes at 9 a.m. Setting off again, at last, we find the barrier only half a kilometre ahead. Here, we are told that we can’t proceed until nightfall. The barrier closed five minutes before our arrival. After a long discussion with the sentry, Sonam comes back shaking his head. ‘Police say no chalo!’ he reports. Then he grins and steers his Land Cruiser off the side of the road, across open ground, while the sentry watches with helpless disapproval. On ahead, a yak herder flags us down. He insists that we are crossing his pasture and demands ten yuan, which we gladly pay, circling over a marsh before re-joining the highway, still within sight of the police barrier."

Wow! They weren't shot down by Chinese, and what's more, didn't expect to be! 

"Three hours later, we finally reach Paryang, another dusty, low-roofed town. In the distance, I can see the northern profile of the Himalayas framed by clouds. We are following the Tsangpo River, though our route crosses into parallel valleys and over broad passes that lead us north, then west, in circuitous detours. Each time we return to the river, it seems to have grown smaller, now a shallow stream. I find it hard to believe that this is the same river I crossed several years ago in Assam, where I could hardly see from one bank to the other. It took hours to navigate the vast, muddy current of the Brahmaputra by river boat. ... "

................................................................................................

"Crossing Tibet, I am constantly aware that this is a country under occupation. Though sparsely populated, much of the region has been dominated by Chinese military and recent immigrants. Because of Beijing’s resettlement policies, ethnic Tibetans have become a minority in their own homeland. Though officially referred to as the Tibet Autonomous Region, there are few signs of independence, and any form of protest is ruthlessly suppressed.

"As transient pilgrims, we had few opportunities to observe the social and political dynamics of Tibet. But along the highways there was evidence of dramatic changes underway: concrete colonies and army installations appearing out of nowhere, walled enclaves blaring martial music. The road gangs working on the highway were mostly Tibetans, supervised by Chinese engineers and foremen. At several points during our journey, I saw evidence of intrusive power and an authoritarian regime that governed with arrogance and insensitivity.

................................................................................................

"All along the way, we were stopped and made to wait, ostensibly because of roadwork but often for no reason at all. On one occasion, during our return journey, we were stranded for twelve hours without any explanation. Two policemen had set up plastic stools in the middle of the road and blocked our way. A line of trucks and other vehicles stretched for half a kilometre. Hours dragged on while the policemen seemed content to sit in the middle of the road forever, accepting cigarettes from drivers but refusing to budge. Their jungle camouflage seemed out of place in the arid steppes.

"After four hours of waiting, two jeeps came roaring toward us from the opposite direction. Everyone sat up hopefully, thinking the road might open. Seeing six policemen emerging from one of the jeeps, I felt sure they had come to inform us that the road was clear. Instead, they went around to the back of the jeep and took out a watermelon. The size of a basketball, its colour matched the variegated green hues of their uniforms. As all of us watched, the melon was placed in the middle of the road, like some sort of fetish object. Meanwhile, a Chinese woman, dressed in tight black leather stepped out from behind the driver’s seat of the second jeep. She wore dark glasses and high-heeled boots, as if she were a dominatrix hanging out with men in uniform. The only thing missing was her whip. A senior police officer also emerged from this jeep, adjusting the red and gold epaulets on his shoulders. He and the woman stared past the line of waiting vehicles, as if we were not there, though everyone’s eyes were on them. At a signal from the officer, one of the policemen took out his knife and butchered the watermelon in the middle of the road with ceremonial precision. It was cut into slices and handed around among the policemen. The woman laughed as she took a bite. While the stranded drivers and passengers watched in silence, the policemen devoured the bright red flesh and spit out the seeds, leaning forward to avoid dripping juice on their clothes. When they finished, each of them hurled the watermelon rinds into the desert like boomerangs that would never return. Then, without once acknowledging the long line of vehicles still waiting to move, the policemen and the woman in black got back in their jeeps and drove off in the direction from which they had come.

................................................................................................

"We remained there another two hours, until, finally, one of the guards punched a number into his mobile phone and spoke for awhile. He consulted with his colleague and then, all at once, they removed their stools and waved us forward. Everyone dashed to their vehicles and engines roared to life, as the stranded convoy set off along the road with a screeching of tyres.

"Ten kilometres ahead, however, a police vehicle with its blue light oscillating wildly, came driving past us waving everyone to one side. Pulling over, Sonam shrugged impatiently and got down to see what was going on. 

"The senior officer in command of this stretch of highway arrived in his jeep. He was a caricature of a tiny dictator, hardly four and a half feet tall, wearing a uniform two sizes too large, a peaked hat and a pair of aviator shades. A cigarette holder clenched between his teeth, he marched about with a belligerent swagger and started barking orders. With him was a junior officer, carrying a construction helmet turned upside down.

................................................................................................

"As all of us watched, the officer ordered each of the drivers to put their keys and registration papers into the helmet. It was hard to know exactly what was going on, but later we learned that he was accusing the drivers of having jumped the checkpoint. He was furious because he hadn’t given an order to open the road. When the drivers protested that the guards had released them, the officer called back to the checkpoint, where the policemen must have denied letting us through. All this, we pieced together later but at that moment, the only thing I could see was the officer gesturing and shouting, as if we had broken every law in the country. Going up to one of the Land Cruisers, he demanded to know whose vehicle it was. When nobody came forward to surrender his keys, the officer picked up a rock and began hammering on the hood of the vehicle.

"Immediately, a driver jumped forward, complaining loudly and waving his arms. Once again, the rock came down on the hood, denting the metal and scratching the paint. Rallying together, the crowd of drivers converged on the police party. In addition to our group, twenty other vehicles had been stopped. The drivers surrounded the policemen in an angry mob and I noticed Sonam picking up a rock in each hand. The policemen were Chinese, the drivers Tibetan. For several minutes, it looked as if we were going to witness a riot, with the officer screaming and the owner of the damaged vehicle bellowing back at him.

................................................................................................

"Amidst the tension, I could see one of the junior constables frantically calling for backup. Just as the situation was about to escalate into serious violence, we heard a siren and saw two police vehicles coming in our direction, trailing plumes of dust. The drivers retreated as a group, marching away defiantly across the open plain, abandoning their vehicles and passengers. Again, we didn’t know what was going on, but it turned out that they were headed to a military outpost a couple of kilometres away to register a complaint. Meanwhile, the officer strutted about, triumphantly puffing on his cigarette holder. Our Sherpas and some of the pilgrims tried to reason with him, but he cut them short with an angry, ‘No!’ Being in charge of this stretch of road, he wasn’t about to have his authority questioned. The whole episode was like watching a cartoon in which the bellicose villain rants and raves, while everyone else looks on helplessly. The Indian pilgrims muttered to each other, wishing they were back in their own country, ‘where we could pay off the cops with a hundred rupees’.

"By now the sun was going down and there was nothing but empty highway stretching in both directions. After dark, the policemen departed and our driverless vehicles stood in a lonely queue by the side of the road with nothing around. For supper, the Sherpas handed out apples, which was all they could muster. As the temperature dropped, each of us put on as many layers as we could and tried to sleep in the vehicles, heads lolling from side to side, windshields fogging over with our breath. The seemingly limitless landscape shrank into darkness.

"A few minutes past midnight, I was jolted out of a fitful sleep as the driver side door was yanked open. Sonam pushed himself behind the wheel with an angry grunt and started the engine. Offering no explanation, he set off along the detour, circling the police barrier which was now deserted. Fifteen minutes later, we reached a guest house. In an airless room with beds jammed together, we scrambled for the nearest horizontal surface and finally fell asleep."

Upton Sinclair describes early era of nazi Germany in scenes not too different. 

................................................................................................

"A cloudy dawn paints the snow peaks to the south with gold and violet pigments as we leave Paryang. Seeing the mountains to the south, my sense of direction remains disoriented. All my life the Himalayas have been situated to the north and it confuses me to face them from this perspective, with the sunrise to my left."

" ... Most Tibetans eat flesh but observe Buddhist injunctions against killing living creatures. All of the Hindu pilgrims in our group are vegetarians and we do not eat at any of the roadside canteens or restaurants where the drivers order noodles with yak meat or mutton. The Sherpas too eat meat, though our cook prepares only rice, lentils and curried vegetables, a monotonous but healthy diet. I am more than content to be vegetarian for the duration of this pilgrimage."

" ... Our group is an eclectic mix of cultures. At least six languages are operating at once—Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, English, Nepali and Tibetan. My Hindi and English allow me to speak to almost everyone, except the drivers. I remember reading an anthropologist’s theory that pilgrimages like this are as much about cultural integration and breaking down social barriers as they are about sustaining religious beliefs.

"Niranjan introduces me to his friend Shivram, an accountant with IBM, based in Binghamton, New York. He and Niranjan have often travelled together. A few years ago they hiked up to Machu Picchu and, more recently, they sailed to Antarctica on an educational cruise. They admit this yatra isn’t quite the style of travel to which they are accustomed. Shivram visits India once in awhile, though most of his family now live in the US. ... Shivram’s son, Suraj, is a doctor in Philadelphia. He has just finished his residency, specializing in emergency medicine. The complete lack of sanitation in Tibet is a challenge for him but he has brought a generous supply of antiseptic hand lotion and sterile wet wipes. The fourth member of their group is Lalit. Like Shivram, he too is an accountant. His family were originally from Gujarat but settled in Kenya several generations back, then emigrated to England in the 1980s. This group of four men, all of them Hindus, represent the Indian diaspora. Yet, the pull of the Himalayas draws them back to South Asia. A mountain like Kailash has a magnetic force, a spiritual and geographical lodestone that attracts us all to its ancient source.

"While talking with Lalit I notice one of the Gujarati women eating a mango. She has smuggled it all the way from India and is sucking on the seed. When our eyes meet, she gives me a guilty smile. Niranjan has discovered that the Gujarati pilgrims have smuggled two extra duffle bags containing dry fruit and nuts, savoury mixtures and other snacks."

................................................................................................

"After another four hours of driving, we finally come within sight of Manasarovar. Ascending out of a shallow stream bed, our vehicles crest a saddle with a chorten and flagpole at the top. Prayer flags radiate in all directions, like a sagging circus tent. The drivers complete a clockwise circuit of the chorten and park the Land Cruisers on a level patch of ground overlooking the sacred lake.

"After four days of anticipation, we are suddenly here and our abrupt arrival takes me by surprise. Manasarovar is larger than I imagined, though I can see the opposite shore. The circumference of the lake is 88 kilometres. Ordinarily, we would be able to see Kailash from this spot but the sky is overcast and Bhim points in the direction where it stands, promising us that it is ‘compulsory’ for the clouds to eventually clear. The lake has a dark blue tint that turns to turquoise when the sun comes out from behind the drifting clouds. Partially visible to the south are the mountains and glaciers that feed Manasarovar. Gurla Mandhata (7,694 metres) is the main peak, a massive whale-backed summit fully clad in snow. In 1905, Tom Longstaff and the Brocherel brothers attempted to climb this peak and were swept 1,000 metres down its slopes by an avalanche, which they survived. The treeless landscape conveys stillness, despite the wind that riffles the prayer flags. Nothing else moves except for the clouds and their shadows that cross the water like phantom shoals. One moment the tawny ridges have hardly any colour—then, as the sun emerges, it brings out hidden pigments in the rocks and soil, a subtle alchemy of light.

"Manasarovar is known as Mapam Tso in Tibetan, a name that means ‘undefeated’, commemorating Milarepa’s victory over a Bon shaman. The Buddha’s mother, Maya, is said to have bathed in this lake before Gautama was conceived. In Sanskrit, ‘manas’ means mind and ‘sarovar’ is a lake. ... "

So far, ok. But then Alter's hubris takes over, giving wrong interpretations of Sanskrit words and texts, and of Hindu thinking. 

" ... Hindus believe that Manasarovar was first created within Brahma’s imagination—a divine illusion that became a geographical reality. ... "

"Imagination" is wrong interpretation, not only of the word Manasa - pronounced Maanasa - but, more specifically, in this context. But Alter wouldn't comprehend, because he's never opened himself to land of his birth, to its ancient culture. 

Not everything that's conception of Mind is imaginary. Numbers, for example. Or circles, ellipses, parabola and hyperbola, or any of the mathematical structures in geometry. They are real, despite being not seen or touched physically. So was Manasarovar, when conceived, before it was Realised onto the physical plane. 

" ... It is the highest freshwater lake of its size in the world and the clarity of its waters reflects the purity accorded to it in mythologies of different faiths. Those who bathe in Manasarovar are cleansed of sin and guilt, not only from this life but from all previous and future incarnations. Even the gods descend from heaven to purify themselves in its waters. The most devout pilgrims complete a Kora of the lake on foot, which takes three days, though trance walkers who practice lung-gom are said to circle it in a day."

"Historically, this region yielded gold and turquoise, though most of the mines in the surrounding hills are now abandoned. One of the popular legends is the story of a huge nugget of gold, the size and shape of a dog, which was unearthed by chance near Manasarovar. When it was found, nobody dared keep it, believing this was sacred treasure. The miners took it to Lhasa and offered it to the Dalai Lama. Instead of accepting the lump of gold, he instructed them to carry it back to the shores of Manasarovar, where it was reburied exactly as it was found. A stupa was built on the spot and named Serkyi (or Kyiro Serpo) which means golden dog.

................................................................................................

"Our route takes us around the eastern rim of the lake, circling Manasarovar in a clockwise direction. After 15 kilometres, we stop at a pebbled beach, where Bhim announces that anyone who wants to take a ritual bath is welcome to do so. ‘It’s not compulsory,’ he says, ‘but please, no shampoo or soap.’ Inside the Land Cruisers it is hot and stuffy but outside, the wind has a sharp edge and the temperature drops every time a cloud passes overhead.

"The glacier-fed waters of Manasarovar are not as cold as I expect, being shallow and warmed by the sun. Some say that hot springs heat the lake, though it remains frozen for nine months of the year. The deepest point at the centre is over 75 metres but near the shore its depth is less than a metre. We spread out along the beach and most of the men strip down to shorts. A few of the women enter the lake in their saris. Others scoop a little of the water into their hands and splash it on to their faces. The pebbles underfoot make it awkward to walk but I wade out about 20 metres from shore, where the water reaches my knees.

"Lowering myself backwards, I go under completely and dunk myself three times. Surfacing, I can feel the dust and grime of four days travel rinse away, along with the adhering filth of the places where we have stayed. My skin is pale, except where the sun has burned my arms and face. The scars on my body are a dull red colour, particularly the gash on my left calf and the stab wound on my thigh. Though fully healed, my injuries are still sensitive and there is a numbness from damaged nerves. As I scrub myself in the clear waters of Manasarovar, I try to imagine the scars washing away, releasing me from the violent memories of our attack. Opening my eyes underwater, I can see the colourful patterns of pebbles and the glint of sunlight on the rippling surface above. I want to swim out farther from shore but after a few strokes, I let myself sink below the surface again, content to float in the shallows. I feel a sense of buoyancy and calm, immersed in Brahma’s dream. Though I submerge myself in the lake, none of my sins slough off; at least, none that I am aware of. Yet I feel cleansed by these sacred waters, purged of a lifetime of transgressions.

" ... A flock of terns are squabbling above a sand bar. Manasarovar contains several varieties of fish on which these migratory birds feed. ... it is a quiet, meditative place, a natural sanctuary imbued with an atmosphere of peace.

"I collect a handful of pebbles from Manasarovar to take home with me as mementoes. Most of the other pilgrims are doing the same. Satish, the Gujarati in our vehicle, rushes over holding a strangely shaped stone. ‘Can you see Ganesh?’ he says with excitement, pointing to the raised contours on the surface of the stone. ... "

................................................................................................

"We continue circling the lake, passing a couple of small monasteries and pilgrim shelters that look deserted. Crossing a stream swollen with snowmelt, one of the Land Cruisers gets stuck, water swirling halfway up the doors. Fortunately, the driver is able to reverse out of the current and makes it across on his second attempt. From the southern shore of the lake, the road loops up a broad bluff and we are able to see Rakshastal, a second lake almost as big as Manasarovar, but irregular in shape and about 15 metres lower in altitude. ‘Rakshas’ means demon and this lake, which is salty and undrinkable, is associated with the darker forces of Hindu mythology. The two lakes lie side by side, like a misshapen ying and yang. It may be the grey canopy of clouds or the angle of the sun as it descends toward the horizon, but Rakshastal has a menacing demeanour, its surface rough with waves. 

"Minutes later, as we descend the other side of the ridge, a miracle occurs!

"Our route, which has been unpaved for more than 600 kilometres, suddenly merges with a perfectly tarred road coming in from the south. Asphalt never looked so beautiful and the yellow line down this two-lane highway is a ribbon of gold. We have joined the road that comes up from Taklakot, a historic trading post near the border with India and Nepal. For centuries this has been one of the main centres of commerce where tea and butter are still bartered for pashmina wool and yak tails. The short section of highway, hardly 30 kilometres from the border to the roadhead at Darchen has been paved by the Chinese to create the illusion of development. On the Indian and Nepal side of the border there is no motorable approach, only rough footpaths winding up precipitous gorges. In 1866, Nain Singh Rawat escaped from Tibet along this route and returned to India. Despite ongoing border disputes, a bilateral agreement between India and China permits a limited number of pilgrims to cross into Tibet on foot. From Taklakot they are taken by bus to Darchen. Originally, I had hoped to make the journey to Kailash by this route, which starts in Uttarakhand and avoids the long detour to Kathmandu. But permits are issued by lottery and the Indian government does not allow foreigners to cross the ‘inner line’ and pass through border regions."

................................................................................................

"I would be happy to drive for another hour like this but after twenty minutes we reach Chiu Gompa, where we spend the night at a guest house that is decorated with brightly painted yak skulls. Nearby is a dry channel that connects Manasarovar with Rakshastal, though water only flows between the two lakes during years of heavy rainfall when the level of Manasarovar rises. This is interpreted as an auspicious omen. The shore of the lake at Chiu is surrounded by mud and it is impossible to reach the water. One of the pilgrims goes too close and sinks up to his thighs in grey ooze. I walk out as far as I dare and find thousands of tiny snail shells, bleached white by the sun.

"The clouds disperse at nightfall and we are treated to a spectacular display of stars. Unlike night skies in other parts of the world where an electric glow allows only a few constellations to shine through, here the firmament above us flickers with millions of lights. The Milky Way spreads like a celestial glacier above the eastern horizon, its reflection faintly visible on the still, dark surface of the lake. Sirius, the Dog Star, gleams like a nugget of gold. A satellite passes overhead, a blinking firefly weaving its way through a net of lights. I keep expecting it to collide with one of the stars. Though the sky appears crowded, it is actually an empty sieve through which years of ancient light have drained to illuminate this moment. There is no moon but, to our south, the faint profile of the Himalayas rises above Manasarovar ... "

................................................................................................

"Hoping to see the sunrise over Manasarovar, I get up early the next morning and stumble past my sleeping roommates. Once outside, I am disappointed to find the sky is overcast. A murky dawn seeps through the clouds. After a few minutes, however, shafts of sunlight penetrate the grey curtains and shoot across the surface of the lake, giving it a metallic sheen. A little later I meet three of the Gujarati pilgrims who tell me that they have been awake all night and claim to have seen lights descending from the sky into the water. One of the myths of Manasarovar is that these lights are deities who descend to bathe in Brahma’s lake. I ask what kind of lights they were and they describe something between a shooting star and an emergency flare, phosphorescent streaks that drop out of the darkness before disappearing into the water. Others have described this phenomenon before, which is sometimes explained as St Elmo’s Fire, atmospheric bursts of static electricity. Whatever it may be, the pilgrims are delighted and they tell their story to everyone in the group.

"After breakfast, Niranjan and the other NRIs invite me to join them on a short trek up the ridge above the guest house. Today we are scheduled for a late start, leaving Chiu Gompa after lunch and driving only as far as Darchen, which is 25 kilometres away. Part of the reason for our walk is to test ourselves for the circumambulation of Kailash, which begins tomorrow. Manasarovar lies 4,556 metres above sea level. Oxygen is scarce and we keep stopping to catch our breath. Kailash is still obscured by clouds and I begin to wonder if we will ever have a clear view of the mountain. The landscape around Manasarovar is like a dented bowl that rises up on every side. Windswept and dry, the folded ridges are covered with patches of Tibetan gorse, a hardy plant with dark green leaves. Though it provides forage for wild and domesticated animals, its thorns protect it from over-grazing.

"From the ridge above Chiu Gompa, we can clearly see the dry stream bed between Manasarovar and Rakshastal. Sections of the channel appear marshy and at places it has a rime of salt caused by evaporation and minerals leeched out of the soil. Known as Ganga Chu, this occasional stream carries the pure waters of Mapam Tso into the demon’s lake, rendering it sacred as well. ... This year, Ganga Chu is inauspiciously dry. Summer rains have been scarce and the snowmelt off Gurla Mandhata is not enough to make Manasarovar overflow its banks."

" ... Clouds still hide Kailash from view. Atop the highest ridge we climb is a cairn of rocks where we have a dramatic view of the lake. From this angle, Manasarovar looks much larger, almost a perfect oval. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... Mount Kailash has suddenly emerged from hiding and stands out above the ridge with unexpected brilliance. The sun gleams off its snowclad features. ... "

"Darchen lies at the foot of the ridges below Kailash, though the mountain itself cannot be seen from the town. A dusty, unkempt settlement with two main streets that cross in the middle and rows of identical buildings, it is not a hospitable place. A line of shops sell trinkets and souvenirs to pilgrims, as well as dried herbs collected from the nearby hills. At the centre of town is the ‘Good Luck To The Supermarket’ and an ‘Abundance Wholesale Store’. Our accommodation is a government guest house that looks more like a jail than a hotel. Several yatra groups are staying here and we are allotted C-Block, a desolate yellow barrack. The usual jigsaw puzzle of beds is squeezed into each room, with barely enough space for anyone to enter.

"After unloading our bags, we set off again to visit the starting point of the Inner Kora. Sonam drives us up a series of switchbacks, along a steep, rough road. Less than 5 kilometres above Darchen, the valley opens out into a broad meadow with a stream flowing through the middle. From here, the south face of Mount Kailash rises directly above us, no clouds obscuring its brilliance. Bhim described this as a ‘Kailash darshan’, providing us with our first close view of the mountain. When we stop, even the drivers take out prayer rugs or spread their jackets on the grass, and prostrate themselves in front of the mountain. Conversations cease and each of us drifts off to separate areas of the meadow to contemplate Kailash, alone with our thoughts.

................................................................................................

"A short distance away, on the slope of a ridge, lies a gompa associated with the Jain religion, though it looks very much like any other Buddhist shrine, with red mud walls and prayer flags. In front is a chorten with a gilded spire. ... a small footpath leading up a dry, windswept ridge at the head of the valley. Several pilgrims, part of another group, are ascending this path and I decide to follow them. It is a steep climb, much more strenuous than our hike this morning and I walk slowly upward, eyes fixed on the mountain."

"The Bon identify a sacred Swastika in the patterns of these rocks. If one stares at the mountain long enough, the shape appears like a giant petroglyph. In India and Tibet, the swastika represents good luck and fertility. Many Hindus interpret it as a stylized image of Natraj, the dancing form of Shiva. 

"While the peak itself is considered the austere throne of Shiva who sits here in eternal meditation, a broad hill in the foreground is known as Nandi Parbat, representing the bull of Shiva who lies attentively at his feet. ... One of the nearby ridges is known as Kuber Parbat, where the god of wealth resides. Another ridge is revered as the abode of Vishnu. ... "

" ... irrepressible emotions well up inside of me at several points along the trail. My vision blurs with tears and my throat constricts, not from altitude, but from a sense of having arrived. Several pilgrims, coming down the path, greet me with repeated cries of ‘Om Namah Shivaya!’ but I am speechless, unable to respond. It could be awe or reverence that evokes these emotions, or a sense of release at having accomplished the simple goal of being in the presence of Kailash."

" ... Sitting here in front of the mountain, leaning against this rock, I realize that nothing exists outside of this experience. ... "

" ... For an hour, I simply sit alone beside the lichen-covered rock, emptying my mind of rational and irrational thoughts, experiencing only the transcendent vision of Kailash."

................................................................................................

" ... The only effective treatment for altitude sickness is to quickly take a person down several thousand feet. But the problem in Tibet is that there is no place to escape, for the entire country lies at high altitudes. The closest airports where a person could be evacuated are either Lhasa or Kathmandu, five days’ journey from Darchen, by which time it is too late.

"After breakfast, the Land Cruisers drop us at Tarboche, 5 kilometres west of Darchen, where the Kora route begins. During the Saga Dawa festival in late spring, Tarboche is inundated with thousands of pilgrims. Each year, a huge flagstaff is erected, from which strings of prayer flags radiate like the fluttering spokes on a giant wheel. Tarboche is located at the mouth of a broad gorge that wraps around Kailash on its western side. ... "

" ... A ring of dark clouds hides the summit of Kailash, but we can see the mountain’s lower slopes encrusted with bands of snow and ice. At Tarboche stands a small chorten with a passage through the middle. This is called Hemdwar by Hindu pilgrims, which means ‘gateway to the snows’. ... "

No, Hema (with a short a), or Hem, is gold in Sanskrit, so it's Golden Gate, meaning to a world above paradise, where highers Gods dwell. 

"From this point onwards, until we complete the Kora, most of our party will be riding horses, with yaks and porters carrying tents and supplies. Only two of us have chosen to complete the Kora on foot, myself and a man named Chandrashekhar, from Mumbai. Bhim and the Chinese tour guide must organize the caravan of men and animals that will travel up the valley. We have been told that nobody is allowed to share a horse and you cannot carry your pack while riding, requiring a porter to shoulder this extra load for an additional fee. Happily leaving behind the bickering and chaos of pairing horses with riders and yaks with loads, I set off up the valley. Chandrashekhar and I walk together for a ways, then agree to each continue at our own pace, glad for the solitude of the Lha Chu Valley, known as the gorge of the river gods.

................................................................................................

" ... As I walk around Kailash, following timeless paths that wheel about its axis, I become conscious of the hidden taproot of this mountain. Even as it rises more than 6,000 metres above sea level, Kailash extends deep into the earth. ... "

"The landscape in this treeless valley has a hypnotic quality. Rocks and boulders take on weird and magical shapes like an optical illusion. Lama Govinda, the Bolivian-German mystic who helped introduce Tibet to the West, writes about lung-gom. While on an extended pilgrimage to Kailash and the abandoned kingdom of Guge in far-western Tibet, Govinda claims to have experienced trance walking himself, after getting lost in the mountains:

""…to my amazement I jumped from boulder to boulder without ever slipping or missing a foothold, in spite of wearing only a pair of flimsy sandals on my bare feet. And then, I realized that a strange force had taken over, a consciousness that was no more guided by my eyes or my brain. My limbs moved as in a trance, with an uncanny knowledge of their own, though their movement seemed almost mechanical. I noticed things only like in a dream, somewhat detached. Even my own body had become distant, quasi-detached from my will-power. I was like an arrow that unfailingly pursued its course by the force of its initial impetus, and the only thing I knew was that on no condition must I break the spell that had seized me.""

................................................................................................

"By noon, I reach a cluster of tea shops, where Bhim has instructed us to wait for lunch. The western face of Kailash is clearly visible now, another facet of the pyramid with the same horizontal bands of rock and snow. But from this angle, the mountain seems to have a different character, sombre and almost menacing. The base is guarded by gargoyles of red rock, fearsome sentinels chiselled by the wind. Gazing up at the mountain, the sun is in my eyes. While Kailash itself remains imposing and serene, here in this valley there seems to be a surrounding chaos of eroded precipices that suggest wild and threatening forces, as if fierce storms and mountain demons have petrified into solid shapes."

" ... These tea shops are set up during the pilgrimage season, from the end of May through October, and will be dismantled during winter when the Kora route is closed. Tables and benches are arranged along one side with displays of Coke and Red Bull cans out front, as well as bottled beer. Entering a tea shop, I ask the proprietor for tea. She serves it to me in a thimble-sized glass, a murky pink infusion with a mildly salty flavour. ... Her daughter, a toddler, wears a whimsical plastic hat with propellers and spring-loaded baubles that nod as she walks, proud as a princess modelling her first crown."

" ... We are served a simple lunch of rice and lentils. I quickly eat and hurry on ... "

"It would be impossible to get lost in this valley, though there are dozens of trails that separate and re-converge along the eastern bank of the Lha Chu River. These paths seem to have been laid out over centuries by the wandering footsteps of pilgrims, each taking their own circuit around Kailash. Coming from the opposite direction, I pass a group of Bon pilgrims ... After an hour’s walk, I come to a bridge that leads to Drira Phuk Gompa, on the opposite side of the valley. Though After an hour’s walk, I come to a bridge that leads to Drira Phuk Gompa, on the opposite side of the valley. Though tempted to explore, I don’t know where our camp is pitched and whether I can cross the river farther up."

"Exploring above our camp, I reach a pile of mani stones. Ahead of me is a gorge that leads to the foot of Kailash, which looks deceptively close. I decide not to go any further, for the wind has picked up and I have left my jacket behind. ... "

"I am just about to give up on the sunset and retreat to my tent when I notice a faint amber glow on one of the lower snowfields. To the west, banks of clouds begin to part, as the sun slips behind the western crags of the La Chu Valley. ... a golden light ascends the mountain. Within a few seconds, Kailash is completely gilded and the cobra’s hood shines like a cornice of gold. The black striations stand out in contrast to the burnished snow and it feels as if the mountain has changed from two dimensions into three and then, perhaps a fourth—each crevice and cliff line standing out in bold relief. Holding my breath, I take a few pictures, then lower my camera, wanting only to experience this spectacle with my eyes, rather than viewing it through a lens. Already, the light is fading. Within three minutes the sunset is over and shadows enfold us in a frigid embrace."

................................................................................................

" ... To cross the 5,636-metre Dolma La pass today and reach our next campsite, we have been told that we must start by 4 a.m. The stars are brilliant and Kailash glows like a pale slab of marble leaning against a sequined sky. The yaks arrive in silence, matted shadows lumbering in the dark. The only sounds are the shrill whistles of their handlers. Just as we are about to leave, a new moon comes up over the ridge. For a couple of minutes, the entire circumference is visible as it rises, fading quickly into a thin crescent."

" ... The climb takes me diagonally up a rocky slope, with a few switchbacks at the steepest points. An hour from camp, I find myself at the top of a rise, where a Tibetan family has stopped to drink tea from a thermos flask—a father and mother with their teenage daughter and son. ... "

"Across the valley from us, Kailash is visible again after being hidden for most of the route from camp. While we remain in shadow, the peak is lit by the first rays of sunlight. Though not as dramatic as the evening glow, the morning light has a startling brilliance, its intensity increasing until I cannot look at the mountain without dark glasses. From this angle, the main profile of the peak is identical to what I saw last evening, but the eastern ridge is now in view. Below this lies the main glacier that skirts the north face."

................................................................................................

"One of the landmarks I have been searching for is a small pond called the ‘Mirror of Yama’, the looking glass of death. There is only one pool of water on this side of the pass, hardly 15 metres in circumference and a short distance from the trail. ... The valley around it lies in shadow but the water captures the bright blue of the sky. To the southwest, Kailash stands out. This will be the last clear view I have of the mountain during my Kora. Though I will see its eastern face after descending the pass, only sections of the mountain are visible beyond this point.

"7 a.m. Three hours have passed since I left camp and now the horses are beginning to catch up. I can hear the sound of their hooves on the rocks and the clucking of the horsemen urging them on. As I step aside to let a group go by, some of the pilgrims greet me, while others sit slumped in their saddles with expressions of misery. Heads throb under woollen hats and nausea makes every turn on the trail a stomach-churning ordeal. Last night, one of the yatris from Maharashtra became violently ill and was taken back to Darchen. Nobody knows if he has survived and his companions are anxious. The sure-footed ponies pick their way through patches of snow that are covered with dung and dirt. Heading directly east, into the sunrise, it is impossible to see the crest of the pass because of the glare. A hundred metres from the top we cross from shadow into sunlight, the harsh rays blinding as they light up thousands of coloured prayer flags that cover Dolma La like a patchwork quilt."

" ... Having promised friends and family that I will bring them souvenirs from my journey, I collect a dozen pebbles from the pass, tiny fragments of the mountain, each of which is a miniature version of Kailash.

"Though I feel a sense of elation on reaching the pass, there isn’t the same experience of awe and reverence that I felt when we approached Kailash on the first day, or last evening when I saw the sunset lighting up its northern face. Dolma La is as dramatic a landscape as any we’ve crossed but, emotionally, it does not move me, beyond a feeling of relief and appreciation for the eroded features of the mountains. Kailash itself is hidden from view. ... "

"Just below Dolma La is another pond, slightly larger than the Mirror of Yama but no more than 9 metres across. Hindus call this Gauri Kund and Buddhists refer to it as the Lake of Compassion. For much of the year it remains frozen but in summer the water melts to a chalky green colour. The snow-capped ridge above is reflected in the surface. Being several hundred feet below the pass and surrounded by steep cliffs and rocky slopes, the lake is seldom visited by pilgrims, who follow a trail that circles above Gauri Kund. Some yatris brave the difficult descent to bathe in the water but most take darshan from a distance, allowing their prayers to reflect upon the jade-like surface of the pool."

Alter gives here story of birth and a bit more of Ganapati, presumably for purposes of entertainment of non-Indians, non-Hindus. 

" ... This myth is a familiar episode in Hindu mythology and I have visited more than one place that is said to be the setting for this story. Here in Tibet, well above the range of any elephants, ... "

Alter forgets that the legend belongs to before Himaalaya was quite so high, and that Kailash is far older, geologically; that there's no reason to presume that at the time of the legend coming into being, everything was as is now, and elephants avoided the surroundings for some mysterious reason despite its being completely accessible! He doesn't say why that would have been so, even though elephants are natural from Assam to Kerala, and were natural to most of ancient Indian land. Tibet hadn't been lifted quite so high then. And if China hadn't finished off everything in sight by eating, elephants might have existed in Tibet, China, even Mongolia. But then, China finished off even cattle, something so vital and essential to an agricultural land in tropics. Chinese cuisine, unlike India or Europe, has no dairy product component. 

................................................................................................

"Himalayan landscapes reflect a luminosity that doesn’t exist on the plains. Partly, it is the clarity of the air but also the angle of the sun, slanting above the earth’s curvature to meet the sudden upheaval of these high ranges. Refraction in the atmosphere at extreme elevations contributes to a greater brightness, as well as subtle adumbrations that tease our perception, as if the light were emanating from the mountain itself."

" ... The sublime magnitude of the Himalayas leaves us with profound feelings of reverence as well as trepidation. ... "

................................................................................................

"REACHING FOR CLOSURE 

" ... It is late September once again. Bar-headed geese will soon begin crossing the Himalayas southward, retracing the flyways above Flag Hill, their soft honking like plaintive voices, almost human."

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

"The pronunciation and spelling of the word ‘Himalayas’ has been a matter of dispute from the time it was first translated into English. In Sanskrit ‘hem’ or ‘him’ means snow and ‘alaya’ denotes the ‘place of’. ... "

In Sanskrit, 'Hima' with a short 'a' at the end is snow (or ice, too?), but 'Hema' with a short 'a' at the end is gold, not snow or ice. 

" ... When I was a boy, we were taught to stress the second syllable (Himaalaya), rather than swallowing the vowel (Him’laya) as many people do. We believed this was the correct pronunciation, though it differed from the original Sanskrit. ... "

No, it's not different from original Sanskrit. Indeed its a very mathematical language, and 

Hima+Aalaya=Himaalaya, 

as per Sanskrit rules of joining words. 

The pronunciation he claims he was taught is, indeed, the correct one, and it's as per rules of Sanskrit. Whoever told him that "it differed from the original Sanskrit" was either lying or an egotistical illiterate idiot. 

" ... As for spelling, many purists assert that Himalaya, without the ‘s’, is more accurate and gives the mountains a singular grandeur. ... "

More accurate, certainly. Grandeur of the very term is inherent in the original nomenclature, cheapened by anglicising with the 's'. 

" ... Common usage has devolved into the plural form that I have chosen for this book. My purpose is simply to avoid confusion amongst readers who may not be aware of the arcane nuances of this debate. ... "

Or simply racism, preferring readership amongst West ' and bootleggers thereof? 

" ... In the end, of course, no matter how we transliterate their name, the Himalayas will always rise above the perverse inadequacies of language."

Himaalaya is always above, risen from ocean millions of years ago, as witnessed and recorded then by India. 

As for the 'perverse inadequacies of language' that's author's, India rose above it, tolerating its myriad - and silly - shortcomings and faults, and more. 

................................................................................................

"If the red slayer think he slays, 

"Or if the slain think he is slain, 

"They know not well the subtle ways 

"I keep, and pass, and turn again. 

"—Ralph Waldo Emerson"

Sounds like he translated Bhagawadgeeta, or interpreted it, in his own terms. 
................................................................................................


BIRTHRIGHT

"A year later, putting his urn in the ground, I felt an overwhelming connection to these mountains, this place that we call home. Once again, my mother had travelled halfway round the world, carrying his ashes, just as she first ventured here from Pennsylvania to Mussoorie, sixty-five years ago, to marry my father. Dad was born in Kashmir, in 1926, a child of the Himalayas. His parents were Presbyterian missionaries and my father followed in their footsteps. He spent most of his life in the mountains, as a teacher and principal at Woodstock School, then later working with village communities in the surrounding hills, promoting drinking water projects, public health, education and environmental awareness. Laying his remains to rest in sight of the high Himalayas seemed to finally close the circle."

"My father’s illness and his death made me intensely aware of our separation and the physical distances that we have put between us as a family. India and the United States seem farther apart than ever before. Wooster and Mussoorie are almost opposite points on the globe. My grandparents originally came from Ohio and Western Pennsylvania—and before that our forefathers immigrated to North America from Switzerland and Scotland—but I have never felt any strong associations there, no ancestral tug of war.

"I was born in Mussoorie. These mountains are my birthright. ... "

"birthright"?????? 

The way whole continents were clsimed by various conquistadores setting out from Europe? Or Arabia? Mongolia?

" ... Our family has lived here for almost a century, since my grandparents first spent a summer in Mussoorie in 1916. ... Yet, despite all this, I am conscious of my own dislocation, the foreignness of settling here in the foothills of the Himalayas. Sometimes it feels as if I have taken on an assumed identity. Earlier, growing up in India, I never felt that I belonged anywhere else, despite my American passport. Whenever I left the Himalayas, an instinctual urge pulled me back, a sense of surety that this was home. Only in recent years have I begun to experience doubts and discontentment, the uneasy, persistent ache of alienation."

He fails to connect the two - the fact of a US passport, kept despite being born and educated in India, despite the pull he describes to his birthplace, despite coming back to settle in the home that belonged to his parents. 

"My attempt to climb Bandarpunch was driven mostly by a need to overcome the physical and emotional trauma of a violent incident that happened at Oakville three years earlier, when Ameeta and I were stabbed and beaten by four intruders. Even as I mourn my father, I find myself returning to those brutal memories. This is something I would rather forget. The indelible experience of our attack still evokes a sense of violation and loss…as if I have become a stranger within the sheltering mountains of my birth."

He forgets the violence routine in US, perpetrated against citizens and non-citizens, regardless of race or gender or age. 

Did he expect that being Scot or Swiss by ancestry haould have rendered him immune from intruders, theft, or violence in a country because of his US passport? 
................................................................................................


RECOVERING MEMORY 

Explicit, detailed description of the said attack by the intruders, perpetrated against author and his wife, in their home at Oak Hill. 
................................................................................................


"‘Take the TV if you want,’ I told them, trying to point. ‘Leave us alone.’ But they kept asking where the money was hidden, voices calm but insistent, as if they were still inquiring about painting the house."

" ... As he turned to look at the others, I caught a glimpse of his smirking features. He was in his early twenties, clean shaven, with wavy hair and a dark complexion. I noticed scars of acne on his cheeks. Though I didn’t recognize him, the impression that remains is the cynical amusement on his face, as if he took sadistic pleasure in seeing me bound and bleeding."

" ... The choking sensation was worse than the blows to my head. ... After more than a minute, which felt like an hour, the man unclamped his hand and asked again, ‘Where is the money?’"

"‘ ... Tell us where the money is or we’ll shoot your wife—madam ko goli mar dengey!’ As I gasped for breath, I remember thinking it was strange that they called Ameeta ‘madam’ after they had beaten and stabbed her. Once again, I told them we had no money in the house."

................................................................................................


"The random cruelty of our assault was matched only by the overwhelming expressions of love and concern that we received in the aftermath. The doctors and staff at the Landour Community Hospital were exceptional in their skill and compassion. Family and friends gathered in our hospital room while we recovered. The townspeople of Mussoorie, many of whom I’d known since childhood, formed a crowd outside the hospital while we were in the operating theatre. When I finally emerged from surgery, the hall was filled with familiar faces looking down at me as I was wheeled toward our room."
................................................................................................


" ... There was no question that the attack had already changed me, even a few hours after it was over. For one thing, I knew that I would never feel invincible again. Yet, somehow, I wanted to set a physical goal for myself that took me beyond mere survival and challenged my body to become stronger because of my injuries. Someday, I wanted to outdistance my fears and leave behind the horror, to reach destinations that would prove I was whole and well again…"
................................................................................................

"The doctors cleared our room a couple of times, insisting that we needed to rest and warning that there was danger of infection with so many people coming and going. But the first two days in the hospital were like a circus, a constant stream of townspeople and politicians coming to express their sympathy and concern. Everyone kept saying, ‘We never imagined that something like this would happen in Mussoorie.’ Emotionally, it was exhausting and I went from casual banter to sudden tears without being able to control myself. I suppose it was good to keep talking about what had happened, telling and retelling the events. ... "

" ... My parents were travelling and only learned what happened three days after the event. Two of Ameeta’s sisters flew in, from Australia and London, while our daughter, Shibani, boarded a plane in Boston to be with us."

"Two policemen were assigned to the case—Inspector Tamta, an officer from Dehradun, and Kukreti, the SHO in Mussoorie. These men interrogated us more than a dozen times over the next three months. They were pleasant enough, always polite and respectful, but it soon became clear that they were clueless. Tamta and Kukreti were caricatures of bumbling policemen, flourishing a lot of bravado, claiming to have uncovered leads that took them nowhere and questioning suspects who provided no information. Most of our conversations were in Hindi and like our attackers the police referred to us as ‘madam’ and ‘uncle’. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... We were put in a police van with tinted windows and driven a kilometre from our house. At the side of the road, with two constables keeping guard, stood a young man they had apprehended. Ameeta stared at him through the darkened glass. At first, she was convinced that he was one of the attackers, then doubt began to skew her memory. Finally, in frustration, she rolled down the window and spoke to the man, asking if he recognized us. He shook his head, but the frightened insolence in his eyes brought back the sickening immediacy of the attack and left us anxious for several days.

"Perhaps the most unnerving aspect of any form of violence is the sense of estrangement that follows, as if your identity has been violated. Mussoorie has always been my home, the town where I was born and raised, yet the attack made me acutely aware of being a foreigner. ... "

He means, no longer master race who wouldn't expect being attacked. 

Because, of course, in US he wouldn't be a foreigner, but could expect to be attacked, and not feel a foreigner. 

................................................................................................


" ... They had come and gone anonymously, disappearing into India’s billions, out of which it would be impossible to identify anyone. Though I have no proof, I believe they were petty criminals from the plains who came up to the mountains in search of easy victims. The man who wore the ski mask was probably from Mussoorie, a local accomplice who showed them where we lived. More than likely they were after money to buy drugs, which is why they didn’t take our cameras or computers. They wanted cash, which we didn’t have in the house. Of course, this explanation is as much conjecture as any other and I can’t prove it, unless one of the men is eventually apprehended, which isn’t likely to occur."

" ... At the same time, I know that if I were ever attacked again, my first instinct would be to kill those men. Never before had I come face to face with evil. Even now, I have difficulty using that word, though there is no doubt in my mind that the men who attacked us were undeniably evil. Unlike obtuse moral debates in religious or philosophical discourse, this form of evil was not an abstract concept or some form of spirit possession. It was real and present. The man who held me down and tried to smother me was evil. Those who kicked and stabbed Ameeta were equally evil. ... "

"Walking around the chakkar in Landour, there are times when Ameeta and I see a group of young men loitering by the side of the road, and instinctively we turn back or take another route. We often wonder if any of the faces we pass in town are the men who assaulted us. Even if we don’t recognize them, do they recognize us? The idea of a stranger knowing who you are and what he’s done to you is more frightening than whatever fragments of memory remain, and it adds to our vulnerability. We have become more alert to possible threats and wary of strangers. For each of us it is different, of course. Even after thirty-six years of marriage, I could never begin to understand everything Ameeta feels, how she copes with the frightening memories and the possibility that it might happen again. Though we have decided to remain in Mussoorie we often speak about leaving, going away to some place where we can feel safe and secure again, moving closer to our children in America, away from the shadows that still haunt us, far away from those dark monsoon mornings when we lie awake listening for a sudden knock at the door.

"Ameeta does not share my sentimental attachments to the Himalayas, though she has spent much of her life in Mussoorie and invested a lot in making Oakville our home. An artist and a gardener, she has created a beautiful place for us to live in, preserving the heritage of the property while filling the flowerbeds with colours and bringing light and warmth into each of the rooms. Without her, I could not live here and she has stayed on mostly for my sake, sacrificing opportunities and interests elsewhere.

................................................................................................


"A month after the attack, when I was finally able to walk more than a couple of steps, I set myself a goal of climbing a nearby hill, 3 kilometres from our home. This forested ridge is called Flag Hill because the Tibetan community ties prayer flags at the top. From the summit there is a spectacular view of the high Himalayas, snow-covered peaks like Swargarohini and Bandarpunch. Looking eastward, the Gangotri group—Srikantha, Jaonli, Kedarnath and Chaukhamba—are clearly visible, a crenelated wall of mountains that flank the headwaters of the Ganga. On a clear day, far off to the east, you can see Nanda Devi, a white pyramid silhouetted against the sunrise."

" ... Leopards prowl the paths around Flag Hill and, occasionally, in winter, bears come to feed on acorns. Rhododendron arboreum bloom in spring, setting the slopes ablaze with scarlet blossoms. During summer, before the rains, forest fires ignite the pine needles. From mid-June to mid-September, the rain is constant and the hill is clad in ferns and mosses, overgrown with wild ginger and peacock orchids. But autumn is the finest time to climb Flag Hill, when the monsoon mist has finally dispersed and the air is so clear it feels as if you could inhale the sky in a single breath. 

"There is nothing I would rather do on an October morning than walk from our home to the top of this hill and see the range of snow mountains framed by fluttering strings of prayer flags. Often, I have sat and looked out at those white summits, emptying my mind of errant thoughts and focusing on the sharp profile of the Himalayas, losing myself in silent contemplation. Early in the morning, the only sounds one hears are the distant beating of drums from village temples across the valley, or the shrill cries of whistling thrushes and the cackle of a koklass pheasant."

................................................................................................


" ... The most I could do was walk a short distance along the path that leads from Oakville to a meditation bench my father built, from where he liked to watch the sunrise. Here, a few of the snow peaks can be seen through a lattice of branches. Flag Hill is visible from the bench, its rounded summit like the hump of a bull. Walking down the path, six weeks after leaving the hospital, I needed a cane for support. My legs felt unsteady, as if they would never be able to carry me up or down a mountain again.

"On purpose, I had come alone. Flag Hill has always been a place of solitude for me…a private sanctuary. Seldom do I meet anyone along these paths, except an occasional dairyman gathering fodder or firewood. That Sunday, in late September, nobody else was around. As I passed a jumble of boulders that I usually clambered up, I felt suddenly uneasy and afraid. Being by myself in the forest has never troubled me, and I have trekked alone in the Himalayas for days at a stretch. Yet, all at once, I was gripped by a feeling of vulnerability. It was my sixth sense, a primal impulse warning me of danger. Though I had noticed a ropey mass of leopard scat lower down the path, it was human predators that frightened me. The fear was unexpected and overwhelming. I had to resist an urge to turn around and hurry home, even though the trail was familiar. I knew exactly how many switchbacks there were to the top. But at that moment, I was completely terrified, as if confronting a malevolent presence. Every shadow seemed to conceal a threat. Every rustling leaf signalled ambush. I felt as if one of our attackers had followed me to this secluded spot. Any minute now, he would rush from behind and put a knife to my throat."

"When I reached the top, my anxiety had dissipated. I no longer felt any immediate danger. In front of me lay a panorama of snow-capped mountains. Between the branches of oaks were dozens of prayer flags bearing block-printed images of wind horses, snow lions, conch shells and other emblems. During the New Year festival of Losar, Tibetan refugees come to Flag Hill. They offer prayers and burn incense in front of the mountains, beyond which lies their homeland. Throughout the day, they worship here, tying fresh flags to the tree limbs, as well as playing cards, drinking chhaang beer and dancing. For these Tibetan exiles, Flag Hill is a place where they can gather and gaze out at the mountains across which their people fled, more than half a century ago. 

"Their prayers and invocations are printed on the coloured flags and relayed on the breeze beyond those far white summits, towards Mount Kailash. This sacred mountain, also known as Kang Rinpoche, is not visible from Mussoorie, for it lies across the Zanskar Range in Tibet. Kailash is considered the keystone of the Himalayas, the mountain which holds all other mountains in place. For Hindus it is the austere ‘abode’ of Shiva and for Buddhists it is Mount Meru, navel of the universe. Though I could not see Kailash, I was aware of its distant presence, a hidden source of spiritual inspiration that exerts its force throughout the Himalayas."

" ... Northward, the main thrust of the Himalayas rose up in solid grandeur, a reef of ice and snow ... "

................................................................................................

Here, in the process of talking about a peak named Bandarpunch, Alter not only refers to a Hindu deity in the fashion of West as monkey God bot also gets his story mixed up. 

Burning of Lanka by Hanuman preceded the war, and since Hanuman visited Himaalaya to fetch Sanjeevanie, he could have dealt with his burns then, if not earlier. There was no second burning of Lanka. 

With confidence that insulting India is a non-sequitur, he proceeds to label Raamaayana a myth. 

Would he do that with doctrine of virgin birth, immaculate conception, or guilt blamed fraudulently on Jews instead of Romans for crucifixion? 

" ... Hidden behind Bandarpunch is a third peak that is barely visible, except from certain angles. Known as ‘Black Peak’ or ‘Kaala Naag’ (Black Cobra), it is the highest summit of the three. Together, the monkey’s tail and cobra’s hood evoke a mysterious, allegorical landscape that promises answers to eternal riddles and has fascinated me since boyhood.

................................................................................................


"East of Bandarpunch the mountains concede a valley where the Bhagirathi tributary of the Ganga cuts a passage through the main thrust of the Himalayas. Farther on, the Gangotri group and Kedarnath bulge up in a monumental heap of snow-capped ridges. But the peak that catches my eye is Nanda Devi, punctuating the eastern corner of my vision, faint as a watermark against the sky. This is the highest and farthest mountain I can see. With the sun behind her, she is featureless, a pale silhouette, as delicate as a moth with folded wings. Nanda is the ‘bliss giving’ goddess. Her blessings dispel all doubt and despair. A dangerous and vindictive deity, she often reveals her violent aspects but those who worship Nanda are showered with the comforting grace of her benevolence. She is the mountain bride of Lord Shiva, who sits in meditation on Mount Kailash. If I were to ride on the wings of a Himalayan griffon across the mountains, soaring from Bandarpunch to Nanda Devi, then follow a straight line towards Tibet, the trajectory of our flight would take me directly to Kailash, no more than 300 kilometres away.

"These mountains represent for me three different aspects of the Himalayas. Bandarpunch offers healing and solace, while Nanda Devi promises ananda or happiness that releases us from anger, fear and doubt. And Mount Kailash, beyond my line of sight, marks an elusive threshold of transcendence. Each is linked to the others by a mysterious triangulation of the soul, an inner cartography that maps the routes I must follow. This trinity of sacred peaks signifies the stages of my search for reconciliation and recovery. Tracing their profiles in my mind, I scan the crags and ridgelines for hidden passages through the mountains. Together the three summits pull me towards them, as if through an instinctual force of nature, the same primal impulse that carries a migratory bird across the Himalayas."
................................................................................................

"WHAT MOUNTAINS MEAN 

"The fifth century Sanskrit poet Kalidasa opens his epic poem Kumarasambhava with lines in praise of the Himalayas. He proclaims them a ‘proud mountain-king!’ crowned with a ‘diadem of snow’ in this early translation by British orientalist, Ralph T. H. Griffith, author of Specimens of Old Indian Poetry: 

""Far in the north Himalaya, lifting high 

"His towery summits till they cleave the sky, 

"Spans the wide land from east to western sea, 

"Lord of the Hills, instinct with Deity. 

"For him, when Prithu ruled in days of old 

"The rich Earth, teeming with her gems and gold, 

"The vassal Hills, and Meru drained her breast, 

"And decked Himalaya, for they loved him best, 

"While Earth, the mother, gave her store to fill 

"With herbs and sparkling ores the royal Hill…""

................................................................................................

" ... Krishna replies: ‘Those who set their hearts on me and ever in love worship me, and who have unshakable faith, these I hold as the best Yogis. But those who worship the Imperishable, the Infinite, the Transcendent unmanifested; the Omnipresent, the Beyond all thought, the Immutable, the Neverchanging, the Ever One; who have all the powers of their soul in harmony, and the same loving mind for all; who find joy in the good of all beings—they reach in truth my very self.’ (12:1-4) 

"Ralph Waldo Emerson understood this when he gave up his parish in New England to seek a transcendent path through the woods. And yet, the most important step towards becoming a mountain is to close the books that others have written and read only those texts imprinted upon rock and ice or in the forests and streams that cascade from above. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... Lightman concludes with a story about ospreys nesting near his summer home on an island off the coast of Maine. He explains that he and his family observed the ospreys for several years, watching the nesting pairs return from their winter migration. One summer, after seeing the eggs hatch and studying the progress of the fledglings, he stood on the deck of his house, witnessing the young birds’ first attempts to fly.

""On this particular afternoon, their maiden flight, they did a loop of my house and then headed straight at me with tremendous speed. My immediate impulse was to run for cover, since they could have ripped me apart with their powerful talons. But something held me to my ground. When they were within 20 feet of me, they suddenly veered upward and away. But before that dazzling and frightening vertical climb, for about half a second we made eye contact. Words cannot convey what was exchanged between us in that instant. It was a look of connectedness, of mutual respect, of recognition that we shared the same land. After they were gone, I found that I was shaking, and in tears. To this day, I cannot explain what happened in that half-second. But it was one of the most profound moments of my life.""

................................................................................................


" ... Alan was attacked by ardent atheists for conceding that faith and science might be, somehow, compatible. A few weeks earlier, a team of physicists had announced their discovery of the Higgs boson, the so-called ‘God particle’, which is partly named after S. N. Bose, one of India’s most eminent scientists and thinkers. In the press there was a lot of discussion about science unravelling the mysteries of creation. Though I have no real understanding of physics, Alan and I talked about it around the fireplace at Oakville in the evenings. ... "

" ... We have dreamed up gods so that we can reassure ourselves that somewhere, someday, somehow, after this life is over, something awaits us: a presence that recognizes who we are. But if we approach a mountain instead, accepting that we are nothing more or less than an integral part of its existence, our ego merges with the nature of the mountain."

" ... The cowboys and sheepmen of the American West failed to understand that by eradicating wolves, they would ultimately turn their pastures into dust. Leopold believes that the ranchers had ‘not learned to think like a mountain’."
................................................................................................


"Near our camp was a small stream that fed into the Zanskar River. While most of the mountains were bare and dry, this spring irrigated narrow margins of grass and wild herbs along its banks—chives, caraway and thyme, which were blooming in the short Ladakhi summer. The place felt as close to wilderness as anywhere I’ve been in the Himalayas, though today it is probably nothing more than a bend in the road, with jeeps and lorries rumbling by. Recalling the eyes of the wolf and the rampant horse, as well as the sprig of fragrant thyme pinched between my fingers, I can think only of Dylan Thomas’s line, ‘… the force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age…’ I was twenty-four years old at the time, and about to become a father.

"Ehrlich explains that after viewing an exhibition of scroll paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, she set off for China to visit the sacred mountains depicted by those painters. She was entranced by the fluid lines and brush strokes that show crags and hilltops draped in mist, with waterfalls and hermits’ huts and staircases ascending the rocks beneath crooked pines. As a student of Buddhist teaching, Ehrlich seeks the sacred truths in these landscapes and their healing message. Her first destination is Mount Emei, in the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas, described by ancient poets as ‘the most beautiful mountain in the world’. What she discovers is the wholesale corruption of natural beauty beginning with the ‘Stalinesque’ architecture of the buildings in the town below ... Her final ascent is by tram instead of on foot where the summit has been flattened into a concrete arcade of tea stalls and gaudy souvenir shops with loudspeakers blaring Chinese pop music."

"Though the book ends with notes of redemption, played on flutes by Naxi musicians, most of Ehrlich’s story is about disillusionment and the impositions of a modern industrial society on the once pristine ... "

"Gretel Ehrlich visited Mussoorie as part of a literary festival I organized. We had never met before but I had read most of her books. On the second day of her visit, I led a group of writers including her to the top of Flag Hill so that we could see the snow peaks arranged to the north. Climbing the hill, she asked about our attack, and I remember telling her in detail about the men who stabbed us and the fact that I felt no pain as the blades cut into my flesh. Between pointing out the birds and trees on the hill, I kept recounting those events, probably more than anyone wanted to hear, as if the story was enmeshed with this place. Afterwards, she said, ‘You might as well write a book about it.’ In her memoir The Solace of Open Spaces, Ehrlich escapes the trauma and loss of a lover and companion by going off to Wyoming and finding redemption in the wild vast spaces of the American West, herding sheep and attending Native American festivals and ceremonies. But more than anything it is the landscape that consoles her and gives her the strength to move on. ... "

"Gretel owns a home in Wyoming under the slopes of the Wind River Mountains, south of Jackson Hole. When I stopped by for a visit the summer after she came to Mussoorie, it struck me that she’d found the perfect place. Instead of the sacred mountains of China, or the ice floes of the Arctic where she has spent whole seasons accompanying Inuit hunters, here was her own ‘home on the range’ with pronghorn antelope roaming nearby and the late afternoon sun painting the mountains with brushstrokes of light.

"Mamang Dai, a writer from Arunachal Pradesh, in the northeastern corner of India where the Himalayas taper away toward Burma, has written a poem titled ‘The Voice of the Mountain’. The poet’s point of view and the ‘I’ of the mountain merge in these verses, so that in the closing lines it is impossible to say who is speaking: 

""I am the breath that opens the mouth of the canyon, 

"the sunlight on the tips of trees; 

"There, where the narrow gorge hastens the wind 

"I am the place where memory escapes the myth of time, 

"I am the sleep in the mind of the mountain.""

................................................................................................


"A primal sense of spiritual longing draws us towards the mountains, just as skeins of geese and other migratory birds are guided by magnetic forces emanating from the earth. Even the most pragmatic climbers speak at times of mysterious forces they encounter at great heights. More than any other range on earth, the Himalayas contain a rarefied atmosphere of sanctity. Most seekers are content to find their gods on the lower slopes and passes as well as in the valleys below these peaks. But some believe that they must ascend into the snowy heights in order to achieve transcendence. An extreme example was Tulshuk Lingpa, a Tibetan shaman who led a devoted band of followers across Sikkim and on to the slopes of Kanchenjunga, promising that he would open a portal to the ‘promised land’, a beyul or valley of immortality that Tibetans believe exists beneath the surface of the landscape. Claiming supernatural powers of navigation, Tulshuk Lingpa interpreted events following the Dalai Lama’s exile as an auspicious moment when the gates of the promised land would open for those who believed. In October 1962, he set off with three hundred true believers to find this hidden paradise. Thomas Shor has written an account of their ill-fated journey in A Step Away from Paradise. The conclusion of this quest leaves open the question of whether Tulshuk Lingpa achieved his goal, even as the mountain opened up and drew him in.

"Equally passionate and irrational was the bizarre story of Maurice Wilson, a quixotic Yorkshireman who flew his single engine plane to India in 1934 and sneaked into Tibet, following in the footsteps of the first British Everest expeditions. He believed that the true path to God lay up the highest mountain in the world and, if he could reach the top, he would be lifted into heaven. Disguising himself as a pilgrim, Wilson reached the Rongbuk Glacier accompanied by a band of porters who finally abandoned him below the North Col. Wade Davis tells this tale in Into the Silence, a tragic history of the early expeditions to Everest. With barely any equipment and no experience of mountaineering, Wilson made a remarkable effort to achieve his spiritual goal. His frozen corpse was discovered the next year by British climbers above the glacier at an altitude of 6,400 metres. Earlier, while pioneering the same route, George Mallory achieved a form of immortality when he and Sandy Irvine disappeared beneath the summit of Everest, their fate a cause for eloquent obituaries suggesting they became one with the mountain, part of an imperial dream and a fatal catharsis following the devastation of World War I."

Wasn't body of Mallory found in recent decades, sans the photograph of his wife which he had securely zipped in his coat, intending to leave it at the top? 

................................................................................................

As usual with this author, written with some flourish but wrong as far as knowledge of languages of India, especially Sanskrit goes - even at its simplest! 

"Amongst all of its muscular and esoteric contortions, yoga includes the tadasana, or mountain stance. It is one of the simplest of all physical postures in which a person stands erect with his or her feet firmly planted on the ground, arms held at the sides, palms facing inward. The chest is pushed out and the chin raised, no different than a sentry standing at attention. In this way, an adept practitioner of yoga takes on the mountain’s lofty demeanour, its resilience and dominating stature. Breathing is controlled and eyes are closed. Sinews and skeleton, nerves and blood vessels, mucous and bile, every gland and organ becomes an integral part of a somatic metaphor while the practitioner focuses on a mental image of a perfect mountain, unattainable yet fully realized in mind and body."

All very nice, except - the name tadasana is derived from the word Taada, pronounced Taad, which isn't a mountain; it's one of the species of palm trees, and its fruit is shaped a little like a water chestnut, but much larger, and not as dry or floury. The connotation of the name of the yogasana named after this tree is illustrated by the description provides above. 

If it were named after a mountain, the pose would have ones arms raised at least halfway to, if not completely, horizontal.

................................................................................................

"‘When the sage climbs the heights of Yoga’, the Bhagavad Gita explains, ‘he follows the path of work; but when he reaches the heights of Yoga, he is in the land of peace’. (6:3) 

"The Katha Upanishad echoes these thoughts with the exhortation: ‘Awake, arise! Strive for the Highest, and be in the Light! Sages say the path is narrow and difficult to tread, narrow as the edge of a razor.’

"Challenging his followers to engage in a physical and spiritual renaissance, Swami Vivekananda, the great Hindu reformer who helped introduce Hinduism to the West, has written: ‘You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the Atman when your body stands firm upon your feet and you will feel yourselves as men.’

"Arjuna’s dilemma in the Gita is how to reconcile his duty as a warrior with the battle he must fight against his kinsmen. Through their discourse on the field of war, Krishna, his divine charioteer, reveals the higher purpose of Arjuna’s actions and the illusory nature of life and death, which leads to the final annihilation and absorption of the soul, the atman, becoming one with the cosmic whole, with brahman. 

"Emerson paraphrases lines from the Gita in his poem, ‘Brahma’: 

""If the red slayer think he slays, 

"Or if the slain think he is slain, 

"They know not well the subtle ways 

"I keep, and pass, and turn again."

"These verses were originally published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1857, a year in which India saw its first rebellion against British rule, and plenty of redcoats were killed, after which they retaliated with vengeful slaughter. The same lines, as translated by Juan Mascaró in 1962, offer a somewhat different gloss. ‘If any man think he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows the ways of truth. The Eternal in man cannot kill: the Eternal in man cannot die.’ (2:19) Profoundly ambiguous, these lines resurface, word for word, in the Katha Upanishad, translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester: ‘If the slayer think that he slays, if the slain think that he is slain, neither of them knows the truth. The Self slays not, nor is he slain.’"

" ... But though the verses remain opaque, steeped in enigma and paradox, I find them strangely comforting."

................................................................................................

" ... the sky was brightening and I could begin to see the profiles of the ridges around me, the layered shadows of surrounding mountains. By now a dawn chorus of bird calls had begun: the burbling whistle of green pigeons and the cackle of laughing thrushes, the single, plaintive note of a hill partridge and the wailing of barbets. At no other time of day do the mountains seem so alive, so full of sounds and smells, the sour-sweet odour of mouldering oak leaves and the resinous scent of pines. The air at daybreak seems as if it has never been breathed before and the light is young, full of unseen possibilities. Sitting on a grassy knoll, huddled in my canvas jacket against the cold, I listened and waited, alert and silent. 

"Below me in the valley, I could hear the murmuring whisper of a stream falling over rocks. In the sky, the last few stars were burning out and the moon was sliding beyond the ridge behind me. Grass was brittle with frost and I could see my breath condensing in the air. Across from me, the opposite side of the valley rose up a hundred metres away at its closest point, extending high above me to the ridgeline. ... Gradually, shapes began to coalesce—oaks and rhododendron trees forming out of the darkness. The day was brightening far above me but the valley had still to emerge from the night. ... "

" ... My eyes scanned the opposite ridge as my fingers tightened around the cold gunmetal and wooden stock. The stillness at dawn is like a meditative trance. It holds us in perfect stasis, as if time has stopped, and breathing slows, while the current of blood in our veins is no longer seething but moves without a pulse. I felt totally connected to the mountain, transfixed within its vastness, as well as in the immediacy of this particular spot, the moist earth and dead grass beneath my feet. 

"And then, I saw the slightest movement across from me, as if a single leaf had turned over on the breeze. A shadow seemed to rustle within the foliage, the indistinct form of an animal still hidden from view. My eyes strained to confirm its presence even as I began to lift the rifle—slowly. It was there and not there. I saw patterns shifting and, a moment later, a goral stepped into view, its grey coat nothing but a smudged blur in the half-light, with a faint white patch on its throat. The animal’s ears flicked nervously as it looked across at me. In that moment, we were each alone in ourselves, yet one with the mountain."

................................................................................................
................................................................................................


"APPROACHING THE GODDESS 

"Nanda Devi is often translated as the ‘bliss-giving goddess’, though the Sanskrit word ‘ananda’ at the root of her name is better understood as ‘contentment’. ... "

One, author should consult someone before making pronouncements on Sanskrit. He's generally wrong, and it's due to lack of knowledge coupled with a hubris. 

Here, he's already wrong more than once. 

Ananda, pronounced and in Indian languages, written 'Aananda', is not the root; if anything, Nanda is closer to the root, while aa added as prefix amounts to 'with, until, upto', ... 

Equally wrong is his interpretation. Aananda is Bliss, neither contentment nor jumping about, but more than joy and felicity both, a complete experience, that's bliss. 

" ... Bliss and joy are forms of happiness that suggest the kind of ecstatic faith that often borders on insanity. ... "

Alter is wrong. 

" ... However, the darshan I seek releases me from discontentment rather than evoking euphoria. Most importantly, darshan does not require the intercession of a priest, which is why it appeals to me. The act of darshan is unencumbered by liturgies, pious rhetoric or moralizing. As an atheist, I can appreciate the spiritual experiences others claim through darshan without accepting the theology and dogma."

" ... And on a midsummer morning in the gardens of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City, I received darshan from a snow-white peacock that appeared out of nowhere like a bird from a fairy tale. ... Or in the autumn forests of New England, where shimmering leaves of gold made me feel I was hallucinating, dazzled by the fiery blaze of dying foliage.."

................................................................................................


"HIGH PLACES

"My search for Nanda Devi begins at the Kuari Pass ... Trail crosses over into the Dhauliganga Valley above Joshimath. At an altitude of 4,264 metres, the pass is relatively low by Himalayan standards, but it opens on to a spectacular panorama of snow peaks, which rise to almost twice that height. The challenge of Kuari Pass is to reach there as early in the day as possible. Clouds often gather by mid-morning and soon there is nothing to be seen."

"Kuari Pass overlooks the inner core of the Garhwal Himalayas, which form an arc of 180 degrees, from Chaukhamba, the four-pillared mountain, across to Nilkanth, Mana and Kamet. Directly in front of us are Ghori and Hathi Parbat, the horse and elephant peaks, caparisoned with fresh saddles of snow. And, farther east, Dunagiri’s white pyramid cleaves the sky. Seated next to a cairn that marks the pass, I feel as close to the mountains as I can be without actually setting foot on their slopes. The only disappointment is that Nanda Devi is hidden behind the Pangarchula Ridge. We will have to wait until we descend a thousand metres below the pass before the goddess reveals herself."

"The traditional approach to Nanda Devi, before motor roads cut their way through the valleys of Kumaon and Garhwal, was to walk from Ranikhet or Almora, across the foothills and over the Kuari Pass to Lata, which is the last village before the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. ... "

"In his memoir, Upon That Mountain, Eric Shipton extols the pleasures ... on their way to Nanda Devi in 1934: 

"" ... Our way led over ridge after ridge of forest-clad hills; not the oppressive rain forest of the Eastern Himalayas, but gentle wooded slopes interspersed with grassy glades, moss and bracken and splashing streams. The rhododendrons were in bloom, and many kinds of Alpine flowers. Above were the sparkling white peaks of Trisul and Nanda Ghunti. The soft music of running water, the murmur of a light breeze in the trees, the summer note of the cuckoo, these were the sounds we awoke to each morning. With such a small party, we could camp far from the dusty villages, wherever we chose. We rarely bothered to pitch a tent, but lay, instead, on a luxurious bed of deep grass, beside a huge log fire. We lived with a sense of perfect freedom and deep physical and mental well-being. We wanted nothing."

"At Chitrakantha, which means picturesque point, we finally catch sight of Nanda Devi emerging above the ring of peaks that guard her sanctuary. The steepled summit is like a vast cathedral that has taken millions of years to carve, buttressed by eroded ridges and corniced with ice. By this time clouds obscure all of the other mountains and only Nanda Devi is visible. In the sky above her floats a gibbous moon so faint that I mistake it for a scrap of cirrus. The same colour as the peak, pale white and blue, it looks as if it has chipped off the mountain, and is now orbiting her sacred summit."

................................................................................................


"UNCERTAIN ALTITUDES

" ... Nanda Devi was considered the highest peak in the world. Today, at a carefully measured 7,816 metres above sea level, her rank has been reduced to twenty-third in elevation, though Nanda Devi has never surrendered her stature or sacred prominence. This beautiful yet forbidding mountain remains the highest peak inside the borders of India. Her perpendicular faces of rock and ice have been calculated as one of the steepest ascents. When asked which mountain he considered most difficult, after having just climbed Everest, Tenzing Norgay identified the eastern summit of Nanda Devi."
................................................................................................


"THE EYE OF CREATION

" ... The clouds and snow spume that drift about her summit are said to be the smoke from sacred fires of mystics who sit atop the mountain performing rites of worship for the goddess. ... This mountain stands out from the rest, not only because of her altitude but through a natural symmetry that suggests perfection. Daubed with vermillion at sunset, she is an uncarved image, the raw shape in stone that a sculptor sees before chiselling a face, the hidden idol awaiting discovery beneath the surface of a rock. ... "
................................................................................................


"PENETRATING THE SANCTUARY

" ... Aitken’s fascination with Nanda Devi grew from that first moment he saw her, rising above the lower ranges of Kumaon. Over a period of twenty years, he pursued the goddess, an infatuation that was both physical and spiritual. After several arduous treks, he was finally able to enter the sanctuary of Nanda Devi, nearly slipping to his death on the Rhamani slabs, an exposed rockface that bars the way. Eventually, he scrambled up the crags with the help of sure-footed Garhwali porters. Arriving in the monsoon, Aitken found the mountain hidden behind clouds. Building a small shrine in which he placed an image of Nandi, Shiva’s sacred bull, he waited for the goddess to reveal herself. Eventually, she consented to give him darshan:

""As I sat on the cave roof facing the black ramparts across the echoing river, the shredded mist higher up the mountain suddenly revealed a patch of blue. It was the first hopeful sign in five days of wet marching that the weather might clear. Contented, I sat back to breathe in the pleasure of the moment and as I idly stretched in the warming air the great moment happened. The top layer of cloud began to thin and tantalisingly the outline of the main peak began to flicker into recognition. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Unknown to me I had built the temple to Nandi exactly facing the Goddess. It seemed a minor miracle that the sun should choose this moment to reward my labours. ... Only her peak was revealed, as lovely a portrait in ermine as any queen could wish for. She sailed majestically against the brief blue of eternity and I could not take my eyes off this stunning apparition. Everything I desired had come to fruition. There was a feeling of utter fulfilment and a song of thankfulness welled up from that core of contentment that follows the union of heaven and earth; the perfect end to all our striving."

"Even today, thirty-five years after that moment, Bill continues to describe his darshan of the mountain as ‘a supreme moment of cosmic consciousness’. He believes that Nanda Devi told him to write, inspiring the book about his quest for the goddess as well as several other travel memoirs about his experiences in India. Though Bill writes with spiritual flourish and passion, he remains a totally grounded mystic with a dry sense of humour."

................................................................................................


"ILLUSIONS OF CONQUEST

"Eric Shipton described the first ascent of Nanda Devi, in 1936, by Bill Tilman and Noel Odell as ‘the finest mountaineering achievement ever performed in the Himalayas’. Two years earlier, Shipton and Tilman, along with Angtharkay, Pasang and Kusang, were the first men to find a route up the Rishi Ganga Gorge into the natural sanctuary at the foot of this mountain, a bowl-like valley that is all but inaccessible. During the early years of Himalayan exploration, Nanda Devi remained an elusive summit, frustrating the skills and determination of the best mountaineers of that generation, including Dr Tom Longstaff and his Italian guides, the Brocherel brothers. Virtually unapproachable, Nanda Devi and her sanctuary are protected by a chain of peaks over 6,000 metres that guard the innermost sanctum of her domain."

" ... Houston, Tilman and Pasang Kikuli completed an epic crossing of Longstaff Col, a near vertical route out of the sanctuary, which brought them into the Gauri Ganga valley.

"Severe floods in Garhwal and Kumaon in 1936 coincided with Tilman and Odell’s successful climb. Many believed that the conquest of Nanda Devi provoked the wrath of the goddess. Whether it was the tin of corned beef or those first bootprints on the summit, climbing Nanda Devi amounted to a form of sacrilege in the minds of many Hindus who believe that the upper reaches of the Himalayas are sacrosanct, the domain of deities, not human beings."

" ... Following the creation of Nanda Devi National Park in 1981, mountaineers have been refused access to the sanctuary. Now that entry up the Rishi Ganga Gorge is forbidden, recent expeditions have focused on Nanda Devi East, which stands 400 metres lower than the western summit and is accessible from the Milam valley and Longstaff Col. Nanda Devi East was first climbed by a Polish team in 1939.

"In 1993 a joint expedition of the Indian Army Corps of Engineers and naturalists from the Wildlife Institute of India undertook an environmental survey of the sanctuary and removed more than a ton of garbage from the area near base camp. Several members of this team also successfully reached the summit. Following their report of widespread pollution, poaching and destruction of juniper, yew and birch forests, the sanctuary remains closed to trekker"
................................................................................................

"PATHFINDING HERO 

"Nobody alive today has more first-hand experience of Nanda Devi than Dorjee Lhatoo, who has climbed the mountain on three occasions and reached both summits—east and west. His first encounter was during the Indo-French expedition in 1975 when he stood on top of Nanda Devi East along with Yves Pollet-Villard and Walter Cecchinel. The following year, he returned to the mountain with an Indo-Japanese expedition, in which two Japanese team members successfully climbed both summits and completed a traverse of the connecting ridge. Lhatoo supported the Japanese climbers by ascending from the west and replenishing their oxygen and other supplies. Bad weather intervened to stop him from attempting a traverse in the opposite direction. His third and final encounter with Nanda Devi was in 1981, when he participated in the joint Indian men’s and women’s expedition. One of the country’s most distinguished mountaineers and a member of the elite community of Sherpa climbers in Darjeeling, Dorjee Lhatoo summited Everest in 1984, and successfully ascended a number of other major Himalayan peaks.

"Despite his many excursions, today Lhatoo is reluctant to leave his home in Darjeeling, where he was an instructor at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute from 1962 to 2000. A dignified, soft-spoken man in his seventies with a trim, athletic build, Lhatoo looks as if he could still climb a mountain with ease. His manner is casual but cultured, almost courtly ... His living room contains climbing mementoes and pictures on the walls, including one of himself as a young man, standing between his mentors, Tenzing Norgay (the first man to climb Everest) and Nawang Gombu (the first man to climb it twice). Lhatoo is taller than both, with a rakish hairstyle that makes him look a little like Elvis Presley.

"On the opposite wall is a large photograph of the snow peaks one can see from Darjeeling: a dramatic panorama with Everest and Lhotse to the west and Kanchenjunga massif in the centre. The panorama extends eastward to Chomolhari, a 7,315 metre peak on the border of Bhutan and Tibet, which Lhatoo climbed in 1970.

................................................................................................

"This mountain has special significance for him because it overlooks the Chumbi Valley, his ancestral home. A narrow corridor between Sikkim and Bhutan, this strip of land is part of Tibet, one of the many anomalies of Himalayan cartography, where borders never follow a straight or predictable line. Until Nepal opened up, the Chumbi Valley was the only route to Everest, travelled by George Mallory and other climbers in the 1920s and ’30s. Lhatoo was born in Yatung, a small settlement along the caravan road from Gangtok to Lhasa. His father was caretaker for the Himalayan Club dak bungalows on this route. When Spencer Chapman led the first successful expedition to Chomolhari in 1936, he stayed with Lhatoo’s family.

"‘Chomolhari is considered a sacred mountain by the Bhutanese,’ he explains. ‘In Thimpu, before we set off, the king gave us an ornate copper pot called a yangu, and asked us to place it on the summit. It was very beautiful and contained all of the different minerals known to man, including gold and diamonds. I put it in my backpack and carried it to the top. All along our route, villagers came out to see who was carrying the yangu and they pressed their foreheads to my pack as I walked by.’

"Lhatoo smiles hesitantly. ‘I’m not a religious person. ... Having been asked to carry the yangu, I was determined to fulfil my responsibility, whether I believed in it or not.’

"Like Nanda Devi, Chomolhari is named after a goddess who is both protective and full of wrath, a paradox that symbolizes the unpredictable and ever-changing elements of Himalayan mountaineering, where disaster often follows in the footsteps of success. Though Lhatoo and another Indian climber reached the summit, their second team vanished completely.

................................................................................................

"Five years later, Lhatoo made his first ascent of Nanda Devi East as part of an Indo-French expedition attempting a traverse. That year there was a lot of snow at lower altitudes, which made the difficult entry into the sanctuary even more treacherous than usual.

"‘In retrospect it may seem like a great experience but while you are climbing in and out of the sanctuary it is very difficult, very exposed, with rocks falling from above, and then, below you…’ Lhatoo gestures to indicate a fall of 1,000 metres or more.

"Concerned about the safety of their porters, the French team fixed ropes all the way from Dharali into the Rishi Ganga Gorge. The Indian team leader, Colonel Balwant Sandhu, organized helicopter drops of supplies from Joshimath, which reduced the need for porters.

"Lhatoo explains how the Indian team provided food up to base camp, after which French cuisine took over. ... "

" ... The expression he chooses most often to describe a climber’s death is that he ‘disappeared on the mountain’, a gentle, respectful euphemism for the bone shattering tumble down unyielding rock and ice."

"Being a refugee from Tibet, Lhatoo expresses ambivalence towards the experience of exile. India is very much his home, yet he has vivid memories of what lies beyond the ranges. A few years ago he accompanied a Canadian film crew to Everest base camp in Tibet. They had hoped to enter the Chumbi Valley but, at the last minute, permission was refused by the Chinese authorities."

"Lhatoo’s final experience on Nanda Devi was in the summer of 1981, with an Indian expedition that succeeded in putting the first women on the summit: Chandraprabha Aitwal, Harshwanthi Bisht and Rekha Sharma. Following an extended stay in the sanctuary to acclimate, they moved up the mountain to Camp IV. The men and women were paired off and roped together. After having been stranded at high altitude for four days because of high winds and severe cold, the team set off at 4 a.m. Lhatoo was climbing with Rekha Sharma and they were the last to leave camp. With so many recent expeditions on the mountain, ‘there were ropes fixed all the way up Nanda Devi, like telephone lines,’ he recalls. Yet, progress was slow. Lhatoo and Rekha finally reached the top at 5.30 p.m. Ordinarily, the climbers would have turned back well before, but they knew this was the only opportunity they would have."

" ... An Indian Army paratroop expedition was on its way up Nanda Devi as they were coming down. One of the climbers was a former student of Lhatoo’s from HMI, an officer named Lakha Singh. ‘Sandhu told us to leave our fixed ropes behind for the paratroopers, as well as our tents and extra supplies of fuel and food. They would bring the equipment down for us after they finished. But Lakha didn’t like Sandhu and he insisted that they would fix their own ropes.’

"The paratroopers seemed overconfident on the mountain. If three ‘girls’ had climbed Nanda Devi, they believed it would be easy enough for them. Caught in a storm on his descent from the summit, Lakha died of exposure. Another paratrooper was killed while rappelling down the rope that Dorjee had fixed just below the summit.

"‘There was no knot at the end, nothing to stop him. He came down jumping, the way they teach them in the army, though the Sherpas warned him to be careful. When he reached the end of the rope, he just kept going…’"

................................................................................................

"MATERNAL HYMNS

" ... this region recognizes Nanda as the chaste daughter of the mountains who is given in marriage to Lord Shiva, the supreme ascetic and master of the universe. Nanda lives most of the year with her husband in his remote and inhospitable home on Mount Kailash, but she longs to return to the familiar comforts of her natal village in Uttarakhand. Pilgrimages like the Raj Jat Yatra re-enact the ritual journey of the bride leaving her parents’ home and being carried away in marriage. Pilgrims literally and figuratively ‘escort’ the goddess with songs and prayers. Her leaving is accompanied by sadness and mourning, while her return is greeted with joy and thanksgiving."

................................................................................................

"DAUGHTER OF THE MOUNTAIN"

The chapter is titled inappropriately, being about a girl named after, not daughter of, the mountain, if it's about Himaalaya and Nanda Devi. 

"In 1948 two young Americans who had recently survived the war against Hitler stood by the side of US Route 66 in Los Angeles, heading east. They carried rucksacks, ropes, ice axes and a cardboard sign that read: ‘Swiss Alps’. What they didn’t tell anyone as they hitchhiked across the United States, then caught a freighter to Europe, was their real destination—the Himalayas. Willi Unsoeld and his companion had summited most of the major peaks in the Pacific Northwest but they were determined to gain entry into the competitive fraternity of international mountaineering.

"After kicking around Switzerland for a couple of months and scaling peaks like Jungfrau and the Matterhorn, they ran out of money. Undeterred, the first post-war American Himalayan expedition headed to Gothenburg, Sweden, where they got jobs in an iron foundry to pay for their passage to India. Eventually, working as deckhands, riding third-class trains from Bombay to Delhi and on to Dehradun, swapping stories for meals, they reached their ultimate destination: Nilkanth, a 6,596-metre peak in the Garhwal Himalayas that stands near the Tibetan frontier. Edmund Hilary tried to climb it once but gave up, claiming it was ‘too bloody steep for me!’

"Bad weather and dysentery kept Unsoeld from reaching the summit, but standing on Nilkanth, he looked across to see what he would call ‘the most beautiful mountain in the world’—Nanda Devi, two spires of rock and snow that remained an obsession for the rest of his life. Though Unsoeld failed on Nilkanth, he returned to the Himalayas several times and became one of the first Americans to reach the top of Everest in 1963, pioneering a first ascent of the difficult West Ridge. This expedition almost cost him his life as he and three other climbers were forced to spend a night huddled together at 8,500 metres without sleeping bags or tents. Unsoeld sacrificed eight of his toes to frostbite on Everest. Settling in Oregon, he went on to become an advocate of wilderness preservation and adventure learning, a guru of the outdoors, whose passion for the mountains became a spiritual quest. When his wife, Jolene, gave birth to a daughter, Willi Unsoeld named her Nanda Devi after his favourite mountain and the bliss-giving goddess who watches over her slopes.

"In 1976, Unsoeld returned to the Garhwal Himalayas, leading an Indo-American expedition, intent on climbing Nanda Devi. Willi had recently turned fifty. Arthritic hips and missing toes made it unlikely that he would reach the summit but he had ambitions for his daughter, who was a member of the team. Nanda Devi Unsoeld was clear about the significance of this climb: ‘I feel a very close relationship with Nanda Devi. I can’t describe it, but there is something within me about this mountain, ever since I was born.’

"Though the lead climbers, including John Roskelley, made it to the summit, the Unsoelds’ obsession with Nanda Devi ended in tragedy. Trapped in a blizzard at 7,300 metres, Devi developed acute abdominal pain complicated by altitude sickness. Unable to carry her down from the mountain, Willi and others desperately fought to save her life, giving her mouth to mouth resuscitation until ‘her lips turned cold’. In an article for The American Alpine Journal, Unsoeld recounts the moments after his daughter’s death:

""As our faculties gradually returned to us, we discussed what was to be done. We agreed that it would be most fitting for Devi’s body to be committed to the snows of the mountain for which she had come to feel such a deep attachment. Andy, Peter and I knelt in a circle in the snow and grasped hands while each chanted a broken farewell to the comrade who had so recently filled such a vivid place in our lives. My final prayer was one of thanksgiving for a world filled with the sublimity of the high places, for the sheer beauty of the mountains and for the surpassing miracle that we should be so formed as to respond with ecstasy to such beauty, and for the constant element of danger without which the mountain experience would not exercise such a grip on our sensibilities. We then laid the body to rest in its icy tomb, at rest on the breast of the Bliss-Giving Goddess Nanda."

"Devi’s death and the strained relationship between Roskelley and Unsoeld flared into controversy. Roskelley’s book, Nanda Devi: The Tragic Expedition, describes an acrimonious team, and he accuses his fellow climbers of being undisciplined and irresponsible. Reflecting on his daughter’s death, Unsoeld recounted part of this experience in a lecture to outdoor educators: ‘In the face of reality, it’s difficult to know what to say. Upon our return to Delhi I was asked at the news conference, “Do you have any regrets?” and my answer was startled out of me—“No!” And then I wondered, “How can I say that?”’ Later, Unsoeld became more philosophical. ‘… this experience has opened my life to the reality of death and I can never look at it in quite the same way. Intellectually, I feel I’ve handled it. But emotionally, how does one handle the death of such a surpassing human being? And my answer is—you don’t. It handles you. It rubs your nose in the reality of your mortality. We are helpless before death’s onslaught and I guess therein lies a very great lesson that’s difficult for us control-types to learn. We’re not in charge in the face of reality and nature, and in the final analysis, I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

"Three years later, Willi Unsoeld was killed in an avalanche on Mount Rainier. 

"Near base camp in the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, Indian climbers have erected a memorial to the American girl who died on the mountain for which she was named. The inscription is taken from her diary and speaks of a personal moment of communion: ‘I stand upon a windswept ridge at night with the stars bright above and I am no longer alone but I waver and merge with all the shadows that surround me. I am part of the whole and am content.’"

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"DESECRATION"

That subtitle betrays the church roots of the authors ancestral roots, despite his stance of atheist conviction proclaimed repeatedly, as often as that of his being born and brought up in India. 

No one with roots deep in ancient Indian culture would use that title or have that feeling on the topic, and this despite a deep, real reverence for Himaalaya as land of Gods and Goddesses. 

"According to M. S. Kohli and Kenneth Conboy’s book, Spies in the Himalayas, the clandestine expedition to Nanda Devi began at a cocktail party in Washington. Speaking with US Air Force Chief of Staff, General Curtis Lemay, Barry Bishop, a National Geographic photographer and climber who took part in the first American ascent of Everest, is said to have proposed the idea of putting an early warning device atop a Himalayan summit. Initially, Kanchenjunga was proposed but Nanda Devi was ultimately chosen as a more viable option."

" ... When news of the lost sensor reached India’s Parliament more than a decade later, it caused political uproar, partly because of cooperation with the Americans but also because of fears that the plutonium would pollute the headwaters of the Ganga."

" ... The spymasters who set the plot in motion, B. N. Mullik and R. N. Kao, are no longer alive. Tucker Gougelmann, the CIA’s station chief in Delhi and a paramilitary expert in Vietnam, is long gone. So is Barry Bishop, whom Kohli once disguised in a turban, pretending he was the Maharaja of Patiala, while they chatted up girls at a bar in Anchorage, Alaska. Lute Jerstad, Harish Rawat and Sonam Gyatso are also dead. By some accounts, several of the Sherpas who carried plutonium up the mountain died of cancer caused by radiation. M. S. Kohli is one of the last survivors of the Nanda Devi mission and he tells the story with relish."

"After their training sessions, the Indian climbers did some sightseeing, including a visit to the New York World’s Fair. Kohli says that he initially opposed the plan to plant a listening device on Nanda Devi because it was a difficult peak to climb. He suggested Nanda Kot instead. After the first sensor was lost, the Americans finally took his advice and Kohli successfully planted another sensor on Nanda Kot, a peak he’d already climbed on one of his first Himalayan expeditions. Though commissioned as a naval officer, Kohli was deputed to the newly formed Indo-Tibetan Border Police, a paramilitary force that guards India’s Himalayan frontier.

"‘A year after it was installed, the device on Nanda Kot stopped working, and we had to go back up,’ he recalls. ‘It was buried under snow, but because of the plutonium power source, the ice around it had melted, forming a cave.’ He describes the weird scene they discovered as if it were a miraculous phenomenon: a radioactive totem enshrined in a cavern of ice."

"In an effortless segue from espionage to religion, he tells me how he was camped high up on a mountain. In the middle of the night he heard the sound of horse’s hooves and saw a vision of Guru Gobind Singh, the martial saint of Sikhism, riding a white stallion. ‘Immediately, energy flowed into me,’ he says. ‘I woke up my men and told them, chai banao! (make tea), and then I put on my crampons and set off, kicking steps in the ice, making my way up the mountain.’"

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"SACRAMENTS

"As we scramble up a landslide, where the main path to Lata has washed away, Mukesh explains there are two sections of the village, about a kilometre apart. The upper homes are occupied in summer but as soon as it snows, the villagers move down to their lower quarters. The residents of Lata are preparing for winter. Red chillies, kidney beans and apricot pits are spread on the rooftops to dry, where TV antennae and solar panels have been rigged up, amidst sheaves of harvested amaranth and buckwheat. Women with their heads covered in shawls of rough spun wool are carrying firewood down from the forest above. An old man is ploughing his fields with a pair of oxen. He tells us that he is planting winter wheat, which will sprout only after the snow melts in spring. The slate-roofed houses are built close together with staircases and narrow lanes leading from one courtyard to another. In each of the households, women are threshing grain and grinding it in stone mortars."

" ... Mountain Shepherds is a grass-roots effort to tap into Uttarakhand’s eco-tourism industry. They have organized my trek to Kuari Pass. ... "

" ... up to the Nanda Devi temple at the centre of the village. A straggling procession of men is working its way up a steep flight of stairs between the village homes, leading a young ram with yellow ribbons tied to its horns. The drummers maintain a steady rhythm as they climb towards the temple."

"Nanda Devi’s temple at Lata reflects the iconic shape of Mount Kailash, a tiered dome rising above a square stone platform. The door of the temple is locked. Next to it is Latu’s shrine, positioned at right angles, almost like a sentry box. At the far side of the courtyard stands a stone cistern filled by a spring that used to be the main source of drinking water for the village until the government provided a pipeline. Carved fragments of granite and broken columns lie about. Dhan Singh explains that these are the remains of earlier temples felled by earthquakes."

" ... Nanda Devi Unsoeld and her father stopped here and took darshan of the goddess before setting out for the summit, as did Shipton, Tilman, Houston and Odell."

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"SLAUGHTER ROAD 

" ... Soon after I bought my watch, I can’t remember when exactly, I made a decision that I would keep it for the rest of my life. To own only one watch seemed a wise and frugal choice, but more than that, it symbolized a resistance to change that appealed to my conservative nature. 

"But in 2003, I lost my watch. We were living in Reading, Massachusetts, and I was teaching at MIT. ... "

Funny how he disdains mentioning, teaching what, exactly. 

"About three weeks later, when I was about to tear down the signs I’d posted, and several heavy spring downpours made me think my watch could never have survived, I came back home from work to find it lying on the steps of our house. My HMT Quartz had been placed there carefully by someone, I don’t know who. It was working perfectly, the second hand circling like a spider weaving its web, the scratched crystal intact. Someone had returned it to me, an anonymous neighbour who did not want to claim the reward, or answer questions. ... "

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"LAKE OF SORROWS 

"Seeking Nanda’s darshan, I follow another path, east of Kuari Pass. This trek ... leads in a different direction, towards a small, high-altitude lake called Roopkund. Unlike my trek in November, when the panorama of snow peaks were clear and close at hand, this journey takes place during the monsoon, nine months later, when the mountains are covered by clouds.

"Few places in the Himalayas have aroused as much speculation, dispute and exaggerated expectations as Roopkund, a glacial pond at 5,029 metres above sea level, which remains frozen most of the year and only melts between July and September. During these few weeks, when the ice and snow recede, hundreds of human bones are revealed in the shallow, green waters of the lake and along its rocky shoreline. The presence of skeletal remains is a mystery. Nobody knows for sure why they are there.

"Carbon dating suggests that the bones are at least five hundred years old. According to popular lore they can be traced back to the fourteenth century. The most plausible explanation is that a cataclysmic storm or avalanche killed a party of pilgrims who were trying to cross Junargali, the pass of death, directly above the lake. This pilgrimage, which reenacts the bridal procession of the goddess, is the longest and most arduous ritual journey in Uttarakhand, beginning at Nanda’s natal home in the village of Nauti, then circling through the watershed of the Pindar and Nandakini rivers. Roopkund is the penultimate stage of this pilgrimage, beyond which the goddess in her palanquin crosses Junargali and descends into Shila Samudra, the ocean of rock, a seemingly endless expanse of glacial moraine at the foot of Trisul."

But on Google maps, photographs show more. It might be an archeological site, although unexplored as yet. 

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" ... Unlike the staid and relatively comfortable pilgrimages to shrines at the primary sources of the Ganga, which attract pilgrims from all across India, the Raj Jat Yatra is held only once every twelve years, and the participants are primarily from this region. Many devotees complete the 280 kilometres barefoot, protected from sun and rain by parasols of split bamboo or birch bark. The Raj Jat Yatra takes place at the end of the monsoon, when the mountains are obscured by mist and trails washed out by landslides. The yatra culminates at the source of the Nandakini River, a tributary of the Ganga that flows out of Shila Samudra. ... "

"On earlier monsoon treks, during the months of July and August, I have remained wet for days on end, soaked through by constant showers, until it is impossible to tell the difference between perspiration and precipitation. Nothing stays dry and my sleeping bag becomes a clammy cocoon. With each cloudburst, paths turn into rivers and you find yourself wading upstream or down, over slick boulders or through channels of mud. No matter how many layers of plastic, nylon or Gore-Tex you wear, the enveloping dampness seeps into your skin. Walking through mist, the air becomes so saturated with moisture, it seems almost too thick to breathe.

"But when it clears, as it always does, after a few hours, a day or a week, the brilliant green of the forests and mountains is so vivid, it feels as if everything is alive, even the soil and rocks beneath your feet. On our way to Roopkund, we set off from Lohajang, a village whose name means ‘battle of iron’, though it is a quiet wayside settlement with no evidence of military history. The night we arrive, however, a violent thunderstorm echoes with the sounds of warfare—the clanging of giant swords and booming of cannons.

"By dawn the sky is bright and still. Above us, we can see the snow-blanched face of Nanda Ghunti, the veil of the goddess, one of the many peaks that hide Nanda Devi from view. The mountain is like a wedge of ice driven into the upper end of the forested valley. Our destination lies close to the foot of Nanda Ghunti, amidst cliffs and snow. From Lohajang the broad ... trail descends into a forest of oak and rhododendron, our path festooned with peacock orchids and wild begonias. Though it isn’t raining, my boots are soon soaked by flowing streams that follow our route. Groups of schoolchildren, dressed in neat uniforms of blue and white, are coming up the path from nearby farms. Some of them carry their shoes so they won’t get wet. Book bags are heavy with homework. One of the girls warns us about a landslide that blocks the way on ahead, though she has made it across.

"In the first hour, we drop 300 metres. The opposite slope of the mountain grows steeper as the valley narrows, and it is obvious that we will soon be forced to regain altitude. Below us, hidden from view by a canopy of foliage, the Bedni Ganga roars in the depths of its gorge. Descending into one of the side valleys, we cross a bridge over a lesser stream that falls in a torrent between banks of bamboo and tree ferns that rise above our heads. The arched branches on either side of the bridge are draped with polypods and moss.

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"The landslide turns out to be less of an obstacle than we imagined. Scrambling across grey mud and shale, we come to a series of abandoned terraces, overgrown with weeds. The path disappears as we bushwhack through thickets of marijuana 3 metres tall, resinous florets dangling over us like limp green tassels. Soon after we have battled our way through this fragrant jungle, the foliage turns to stinging nettle and we are forced to retreat and take a detour through another field. Eventually, after vaulting over a stone wall we re-join something that looks like a path. A hundred metres ahead is another stream where the bridge has washed away and we will have to wade across.

"As soon as I begin to unlace my shoes, I realize that my feet and ankles are covered in leeches. They look like black stitches coming undone, fastening and unfastening themselves to my skin. No matter how quickly I pick them off, others appear. They cling to my fingers as I try to flick them into the stream. After counting at least twenty-five, I lose track of numbers. Fortunately, because the bridge is washed out, we have been forced to stop and remove our shoes before crossing the stream, otherwise our feet would have become sieves of blood. Several leeches have already gorged themselves and fallen off. Red welts on my calves and between my toes are oozing red. ... "

"One of my companions, Titu, has worked as a trekking guide and completed the basic and advanced courses at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering. I have hiked with him before and know that he is a strong walker and resourceful when it comes to setting up camp. More to keep him company and allow me to be alone whenever I choose, I have also hired a friend of his, Akshay, who has little trekking experience but seems eager for the adventure.

"Though I crave the solitude of trekking alone, there is still a residual fear from our attack, an uncertain, uncomfortable feeling of being vulnerable and exposed, unable to defend myself. Having Titu and Akshay with me is reassuring. They help lighten my load and will be there if we face an emergency."

That's the normal prudence of India - which, if the couple had learnt in the first place, they wouldn't have opened the door to a bunch of intruders in pre-dawn dark of night in the first place. 

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"Soon after we ford the stream our path crosses a bridge over the Bedni Ganga and the climb begins. From here to Roopkund is a steady ascent of 3,000 metres. Over the course of three days we pass through every variety of Himalayan botany, from semi-tropical foliage full of liverworts and mosses, ground orchids and ferns, through various bands of deciduous forest marked by different species of oaks—banj, moru and kharsu. Each of these trees provides fodder for cattle at different times of the year, as the dairymen move their herds up and down the slopes during spring and fall. The conifers change too with altitude, chir pines giving way to cypress and cedar, then spruce and fir, and finally thuner, the Himalayan yew, a hardy tree with delicate needles and papery bark. An experienced naturalist can gauge the elevation without an altimeter simply by marking the presence of different species. Once you climb above the treeline at 3,000 metres, bugyal meadows provide a lush zone of grass and wildflowers, layered between forest and crags. These summer pastures attract herdsmen with their cows, buffaloes, goats and horses. For trekkers, the bugyals provide a brief respite from the relentless climb, their rolling slopes less steep and strenuous, before the final ascent into rock and snow."

" ... As she escapes from the buffalo demon and takes refuge in the forest, Nanda curses the turmeric and potato plants which offer no protective shade, banishing them underground. Tripping on the stubble of a wheat field, her tears of sorrow and anger leave the soil barren. Nanda also curses the pines, because their needles fail to hide her from the demon. Their branches will never regenerate themselves after they are cut. However, as consolation, she grants the pine a boon to serve as the flagpole at her shrines. After finally hiding behind a kunju shrub, a thorny bush with dense foliage, Nanda blesses this plant, saying that it will never lose its leaves: no goats or cattle will eat kunju for fodder, and men will not cut it for fuel or timber."

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"The climb grows more and more precipitous, until we are scrambling up a ladder of tree roots along the spine of the ridge. The oaks cast plenty of shade but it is hard work and sweat pours down my face. Too late, I realize that I have made the mistake of not drinking enough water before leaving Didana. Halfway up the ridge, my legs begin to cramp. Though I swallow half a bottle of water, it doesn’t help and I know that we must stop. Somewhere to our left, I can hear the sound of a stream, but it lies beyond dense thickets of ringal bamboo. The ravine looks even more precipitous than the ridge. Fortunately, Titu is able to scout for a campsite and after exploring in the direction of the water, he finds enough flat ground for us to pitch our tents. Though I am not particularly tired, my legs continue to cramp. Frustrated and discouraged, I drink a litre of water and lie down to rest. 

"Before long, clouds sweep in and it begins to rain. It was fortunate that we stopped here, because the storm would have caught up with us ahead. Impatience is a walker’s downfall and I wish I hadn’t forced our pace. There is no real urgency driving us on, and my body has signalled its resistance. Though I know that the cramps will be gone by nightfall, I wonder whether I will be able to complete the trek. After a bright beginning we spend the first evening in a sober mood, the mossy limbs of trees dripping on to our tents and thunder bellowing above the bugyals.

"Next morning, when I test my legs, they feel much stronger. Breaking camp after breakfast, all three of us are in a better mood. Blundering through the bamboo, I locate our path and start slowly up the trail. With each step, I keep expecting my calves and thighs to knot up but the muscles have regained their elasticity. Despite the climb, I am able to appreciate the forest again. The ground is covered with mushrooms and other kinds of fungi, including a bright orange variety, as large as dinner plates. Another species that grows out of a tree stump has the appearance and colour of scrambled eggs.

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"After half an hour, I stop to rest, waiting for Titu and Akshay to catch up. Minutes later, I hear children’s voices and three young girls come up the trail. They are ten or twelve years old, each of them carrying baskets woven out of split bamboo. Seeing me sitting on a fallen tree, they stop abruptly, as if confronted by a demon. Greeting them, I try to reassure the girls that I am not dangerous, though they leave the trail and skirt around me cautiously. Only when they are a safe distance up the path, do they ask where I am going.

"As we keep passing each other over the course of the morning, stopping at different points to rest, the girls and I carry on a fragmented conversation. They are headed to their chaan, a summer shelter where goats and cattle are kept at pasture. The girls are from Didana and their family chaans lie at one end of Ali Bugyal. When I ask if they attend school, the eldest says they study at the temple because the nearest school is 10 kilometres away and they have work to do at home. All three walk steadily up the slope with purposeful maturity. Learning that I am going to Bedni Bugyal and Roopkund, they want to know if I am going to make an offering to the goddess. Unlike the man who followed me the day before, their questions are carefully asked and they consider my answers with thoughtful expressions. While he was an adult with the mind of a child, these are children who seem much older than their years. They do not ask for anything and seem completely self-reliant. The baskets they carry contain bags of rice and flour, as well as steel darantis (small sickles) for cutting firewood and fodder.

"When we finally reach the treeline where my path continues up the hill and theirs cuts across the lower edges of the meadow, the youngest girl points toward a plume of wood smoke rising from their huts. Smiling with anticipation, she tells me, ‘Chaan pey bhaat banayenge—When we reach our chaan we’re going to cook rice.’ The simple satisfaction in her statement makes me appreciate the hardship and deprivation these girls endure, as well as the false pretence of self-sufficiency that I carry on my back. Compared to theirs, my life seems far too complicated and full of dubious privileges.

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"Ali Bugyal is one of the largest alpine meadows in Uttarakhand, rolling fields of grass that spread for 30 square kilometres across the upper flanks of a broad ridge that leads on to Bedni farther up. Thin curtains of mist begin to drift across the meadows as we wade knee-deep through fields of anemones, potentilla and lousewort. Wild salvia and thistles grow along our path, which converges with dozens of other trails, trod out of the meadow by cattle and sheep. Animals are grazing all around us, appearing and disappearing in the mist. During the monsoon, bugyal meadows are peaceable, plentiful pastures where the mountains provide an abundance of food until they are covered by snow in winter. At one place, half a dozen horses seem to race the retreating mist. Two of them are foals testing young limbs as they chase their mothers. We can hear cowbells as we walk, a gentle, clanging sound from somewhere in the clouds. These meadows are the summer gardens of the goddess, a symbol of her fertility."

"Bedni, where we spend the night, is one of the primary halts on the Raj Jat Yatra. Here we join the main pilgrimage route that comes up from a village called Wan, which has a large temple dedicated to Latu, Nanda’s bodyguard. For most of the year, above this point, the path is covered with snow and ice. The bugyals at Bedni have plenty of water. An artificial lake has been created with the help of a concrete dyke, converting a marshy wetland into a sacred pond. Trekkers’ huts and a makeshift tea shop stand nearby, along with a forest department outpost. These haphazard structures and mangled strands of barbed wire mar the natural sanctity of the bugyal. Yet, Bedni has an eerie beauty, particularly after a storm. We arrive in the rain and take shelter in a trekker’s hut, a domed structure made of fibreglass and tin, with a wooden floor. By early evening the clouds begin to disperse. I watch as they slough off the cliffs, spilling across high ridges like milk boiling over the rim of a pan.

"A few minutes later, I can just make out the shape of a snow peak emerging from the mist. Its silhouette is barely visible at first but gradually takes shape before my eyes, until I recognize the scalloped summit of Trisul. ... From Bedni the three points of the trident are not clearly evident but there is no mistaking Trisul’s towering crest that rises 7,120 metres above sea level. Eventually, the entire mountain is revealed, though the clouds keep it wrapped in shadow, while the sunset picks out more distant ranges to the west. Far off, beyond a fretwork of ridges, I recognize Chaukhamba glinting in the waning daylight.

"Near the lake at Bedni stands a small Nanda Devi temple, as well as a shrine for Latu. Made entirely of rock, no mortar holds the stones in place, though moss has grown between the crevices. The central niche of Nanda’s shrine houses two small idols of the goddess, carved from stone. Next to these is a single conch shell, white as a lump of snow. ... "

" ... Devi’s idols are bathed in the pond and devotees are cleansed by submerging themselves in its cold, spring-fed waters. Her images are worshipped at this shrine, which serves as a transitional shelter during the Raj Jat Yatra, the ‘big pilgrimage’ that occurs every twelve years, when the goddess is carried on to Roopkund and Shila Samudra Glacier."

" ... After a few wrong turns while crossing the meadow, we reach the main pilgrim trail, which is easy to follow. Chunks of slate are placed vertically as rough cobblestones, creating a path that doesn’t get mired in mud or dung. With the next Raj Jat Yatra only a year away, work has started on improving the trail and I can see where fresh sections of stones have been laid. 

"Our climb grows steadily steeper as we follow the contours of the ridge. Trisul remains hidden behind clouds. All I can see are precipitous slopes of grass falling away from the side of the trail and disappearing into the mist. ... Eventually, we reach a place called Pathar Nachuni, where the exposed rocks look like the ruins of a giant amphitheatre.

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"Climbing steadily, we pass several shrines. One of these lies at a pass called Kelu Vinayaka, where a new stone structure has been built containing an image of Ganesh ... As the eldest child of Shiva and Parvati, Ganesh is revered throughout India. ... "

Wrong again! 

Why this repeated racist hubris by someone who claims birth and growing up in India? It's easy enough to ask and correct these mistakes that Alter insists on committing! 

No, Kartikeya is the elder, being the reason Gods helped Parvati succeed by sending Madana and Rati to disturb the Dhyaan Samaadhi of Shiva, so thst he'd become aware of Parvati, marry her, and Kartikeya born of this marriage would defend Gods and defeat their adversaries. And so it came so be. 

Ganapati is younger, but smarter and wiser, according to more than one amusing legend, but even generally it is so understood. 

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"Vinayaka marks a point where steep grasslands merge into the uppermost margins of rock and ice. Here too, another trail comes up the opposite side of the ridge from the village of Sutol, an alternate route for pilgrims. Cloaked in mist, the wayside shrine seems less a portal to another world than a forgotten milestone in the clouds. The benign image of Ganesh ... "

" ... The face of the mountain has been quarried by erosion, exposing slabs of stone cracked and fissured by the freezing and melting of ice. Glaciers and avalanches have dragged the rocks and scattered them like the flattened ruins of a vast citadel devastated by an earthquake. Walking through frayed curtains of mist, it feels as if we are the first to arrive in the aftermath of a natural disaster, with no survivors left to rescue.

"Our camp for the night is Bhugubasa. We reach there in the early afternoon but the sky is so dark it feels as if the sun is about to set. Amidst the rocks, I can see wild rhubarb and sedum but my attention is focused on locating a level place to pitch our tents. We reject an abandoned cave with rough stone walls enclosing its entrance, a temporary shelter for shepherds or mendicants, as uninviting as a yeti’s den. Just beyond, we find a sorry-looking cluster of broken walls and collapsed slate roofs, the abandoned remains of a pilgrim shelter. The stone floors inside two ruined huts offer the only level ground that we can see. As the rain continues to fall, I quickly erect my tent amidst the ruins at Bhugubasa, while Titu and Akshay head off to search for drinking water."

" ... While the lower stretches of our trek have been marked by constantly changing belts of foliage, and even the slopes below Kelu Vinayaka are covered with dark-blue gentians, buttercups and edelweiss, at this point we seem to have entered an altitudinal zone of near desolation."

" ... A story is told of G. W. Traill, the first British commissioner of Kumaon who was a mountaineer and explored much of this region in the 1830s. A pass above Pindari Glacier bears his name. When Traill ordered the shifting of Nanda’s temple in Almora, he was warned of the goddess’ wrath. Soon afterwards, while climbing in the mountains, he suffered a severe attack of snow which was interpreted as divine retribution."

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" ... The breeze is cold but the mist has evaporated and there is a clarity to the air, as if the storm has polished the atmosphere into a perfect lens that magnifies everything in sight. What startles me most of all are the greenish white blossoms of the brahmakamal flower, which grows in profusion. I can’t believe I didn’t notice them the day before. Known as Brahma’s lotus, they are considered a sacred bloom. Dried brahmakamal are often suspended above the doors of temples in Garhwal. The flowers look more like giant poppies than lotuses, though the crepe-like petals are cupped together in the shape of a supplicant’s folded hands. 

"Brahmakamal grows above 3,500 metres, one of the last plants found on any Himalayan climb. Most times I have seen no more than a dozen scattered amongst the rocks but at Bhugubasa thousands of brahmakamal cover the slopes, as if they have all burst forth in the aftermath of the storm. Their pale, luminous shapes are as delicate as Chinese lanterns, fields upon fields of blossoms that seem to have appeared overnight, a spontaneous miracle of nature."

................................................................................................

"Eventually, we come to a crumbling staircase of stones that brings us to a loose rockfall, where I can see traces of a path. Scrambling up this slope, I keep my eyes on the ground in front of me, to avoid looking at the drop below. A short distance on ahead, the rocks turn to gravel as we traverse an unstable stretch that looks more like a landslide than a passable trail. Just as I begin to wonder if we have taken a wrong turn, we crest the rise and there below us lies Roopkund, not more than 12 metres long and 6 metres across. Ice-scarred rocks form a natural chalice beneath the cliffs and its jade waters have a poisonous tint. A dense ceiling of clouds hangs above us, obscuring all but the closest crags. To our right lies a glacier of dirty ice, worming its way through a notch in the ridge. Westward, the lower slopes of Nanda Ghunti are streaked with snow, though most of the mountain remains hidden. Only below us is an unobstructed view of the rain-scoured valley extending to Bhugubasa and beyond."

"Descending to the lake, a short glissade down steep funnels of debris, we carefully avoid the mud, which is a morbid grey colour, contrasting with the green water. Most accounts of Roopkund describe hundreds of skeletons, though it is hard to imagine how anyone could have counted the bones, which are scattered and mixed together like a conglomerated bed of fossils. I estimate no more than thirty to forty victims of whatever catastrophe occurred, though it’s possible that members of the Himalaya Enjoyment Association, and other visitors like them, have carried off grim souvenirs.

"Only a dark rind of ice remains at one end of the lake, from which a trickle of water spills through the rocks. The cliffs above are fiercely toothed and wreathed in fog. ... "

................................................................................................

"WRITING WITH MY FEET 

"We climb toward Taktsang, the Tiger’s Nest, in Bhutan. ... This cliff-top monastery is built around a cave where Guru Padmasambhava meditated, after flying here from Tibet. His consort turned herself into an airborne tigress so that she could transport him over the Himalayas. Prayer flags are draped across a precipice, fluttering shreds of sacred texts that mark the trajectory of the guru’s flight."

Amusing to notice that Alter treats Buddhist lores with far more respect, never branding them as myth, while he never faults doing so several times per paragraph about lores and legends of ancient Indian culture by any name, as if terrified thst he might be accused of having lost caste - racial, that's caste by caste system of West, of course - and 'gone native', the most supreme sin for anyone of ancestry from Europe. 

But then, Buddha was of India in every way possible, and merely one of a long tradition of Divine descent on earth in a live girl, recognized as such; also, he didn't convert to anything abrahmic, although he did of course precede the later abrahmic faiths which are conversionist. 

So why does the disdain bordering on open, compulsory disrespect for India that's routine from writers of West, not extend to Buddhism? 

Is it because Buddhism is seen in context, not of its very Indian teaching and roots, but the military prowess of its far more numerous followers in East Asia? 

Of course, West respects brutal force, however idiotic and ignorant, overcoming and destroying other, however far more advanced, cultures. 

"My flags won’t pray for a better life next time round or forgiveness for sins I don’t regret—evil thoughts, perhaps, but not the daily transgressions that I’m supposed to confess. ... "

Does Alter realise this is a choice, a freedom India gives, but abrahmic creeds don't, and in saying this more than in anything else, he's unconsciously proved himself true, not to his ancestral distance from ancient culture of India, but to his birth and early years, his growing years, of India? 

"For close to fifty years, I haven’t prayed. Others have performed the task on my behalf. But on this walk the wind and trees seem to tug words from my soul. At Taktsang, I watch a Bhutanese family prostrating themselves in front of the guru’s image. A girl of four or five mimics her parents, flattening herself to the floor, as if doing calisthenics. The teenaged monk who unlocks the sanctuary for us trickles holy water into my palm from a silver vessel adorned with peacock feathers. I baptize my face and head, wondering what these rituals mean."

If that's not bring foreign, what is? 

Was he kept away, assiduously, from possible contamination of Indian thought, by family? 

................................................................................................

" ... Once when I was in high school, I became miserably depressed and angry for some reason that I can no longer recall. Returning home from school, I said nothing to my parents but picked up a 20-gauge shotgun and half a dozen shells, setting off into the forest on my own. Walking until it grew dark, I improvised a bivouac for the night, under a grove of wild cinnamon trees in the valley near a stream. I remember clearly how upset I was, the helpless misery bordering on the suicidal that comes out of adolescence. But I had taken the shotgun more out of habit than because I considered shooting myself. In fact, I did not even fire the gun, though several pheasants flew up in front of me. I had no matches to light a fire and no way of cooking the birds. This was late spring, warm and dry enough, so I needed no tent. Sitting alone on a sandy patch of ground near a shallow stream, beneath the branches of the cinnamon trees, I stayed awake all night. By this time the walk had settled my mind and I felt much better for being alone in the forest. At some point, an owl began to call, the only creature sharing my solitude. For a while, the moon came out and its pale aura filtered through the trees, but it soon gave way to darkness again. I had no watch with me, nor any kind of torch. 

"Hours later, when the first light of another day began to outline the ridges to the east, I climbed into one of the trees and peeled some of the cinnamon bark before scrambling out of the valley. By the time I got back home, breakfast was on the table. My parents must have been worried but somehow they understood and did not press me to tell them where I’d gone or why. I said nothing about my night alone. By this time, the sadness and anger had lifted. I felt cleansed by my aimless walk through the forest, those hours spent in darkness and the sweet perfume of cinnamon still lingering on my fingertips."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"ENTERING THE MANDALA 

"Driving across western Tibet, somewhere between Lhasa and Mount Kailash we approach the crest of an unmarked pass, roughly 4,500 metres above sea level. All at once, a low canopy of clouds dissolves into rain, a rare moment of precipitation in this arid landscape. ... "

"At the beginning of our journey, the rolling steppes seemed almost colourless, like monochromatic tints in a sepia photograph. But as we travel over the Tibetan Plateau, mountain light reveals a range of mineral hues in the soil, from rust to ochre, amber and gold, as well as the whiteness of salt. Wherever there is a hint of water, living shrouds of muted green unfold within the valleys. Sand dunes glow like burnished copper. Bruised and dented, the surrounding ridges are varying shades of purple or indigo, their pigments changing with the shafts of sunbeams that slant in across the high Himalayas."

"A few minutes later, descending from the pass, we cross a shallow draw, where two gazelles race off into a canyon. Suddenly, several hundred metres ahead, I see a rainbow. It marks the edge of the storm, a perfect arch of primary colours like strings of prayer flags erected by luminous vapours in the atmosphere. Appearing as if out of nowhere, the rainbow could be a window to another world. Our road passes directly beneath this ethereal gateway, as if built to celebrate our passage. The driver, Sonam, guns the engine on his Land Cruiser, accelerating toward the rainbow. I expect it will disappear before we get there, vanishing because of the angle of the sun or a gust of wind. But there it is in front of us. The bow remains taut, an invisible arrow pointing our way to a hidden land… Shambala? Sunlight gilds the slopes beyond.

"Our vehicle leaps and plunges over the rutted road. Sonam will not slow down. Seconds later, we drive through the arch, cheering as we cross this gaudy frontier of light. All of us laugh with excitement, shaking hands, congratulating ourselves. Sonam grins and blows his horn. After hours and days of tedious driving, this is a brief moment of exhilaration and delight that makes us feel as if we have finally reached our destination, though we are only halfway there. 

"When I look behind us, the bright bands of colour are gone."

................................................................................................

"Tibetan mythology and folklore explain that the land itself has many guises. Rainbows represent the auras of saints and teachers who have passed away, or numinous markers leading to promised lands. What we see around us is only the surface, beneath which lie hidden realities—lost cities, subterranean lakes and buried treasure. In one account, the undulating highlands of the Trans-Himalaya are actually the body of a female demon (some would call her a goddess) who lies asleep beneath our feet. Another myth describes the mountains as tent pegs that hold the sky in place. Countless stories of Shambala promise the discovery of a secret, peaceable kingdom, closer at hand than we think, just beneath the taut dry membrane of these barren steppes. Only those who are blessed with sacred access can find the invisible gateways and forbidden caves that lead us into this idyllic country. Our ignorance makes us blind to sheltered valleys and neighbouring worlds."

"Before setting off for Kailash, if I had been told that I would be travelling for two weeks with a group of forty Hindu pilgrims from Gujarat and Maharashtra, driving ten to twelve hours a day over unpaved, dust-smothered roads, and sharing accommodation, sometimes as many as ten of us in a room together, beds crammed end to end and side by side with no privacy or ventilation, and no baths for the duration of the journey, I might have reconsidered my options. However, the decision to travel to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar was impulsive. Making arrangements at the last minute, I had no choice but to let a travel agent in Kathmandu squeeze me into a group that was already organized and approved by Chinese authorities."

"Kathmandu itself was unknown territory. Though I have lived most of my life in the Indian Himalayas, I had never visited Nepal before this trip. Just as my fellow pilgrims began their spiritual quest at Hindu sites in the city, I made my rounds of Kathmandu’s major shrines, starting with Pashupatinath temple, where Shiva is worshipped behind silver doors that are closed to foreigners. ... After circumambulating Boudhanath stupa in the Tibetan quarter of the city, I took darshan of the Maitreya Buddha at another shrine. ... All of this seemed the appropriate thing to do before setting off for Kailash, though I felt more like a tourist than a pilgrim, pursuing the exotic instead of the divine."

................................................................................................

"Geographically, Kailash and Manasarovar have immense significance, for they lie at the centre of the high tablelands of western Tibet and mark the watershed of South Asia’s greatest rivers. From the slopes of this mountain and the glaciers that feed this lake, the Indus and Sutlej flow westward through the Himalayas, before crossing into Punjab and Sindh, on their way to the Indian Ocean. The Karnali River also originates near Kailash, carving its way southward through the mountains of Nepal to become a major tributary of the Ganga. And draining to the east is the Tsangpo, or Brahmaputra, which flows in a huge arc across Tibet before entering northeastern India and setting its course for the Bay of Bengal."

"For me, Tibet has always represented a forbidden country. My hometown of Mussoorie is one of the places in India where Tibetan refugees have settled. Accompanying the Dalai Lama into exile in 1959, they established a displaced community and culture outside their homeland. In 1962, when I was an impressionable six-year old, India and China fought a war over disputed Himalayan boundaries and these regions became inaccessible to most civilians, especially foreigners. I had always imagined that entering Tibet would be like crossing a closely guarded frontier, traversing a dangerous, unyielding border that might close behind me without warning, like mountain passes buried in a sudden avalanche of snow."

................................................................................................

"FRONTIERS OF FAITH 

"4.15 a.m. My wakeup call comes earlier than expected. I have forgotten to adjust my watch to Nepal time, a quarter of an hour ahead of India. Throughout this journey there will be continuous uncertainty about time, as if clocks are meaningless. All of China operates on Beijing time, two hours and fifteen minutes ahead of Kathmandu, though our Nepali guides and Sherpas refuse to advance their watches. Adding to the ambiguity, after crossing the border we will be travelling 800 kilometres westwards. According to Chinese clocks, sunrise at Mount Kailash can be as late as 10 a.m.

"Before departure, a group of pilgrims gather in front of our buses and perform a brief pooja. They sing ... and recite a Sanskrit incantation, led by one of the elderly women. At the end, they cry out in praise of Shiva: ‘Jai Gaura Shambhu! Bam Bam Bholey!’ The ritual is improvised and awkward but satisfies a need to invoke blessings for our journey."

" ... One of the travel agents briefs us in English and gives us a lecture on the rigours of the journey and the importance of maintaining a ‘positive attitude’. He tells us that yatris come in three varieties: those who see the trip to Kailash as a spiritual journey; those who are interested in nature; and those who feel they are buying a chance to boast about having been to Mount Kailash. The third category, he explains, are the ones who cause the most problems. We are instructed to travel light and leave behind unnecessary items. Our clothes and other belongings must fit into a small duffle bag provided by the agency. The rest of our luggage will be left at the hotel in Kathmandu. Our duffle bags are numbered for easy identification, since they are transported by truck. My number is 51. I am permitted to carry a day pack with me. The tour operator then recites a litany of rules. We will not be allowed to bathe for the duration of the trip and shaving is discouraged. The guest houses where we will stay have no running water. ... "

Author describes a comment by tour operator to the effect that tibetans aren't hospitable. This is a horrible comment, considering that their position is no different from that of Jews in Germany during WWII, except thst Tibetan people are suffering this in their own homeland, so perhaps one should compare them to natives of the so-called 'New World', where European migrants and conquistadores claimed they'd discovered the new continents - even as original residents suffered genocide at hands of the new arrivals claiming the land in name of a monarch in Europe or an abrahmic creed. 

................................................................................................

" ... Nepali policemen in blue camouflage are taking shelter from the rain under a tin awning and wave us through. In contrast, the Chinese put on a stern display of martial discipline. Halfway across the bridge, two guards in lime green camouflage inspect our passports and scowl at us with rehearsed suspicion. Farther on, a pair of sentries wearing dress uniforms stand at attention inside glass booths. Their jaws twitch and eyes flicker but otherwise they could be made of wax. 

"The immigration and customs hall on the Chinese side of the river has X-ray machines, a duty-free shop and uniformed officials wearing white gloves. Signs are written in Chinese characters and in English. Yet, the whole effect of regimentation and formality is defeated by the procession of Nepali porters ferrying baggage back and forth. Each of them has a blue transit pass, which they wave at the Chinese officials as they shuffle by, bent double under bales of fabric and boxes of other merchandise. Both women and men carry huge loads on their backs, most of the weight supported by straps across their foreheads. This route has always been an important trade link between Nepal and Tibet, traversed by Newari merchants for generations. Today, instead of butter, tea and salt, the consignments are cartons of mango juice in tetra packs, cheap rubber sandals and denim clothes. On both sides of the border, glaciers of packing materials have been discarded down the hillsides into the river.

................................................................................................

"Gradually, I am getting a sense of my fellow travellers. Our party is made up of three pilgrimage groups clubbed together for the convenience of the travel agency and Chinese authorities. While I am eyeing my companions to assess their stories, they too are watching me. A few of the pilgrims have made small talk and word has gone around that I speak Hindi, but everyone is cautious, not wanting to seem too inquisitive. 

"Our official Chinese guide meets us in the immigration hall. He is a Tibetan from Lhasa, working for the China India Pilgrim Service Centre, an agency that handles Hindu pilgrims visiting Kailash. A thin, agitated man with a nervous grin, he speaks some English. When he learns that I am from Mussoorie, he tells me that his wife studied there at the school for Tibetan refugee children. We follow his instructions, joining one queue and then another, until we emerge on the other side. After an hour’s wait, our luggage and supplies are carried across and loaded on to a truck. Though customs notices forbid importing fresh vegetables and fruit, our group is vegetarian and huge baskets of cauliflowers, okra, bitter gourd, cucumbers and tomatoes are being carried with us from Nepal. While we stand and wait, money changers ruffle wads of yuan in our faces, taunting us for having exchanged our rupees at a lower rate on the other side."

................................................................................................

"Beyond the town, we ascend through moist green shadows, trees overhanging the road. Near the river grow elms, alders and rhododendrons, after which we move up into conifer forests of cedar and hemlock. One variety of spruce has purple cones as big as mangoes. At places the road has washed away. Labourers are rebuilding walls as bulldozers remove debris. Across the valley, we see precipices extending thousands of feet up and down, like scroll paintings: brushstrokes of bamboo, a cragged profile, clouds of negative space, and waterfalls that drop as silver threads down moss-covered slopes. The humid warmth of the valleys gives way to a damp chill. When we stop at a checkpoint, the armed guards are wearing quilted uniforms. In the gorge below, the Bhote Kosi writhes and roars like a chained dragon."

"The story of Nain Singh Rawat and his fellow ‘pandits’ is one of the great adventures of Himalayan exploration. Being secret agents of the British Raj, Rawat and other men from the border villages of Uttarakhand were recruited by officials of the Survey of India. They were trained in techniques of cartography and equipped with sextants hidden in boxes with false bottoms. Disguising themselves as Ladakhi merchants, they worried strings of prayer beads specially adapted to count their strides—100 beads instead of the usual 108. The maps they produced are remarkably accurate, though their equipment was unsophisticated. To gauge the level of the horizon, they carried bowls of liquid mercury. Altitude was calculated by measuring the temperature of boiling water, a procedure that required precision and patience, as well as plenty of yak dung for fuel. The pandits mapped the course of the Tsangpo and discovered that it became the Brahmaputra beyond the impenetrable gorges of the eastern Himalayas. Captured and jailed on several occasions, they returned to India with valuable intelligence. Their reports were published by the Royal Geographic Society in London but their names were erased from the records, anonymous explorers in ambiguous lands."

Sheer racism by British, exploiting talent and giving no credit, as per Macaulay policy. 

................................................................................................

"TRANS-HIMALAYA 

"The Land Cruiser’s engine roars back to life and we hurry to reclaim our seats. Three minutes later, we reach the Thong La pass and stop again. Here the wind is much stronger, buffeting the parked vehicles and flapping the massed streamers strung from a flagpole. A man in monk’s robes is selling prayer flags and tiny packets of printed prayers. From the direction of Nyalam, a motorcycle arrives, the rider wearing a heavy woollen cloak, his hair braided with red ribbons. Buying a packet of paper prayers, he tosses these into the air like confetti and shouts into the wind as the multi-coloured scraps scatter across the road and down the hill. Nearby is a line of wooden prayer wheels with cupped propellers that catch the wind. The wheels turn constantly on greased axles, driven by a steady gale at the top of the pass. Our drivers have trouble lighting their cigarettes. They hunker down and shelter their lighters between the upturned collars of their coats. While we are stopped, two Japanese cyclists on mountain bikes arrive at the pass. They look exhausted, having pedalled all the way from Lhasa, but I can see the relief in their eyes as they survey the downhill route ahead. 

"Fifteen kilometres farther on, we turn off the main highway and begin heading west towards Saga, our destination for today. Almost immediately, our progress is interrupted. The Land Cruiser that was having engine trouble earlier has broken down again. We stop at the side of the road to wait. By now the sun is unrelenting and we are stranded on an exposed patch of dust and grass, next to a marshy meadow. Yaks and goats are grazing nearby. A cluster of shepherd’s tents are arranged in the distance. Soon a crowd of women and children gather, begging for food and money. One of the women has a bracelet made out of a conch shell, which looks like a white gauntlet on her wrist. A few of the yatris give the younger children biscuits and one of the Gujarati women sticks bindis on the foreheads of the girls. The herdsmen’s clothes are tattered. None of them seem to have washed their faces for days, though there is plenty of water nearby."

That last sentence is from someone whose race persecuted poor Indian students relentlessly about restrictions they imposed regarding bathing no more than once a week - which the said poor Indian students flouted, as often as they could, having been used to bathing at least once a day, every morning, apart from routine washing before and after meals! 

So Alter criticising poor Tibetans for not washing - "though there is plenty of water nearby" (there never was a shortage of water in England, was there? Why did English persecute Indians for bathing?), even if implicitly, is merely racism.

................................................................................................

" ... Beyond the courtyard wall is a stream banked with green grass and snow peaks to the south, but I can’t appreciate the view. After taking the Diamox, I feel drunk and disoriented. I keep thinking I’ve lost my hat, then realize it’s on my head. Just as we are about to start off again, I take a pair of sunglasses from my pack, which ease the glare. It isn’t the altitude that caused my headache, but the harsh sunlight.

"As we drive on, snow peaks continue to appear to the south, along the border with Nepal. Seeing them I feel even more disoriented, for I am used to having the Himalayas rising up in the north. Everything seems to be turned around and my sense of direction is confused. At times I cannot tell if these are clouds or mountains. Some of the peaks have enormous hanging glaciers and others are broken spires. I feel as if I am hallucinating, seeing an endless panorama of snow fields and summits that may or may not be there. As the landscape grows drier and more desolate, sand dunes begin to appear—waves of gold with rippled patterns. On ahead, a mirage appears—warped sunlight melting the horizon. Conscious of a watery blue surface, I tell myself it is an illusion, my vision distorted by pain. Then, all at once, we come to a large lake, fed by glaciers to the south. The blue expanse of water looks like a patch of sky that has fallen on to the plateau. For a moment, I think we have arrived at Manasarovar, though it is still more than three days’ drive from here. Later on, checking my map, I discover the name of this lake is Paigu Tso. I have lost track of time, delirious, drifting in and out of consciousness, despite the jostling and shaking of the vehicle. When I open my eyes again, there is another lake. This one is completely white. At first, I think it must be frozen, covered with snow, then realize it is salt. Far off on the perimeter, I can see men digging and remember a section of Nain Singh’s journals in which he describes two alkaline lakes where caravans load up to carry this mineral cargo across the Himalayas.

"Soon after arriving in Saga, we discover that the next leg of our journey, a stretch of 250 kilometres to a town called Paryang, is undergoing road work. The police are closing the highway during the day, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. This means that we will be forced to travel at night. Bhim and the Sherpas consult with the drivers and decide to set out at 2 a.m., though the exact time of our departure remains unclear. While our Nepali guides continue to operate on Kathmandu time, the drivers and Chinese officials are functioning on Beijing time and it is impossible to know exactly what to expect."

"Despite the extended misery of today’s journey, I am eager to leave Saga as soon as possible. When I go out to buy my bottled water, a woman with a baby strapped to her back begins begging for money. She is a young Tibetan in her twenties, haggard and dressed in tatters. It seems odd that anyone would need to be begging on the street under Communist rule, with all the promises of a paternalistic state. But almost everywhere we stop, women and children greet us with open hands."

Obviously, that so-called "Communist rule, with all the promises of a paternalistic state" is, in case of China occupying Tibet with brutal force, is limited to not shooting Tibetans down for begging. 

"The pathetic obscenity of this encounter leaves me with a sense of remorse and disgust, particularly the image of the child on the woman’s back, and the futile desperation that must drive her to offer hurried sex to strangers in this wayside town."

Obviously it's because some visitors - although it's unlikely it's any of the pilgrims from India, who are mostly over middle age and in a crowd - do take advantage of it, else she wouldn't have expected a response to such an offer. Equally obviously, she didn't expect her own self touched, so such acceptance must have been from racists. 

This, incidentally, is the fourth account one has been reading of travel to Kailash from India, and none of the other three mentioned this offer by a Tibetan, although two were by males and none by pilgrims. They were, though, all Indian. They did mention the poverty and begging part. At least, one did, perhaps two. 

So the random sample seems to indicate that Tibetans do not make these offers to Indians, the chief visitors to this region of Tibet. 

................................................................................................

"Just after midnight, I am awakened by a banging on our door. The Sherpas bring us tea—lukewarm and over-sweetened. After a couple hours’ sleep, my headache is gone. Only a mild itch of pain lingers around the rims of my eyes, which reassures me that it was caused by the sun, not altitude. Though we set out in the dark, I make sure my Ray-Bans are easily accessible."

" ... We drive another kilometre before the Land Cruiser stops again. This time we are stalled on a steep incline, halfway up a series of switchbacks, where a section of the road has been recently excavated. Huge pieces of earth moving equipment are parked close by, amidst mounds of earth. Every few minutes a truck labours past, sending up a cloud of dust and diesel exhaust. Whatever we might have gained from our early start is lost as we remain stranded at the side of the road, while the drivers disassemble the fuel pump and carburettor. They work in complete darkness, with only a couple of headlamps."

" ... The night sky is a pointillist fantasy, every bead of light shimmering amidst infinite patterns of the universe. I can imagine Nain Singh Rawat on a night like this, trying to get his bearings. Having taken his sextant from its secret compartment, he must have hesitated before fixing his coordinates, with so many stars from which to choose. I try to connect the dots of constellations but the sky is so crowded that all I can recognize is the Big Dipper, and Orion with his belt of stars. Beside him is Canis Major, his hunting companion."

" ... Finally, around 4 a.m., as the sky is beginning to brighten above the ridges to our east, the Land Cruiser miraculously comes back to life and the engine settles into a ragged growl. 

"Now that we are finally moving again, the road is even rougher than yesterday, with hundreds of detours across the rolling steppes. As Robert Fleming explains in his book, Across the Tibetan Plateau, western Tibet is really a series of high valleys and ridges, rather than an open plain. The drivers are exhausted, having been awake all night. Soon after sunrise, they stop for breakfast at a shack by the side of the road. Sonam and the others ignore the pleading of our guides to continue so that we can cross a police checkpoint before it closes at 9 a.m. Setting off again, at last, we find the barrier only half a kilometre ahead. Here, we are told that we can’t proceed until nightfall. The barrier closed five minutes before our arrival. After a long discussion with the sentry, Sonam comes back shaking his head. ‘Police say no chalo!’ he reports. Then he grins and steers his Land Cruiser off the side of the road, across open ground, while the sentry watches with helpless disapproval. On ahead, a yak herder flags us down. He insists that we are crossing his pasture and demands ten yuan, which we gladly pay, circling over a marsh before re-joining the highway, still within sight of the police barrier."

Wow! They weren't shot down by Chinese, and what's more, didn't expect to be! 

"Three hours later, we finally reach Paryang, another dusty, low-roofed town. In the distance, I can see the northern profile of the Himalayas framed by clouds. We are following the Tsangpo River, though our route crosses into parallel valleys and over broad passes that lead us north, then west, in circuitous detours. Each time we return to the river, it seems to have grown smaller, now a shallow stream. I find it hard to believe that this is the same river I crossed several years ago in Assam, where I could hardly see from one bank to the other. It took hours to navigate the vast, muddy current of the Brahmaputra by river boat. ... "

................................................................................................

"BRAHMA’S DREAM 

"Crossing Tibet, I am constantly aware that this is a country under occupation. Though sparsely populated, much of the region has been dominated by Chinese military and recent immigrants. Because of Beijing’s resettlement policies, ethnic Tibetans have become a minority in their own homeland. Though officially referred to as the Tibet Autonomous Region, there are few signs of independence, and any form of protest is ruthlessly suppressed.

"As transient pilgrims, we had few opportunities to observe the social and political dynamics of Tibet. But along the highways there was evidence of dramatic changes underway: concrete colonies and army installations appearing out of nowhere, walled enclaves blaring martial music. The road gangs working on the highway were mostly Tibetans, supervised by Chinese engineers and foremen. At several points during our journey, I saw evidence of intrusive power and an authoritarian regime that governed with arrogance and insensitivity.

................................................................................................

"All along the way, we were stopped and made to wait, ostensibly because of roadwork but often for no reason at all. On one occasion, during our return journey, we were stranded for twelve hours without any explanation. Two policemen had set up plastic stools in the middle of the road and blocked our way. A line of trucks and other vehicles stretched for half a kilometre. Hours dragged on while the policemen seemed content to sit in the middle of the road forever, accepting cigarettes from drivers but refusing to budge. Their jungle camouflage seemed out of place in the arid steppes.

"After four hours of waiting, two jeeps came roaring toward us from the opposite direction. Everyone sat up hopefully, thinking the road might open. Seeing six policemen emerging from one of the jeeps, I felt sure they had come to inform us that the road was clear. Instead, they went around to the back of the jeep and took out a watermelon. The size of a basketball, its colour matched the variegated green hues of their uniforms. As all of us watched, the melon was placed in the middle of the road, like some sort of fetish object. Meanwhile, a Chinese woman, dressed in tight black leather stepped out from behind the driver’s seat of the second jeep. She wore dark glasses and high-heeled boots, as if she were a dominatrix hanging out with men in uniform. The only thing missing was her whip. A senior police officer also emerged from this jeep, adjusting the red and gold epaulets on his shoulders. He and the woman stared past the line of waiting vehicles, as if we were not there, though everyone’s eyes were on them. At a signal from the officer, one of the policemen took out his knife and butchered the watermelon in the middle of the road with ceremonial precision. It was cut into slices and handed around among the policemen. The woman laughed as she took a bite. While the stranded drivers and passengers watched in silence, the policemen devoured the bright red flesh and spit out the seeds, leaning forward to avoid dripping juice on their clothes. When they finished, each of them hurled the watermelon rinds into the desert like boomerangs that would never return. Then, without once acknowledging the long line of vehicles still waiting to move, the policemen and the woman in black got back in their jeeps and drove off in the direction from which they had come.

................................................................................................

"We remained there another two hours, until, finally, one of the guards punched a number into his mobile phone and spoke for awhile. He consulted with his colleague and then, all at once, they removed their stools and waved us forward. Everyone dashed to their vehicles and engines roared to life, as the stranded convoy set off along the road with a screeching of tyres.

"Ten kilometres ahead, however, a police vehicle with its blue light oscillating wildly, came driving past us waving everyone to one side. Pulling over, Sonam shrugged impatiently and got down to see what was going on. 

"The senior officer in command of this stretch of highway arrived in his jeep. He was a caricature of a tiny dictator, hardly four and a half feet tall, wearing a uniform two sizes too large, a peaked hat and a pair of aviator shades. A cigarette holder clenched between his teeth, he marched about with a belligerent swagger and started barking orders. With him was a junior officer, carrying a construction helmet turned upside down.

................................................................................................

"As all of us watched, the officer ordered each of the drivers to put their keys and registration papers into the helmet. It was hard to know exactly what was going on, but later we learned that he was accusing the drivers of having jumped the checkpoint. He was furious because he hadn’t given an order to open the road. When the drivers protested that the guards had released them, the officer called back to the checkpoint, where the policemen must have denied letting us through. All this, we pieced together later but at that moment, the only thing I could see was the officer gesturing and shouting, as if we had broken every law in the country. Going up to one of the Land Cruisers, he demanded to know whose vehicle it was. When nobody came forward to surrender his keys, the officer picked up a rock and began hammering on the hood of the vehicle.

"Immediately, a driver jumped forward, complaining loudly and waving his arms. Once again, the rock came down on the hood, denting the metal and scratching the paint. Rallying together, the crowd of drivers converged on the police party. In addition to our group, twenty other vehicles had been stopped. The drivers surrounded the policemen in an angry mob and I noticed Sonam picking up a rock in each hand. The policemen were Chinese, the drivers Tibetan. For several minutes, it looked as if we were going to witness a riot, with the officer screaming and the owner of the damaged vehicle bellowing back at him.

................................................................................................

"Amidst the tension, I could see one of the junior constables frantically calling for backup. Just as the situation was about to escalate into serious violence, we heard a siren and saw two police vehicles coming in our direction, trailing plumes of dust. The drivers retreated as a group, marching away defiantly across the open plain, abandoning their vehicles and passengers. Again, we didn’t know what was going on, but it turned out that they were headed to a military outpost a couple of kilometres away to register a complaint. Meanwhile, the officer strutted about, triumphantly puffing on his cigarette holder. Our Sherpas and some of the pilgrims tried to reason with him, but he cut them short with an angry, ‘No!’ Being in charge of this stretch of road, he wasn’t about to have his authority questioned. The whole episode was like watching a cartoon in which the bellicose villain rants and raves, while everyone else looks on helplessly. The Indian pilgrims muttered to each other, wishing they were back in their own country, ‘where we could pay off the cops with a hundred rupees’.

"By now the sun was going down and there was nothing but empty highway stretching in both directions. After dark, the policemen departed and our driverless vehicles stood in a lonely queue by the side of the road with nothing around. For supper, the Sherpas handed out apples, which was all they could muster. As the temperature dropped, each of us put on as many layers as we could and tried to sleep in the vehicles, heads lolling from side to side, windshields fogging over with our breath. The seemingly limitless landscape shrank into darkness.

"A few minutes past midnight, I was jolted out of a fitful sleep as the driver side door was yanked open. Sonam pushed himself behind the wheel with an angry grunt and started the engine. Offering no explanation, he set off along the detour, circling the police barrier which was now deserted. Fifteen minutes later, we reached a guest house. In an airless room with beds jammed together, we scrambled for the nearest horizontal surface and finally fell asleep."

Upton Sinclair describes early era of nazi Germany in scenes not too different. 

................................................................................................

"A cloudy dawn paints the snow peaks to the south with gold and violet pigments as we leave Paryang. Seeing the mountains to the south, my sense of direction remains disoriented. All my life the Himalayas have been situated to the north and it confuses me to face them from this perspective, with the sunrise to my left."

" ... Most Tibetans eat flesh but observe Buddhist injunctions against killing living creatures. All of the Hindu pilgrims in our group are vegetarians and we do not eat at any of the roadside canteens or restaurants where the drivers order noodles with yak meat or mutton. The Sherpas too eat meat, though our cook prepares only rice, lentils and curried vegetables, a monotonous but healthy diet. I am more than content to be vegetarian for the duration of this pilgrimage."

" ... Our group is an eclectic mix of cultures. At least six languages are operating at once—Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, English, Nepali and Tibetan. My Hindi and English allow me to speak to almost everyone, except the drivers. I remember reading an anthropologist’s theory that pilgrimages like this are as much about cultural integration and breaking down social barriers as they are about sustaining religious beliefs.

"Niranjan introduces me to his friend Shivram, an accountant with IBM, based in Binghamton, New York. He and Niranjan have often travelled together. A few years ago they hiked up to Machu Picchu and, more recently, they sailed to Antarctica on an educational cruise. They admit this yatra isn’t quite the style of travel to which they are accustomed. Shivram visits India once in awhile, though most of his family now live in the US. ... Shivram’s son, Suraj, is a doctor in Philadelphia. He has just finished his residency, specializing in emergency medicine. The complete lack of sanitation in Tibet is a challenge for him but he has brought a generous supply of antiseptic hand lotion and sterile wet wipes. The fourth member of their group is Lalit. Like Shivram, he too is an accountant. His family were originally from Gujarat but settled in Kenya several generations back, then emigrated to England in the 1980s. This group of four men, all of them Hindus, represent the Indian diaspora. Yet, the pull of the Himalayas draws them back to South Asia. A mountain like Kailash has a magnetic force, a spiritual and geographical lodestone that attracts us all to its ancient source.

"While talking with Lalit I notice one of the Gujarati women eating a mango. She has smuggled it all the way from India and is sucking on the seed. When our eyes meet, she gives me a guilty smile. Niranjan has discovered that the Gujarati pilgrims have smuggled two extra duffle bags containing dry fruit and nuts, savoury mixtures and other snacks."

................................................................................................

"After another four hours of driving, we finally come within sight of Manasarovar. Ascending out of a shallow stream bed, our vehicles crest a saddle with a chorten and flagpole at the top. Prayer flags radiate in all directions, like a sagging circus tent. The drivers complete a clockwise circuit of the chorten and park the Land Cruisers on a level patch of ground overlooking the sacred lake.

"After four days of anticipation, we are suddenly here and our abrupt arrival takes me by surprise. Manasarovar is larger than I imagined, though I can see the opposite shore. The circumference of the lake is 88 kilometres. Ordinarily, we would be able to see Kailash from this spot but the sky is overcast and Bhim points in the direction where it stands, promising us that it is ‘compulsory’ for the clouds to eventually clear. The lake has a dark blue tint that turns to turquoise when the sun comes out from behind the drifting clouds. Partially visible to the south are the mountains and glaciers that feed Manasarovar. Gurla Mandhata (7,694 metres) is the main peak, a massive whale-backed summit fully clad in snow. In 1905, Tom Longstaff and the Brocherel brothers attempted to climb this peak and were swept 1,000 metres down its slopes by an avalanche, which they survived. The treeless landscape conveys stillness, despite the wind that riffles the prayer flags. Nothing else moves except for the clouds and their shadows that cross the water like phantom shoals. One moment the tawny ridges have hardly any colour—then, as the sun emerges, it brings out hidden pigments in the rocks and soil, a subtle alchemy of light.

"Manasarovar is known as Mapam Tso in Tibetan, a name that means ‘undefeated’, commemorating Milarepa’s victory over a Bon shaman. The Buddha’s mother, Maya, is said to have bathed in this lake before Gautama was conceived. In Sanskrit, ‘manas’ means mind and ‘sarovar’ is a lake. ... "

So far, ok. But then Alter's hubris takes over, giving wrong interpretations of Sanskrit words and texts, and of Hindu thinking. 

" ... Hindus believe that Manasarovar was first created within Brahma’s imagination—a divine illusion that became a geographical reality. ... "

"Imagination" is wrong interpretation, not only of the word Manasa - pronounced Maanasa - but, more specifically, in this context. But Alter wouldn't comprehend, because he's never opened himself to land of his birth, to its ancient culture. 

Not everything that's conception of Mind is imaginary. Numbers, for example. Or circles, ellipses, parabola and hyperbola, or any of the mathematical structures in geometry. They are real, despite being not seen or touched physically. So was Manasarovar, when conceived, before it was Realised onto the physical plane. 

" ... It is the highest freshwater lake of its size in the world and the clarity of its waters reflects the purity accorded to it in mythologies of different faiths. Those who bathe in Manasarovar are cleansed of sin and guilt, not only from this life but from all previous and future incarnations. Even the gods descend from heaven to purify themselves in its waters. The most devout pilgrims complete a Kora of the lake on foot, which takes three days, though trance walkers who practice lung-gom are said to circle it in a day."

"Historically, this region yielded gold and turquoise, though most of the mines in the surrounding hills are now abandoned. One of the popular legends is the story of a huge nugget of gold, the size and shape of a dog, which was unearthed by chance near Manasarovar. When it was found, nobody dared keep it, believing this was sacred treasure. The miners took it to Lhasa and offered it to the Dalai Lama. Instead of accepting the lump of gold, he instructed them to carry it back to the shores of Manasarovar, where it was reburied exactly as it was found. A stupa was built on the spot and named Serkyi (or Kyiro Serpo) which means golden dog.

................................................................................................

"Our route takes us around the eastern rim of the lake, circling Manasarovar in a clockwise direction. After 15 kilometres, we stop at a pebbled beach, where Bhim announces that anyone who wants to take a ritual bath is welcome to do so. ‘It’s not compulsory,’ he says, ‘but please, no shampoo or soap.’ Inside the Land Cruisers it is hot and stuffy but outside, the wind has a sharp edge and the temperature drops every time a cloud passes overhead.

"The glacier-fed waters of Manasarovar are not as cold as I expect, being shallow and warmed by the sun. Some say that hot springs heat the lake, though it remains frozen for nine months of the year. The deepest point at the centre is over 75 metres but near the shore its depth is less than a metre. We spread out along the beach and most of the men strip down to shorts. A few of the women enter the lake in their saris. Others scoop a little of the water into their hands and splash it on to their faces. The pebbles underfoot make it awkward to walk but I wade out about 20 metres from shore, where the water reaches my knees.

"Lowering myself backwards, I go under completely and dunk myself three times. Surfacing, I can feel the dust and grime of four days travel rinse away, along with the adhering filth of the places where we have stayed. My skin is pale, except where the sun has burned my arms and face. The scars on my body are a dull red colour, particularly the gash on my left calf and the stab wound on my thigh. Though fully healed, my injuries are still sensitive and there is a numbness from damaged nerves. As I scrub myself in the clear waters of Manasarovar, I try to imagine the scars washing away, releasing me from the violent memories of our attack. Opening my eyes underwater, I can see the colourful patterns of pebbles and the glint of sunlight on the rippling surface above. I want to swim out farther from shore but after a few strokes, I let myself sink below the surface again, content to float in the shallows. I feel a sense of buoyancy and calm, immersed in Brahma’s dream. Though I submerge myself in the lake, none of my sins slough off; at least, none that I am aware of. Yet I feel cleansed by these sacred waters, purged of a lifetime of transgressions.

" ... A flock of terns are squabbling above a sand bar. Manasarovar contains several varieties of fish on which these migratory birds feed. ... it is a quiet, meditative place, a natural sanctuary imbued with an atmosphere of peace.

"I collect a handful of pebbles from Manasarovar to take home with me as mementoes. Most of the other pilgrims are doing the same. Satish, the Gujarati in our vehicle, rushes over holding a strangely shaped stone. ‘Can you see Ganesh?’ he says with excitement, pointing to the raised contours on the surface of the stone. ... "

................................................................................................

"We continue circling the lake, passing a couple of small monasteries and pilgrim shelters that look deserted. Crossing a stream swollen with snowmelt, one of the Land Cruisers gets stuck, water swirling halfway up the doors. Fortunately, the driver is able to reverse out of the current and makes it across on his second attempt. From the southern shore of the lake, the road loops up a broad bluff and we are able to see Rakshastal, a second lake almost as big as Manasarovar, but irregular in shape and about 15 metres lower in altitude. ‘Rakshas’ means demon and this lake, which is salty and undrinkable, is associated with the darker forces of Hindu mythology. The two lakes lie side by side, like a misshapen ying and yang. It may be the grey canopy of clouds or the angle of the sun as it descends toward the horizon, but Rakshastal has a menacing demeanour, its surface rough with waves. 

"Minutes later, as we descend the other side of the ridge, a miracle occurs!

"Our route, which has been unpaved for more than 600 kilometres, suddenly merges with a perfectly tarred road coming in from the south. Asphalt never looked so beautiful and the yellow line down this two-lane highway is a ribbon of gold. We have joined the road that comes up from Taklakot, a historic trading post near the border with India and Nepal. For centuries this has been one of the main centres of commerce where tea and butter are still bartered for pashmina wool and yak tails. The short section of highway, hardly 30 kilometres from the border to the roadhead at Darchen has been paved by the Chinese to create the illusion of development. On the Indian and Nepal side of the border there is no motorable approach, only rough footpaths winding up precipitous gorges. In 1866, Nain Singh Rawat escaped from Tibet along this route and returned to India. Despite ongoing border disputes, a bilateral agreement between India and China permits a limited number of pilgrims to cross into Tibet on foot. From Taklakot they are taken by bus to Darchen. Originally, I had hoped to make the journey to Kailash by this route, which starts in Uttarakhand and avoids the long detour to Kathmandu. But permits are issued by lottery and the Indian government does not allow foreigners to cross the ‘inner line’ and pass through border regions."

................................................................................................

"I would be happy to drive for another hour like this but after twenty minutes we reach Chiu Gompa, where we spend the night at a guest house that is decorated with brightly painted yak skulls. Nearby is a dry channel that connects Manasarovar with Rakshastal, though water only flows between the two lakes during years of heavy rainfall when the level of Manasarovar rises. This is interpreted as an auspicious omen. The shore of the lake at Chiu is surrounded by mud and it is impossible to reach the water. One of the pilgrims goes too close and sinks up to his thighs in grey ooze. I walk out as far as I dare and find thousands of tiny snail shells, bleached white by the sun.

"The clouds disperse at nightfall and we are treated to a spectacular display of stars. Unlike night skies in other parts of the world where an electric glow allows only a few constellations to shine through, here the firmament above us flickers with millions of lights. The Milky Way spreads like a celestial glacier above the eastern horizon, its reflection faintly visible on the still, dark surface of the lake. Sirius, the Dog Star, gleams like a nugget of gold. A satellite passes overhead, a blinking firefly weaving its way through a net of lights. I keep expecting it to collide with one of the stars. Though the sky appears crowded, it is actually an empty sieve through which years of ancient light have drained to illuminate this moment. There is no moon but, to our south, the faint profile of the Himalayas rises above Manasarovar ... "

................................................................................................

"UPON THIS THRESHOLD 

"Hoping to see the sunrise over Manasarovar, I get up early the next morning and stumble past my sleeping roommates. Once outside, I am disappointed to find the sky is overcast. A murky dawn seeps through the clouds. After a few minutes, however, shafts of sunlight penetrate the grey curtains and shoot across the surface of the lake, giving it a metallic sheen. A little later I meet three of the Gujarati pilgrims who tell me that they have been awake all night and claim to have seen lights descending from the sky into the water. One of the myths of Manasarovar is that these lights are deities who descend to bathe in Brahma’s lake. I ask what kind of lights they were and they describe something between a shooting star and an emergency flare, phosphorescent streaks that drop out of the darkness before disappearing into the water. Others have described this phenomenon before, which is sometimes explained as St Elmo’s Fire, atmospheric bursts of static electricity. Whatever it may be, the pilgrims are delighted and they tell their story to everyone in the group.

"After breakfast, Niranjan and the other NRIs invite me to join them on a short trek up the ridge above the guest house. Today we are scheduled for a late start, leaving Chiu Gompa after lunch and driving only as far as Darchen, which is 25 kilometres away. Part of the reason for our walk is to test ourselves for the circumambulation of Kailash, which begins tomorrow. Manasarovar lies 4,556 metres above sea level. Oxygen is scarce and we keep stopping to catch our breath. Kailash is still obscured by clouds and I begin to wonder if we will ever have a clear view of the mountain. The landscape around Manasarovar is like a dented bowl that rises up on every side. Windswept and dry, the folded ridges are covered with patches of Tibetan gorse, a hardy plant with dark green leaves. Though it provides forage for wild and domesticated animals, its thorns protect it from over-grazing.

"From the ridge above Chiu Gompa, we can clearly see the dry stream bed between Manasarovar and Rakshastal. Sections of the channel appear marshy and at places it has a rime of salt caused by evaporation and minerals leeched out of the soil. Known as Ganga Chu, this occasional stream carries the pure waters of Mapam Tso into the demon’s lake, rendering it sacred as well. ... This year, Ganga Chu is inauspiciously dry. Summer rains have been scarce and the snowmelt off Gurla Mandhata is not enough to make Manasarovar overflow its banks."

" ... Clouds still hide Kailash from view. Atop the highest ridge we climb is a cairn of rocks where we have a dramatic view of the lake. From this angle, Manasarovar looks much larger, almost a perfect oval. ... "

In addition to his other shortcomings, in Alter there's an unfortunate manifestation of racism and a need to distance himself from anything that might provide anyone to hang an illusion that this person could be seen as belonging or even attached to India or her ancient culture - which manifests in a strange and repeated copy, sometimes exact, of the kast scene of a European film about Hungary one recalls having seen some time in early to mid eighties, a good film completely marred by that last scene, strangely alike a post-impressionist artist's work in a NY city museum one saw later, in 1983. 

................................................................................................

" ... Mount Kailash has suddenly emerged from hiding and stands out above the ridge with unexpected brilliance. The sun gleams off its snowclad features. ... "

"Darchen lies at the foot of the ridges below Kailash, though the mountain itself cannot be seen from the town. A dusty, unkempt settlement with two main streets that cross in the middle and rows of identical buildings, it is not a hospitable place. A line of shops sell trinkets and souvenirs to pilgrims, as well as dried herbs collected from the nearby hills. At the centre of town is the ‘Good Luck To The Supermarket’ and an ‘Abundance Wholesale Store’. Our accommodation is a government guest house that looks more like a jail than a hotel. Several yatra groups are staying here and we are allotted C-Block, a desolate yellow barrack. The usual jigsaw puzzle of beds is squeezed into each room, with barely enough space for anyone to enter.

"After unloading our bags, we set off again to visit the starting point of the Inner Kora. Sonam drives us up a series of switchbacks, along a steep, rough road. Less than 5 kilometres above Darchen, the valley opens out into a broad meadow with a stream flowing through the middle. From here, the south face of Mount Kailash rises directly above us, no clouds obscuring its brilliance. Bhim described this as a ‘Kailash darshan’, providing us with our first close view of the mountain. When we stop, even the drivers take out prayer rugs or spread their jackets on the grass, and prostrate themselves in front of the mountain. Conversations cease and each of us drifts off to separate areas of the meadow to contemplate Kailash, alone with our thoughts.

................................................................................................

"A short distance away, on the slope of a ridge, lies a gompa associated with the Jain religion, though it looks very much like any other Buddhist shrine, with red mud walls and prayer flags. In front is a chorten with a gilded spire. ... a small footpath leading up a dry, windswept ridge at the head of the valley. Several pilgrims, part of another group, are ascending this path and I decide to follow them. It is a steep climb, much more strenuous than our hike this morning and I walk slowly upward, eyes fixed on the mountain."

"The Bon identify a sacred Swastika in the patterns of these rocks. If one stares at the mountain long enough, the shape appears like a giant petroglyph. In India and Tibet, the swastika represents good luck and fertility. Many Hindus interpret it as a stylized image of Natraj, the dancing form of Shiva. 

"While the peak itself is considered the austere throne of Shiva who sits here in eternal meditation, a broad hill in the foreground is known as Nandi Parbat, representing the bull of Shiva who lies attentively at his feet. ... One of the nearby ridges is known as Kuber Parbat, where the god of wealth resides. Another ridge is revered as the abode of Vishnu. ... "

" ... irrepressible emotions well up inside of me at several points along the trail. My vision blurs with tears and my throat constricts, not from altitude, but from a sense of having arrived. Several pilgrims, coming down the path, greet me with repeated cries of ‘Om Namah Shivaya!’ but I am speechless, unable to respond. It could be awe or reverence that evokes these emotions, or a sense of release at having accomplished the simple goal of being in the presence of Kailash."

" ... Sitting here in front of the mountain, leaning against this rock, I realize that nothing exists outside of this experience. ... "

" ... For an hour, I simply sit alone beside the lichen-covered rock, emptying my mind of rational and irrational thoughts, experiencing only the transcendent vision of Kailash."

................................................................................................

"CIRCLING THE SUMMIT 

" ... The only effective treatment for altitude sickness is to quickly take a person down several thousand feet. But the problem in Tibet is that there is no place to escape, for the entire country lies at high altitudes. The closest airports where a person could be evacuated are either Lhasa or Kathmandu, five days’ journey from Darchen, by which time it is too late.

"After breakfast, the Land Cruisers drop us at Tarboche, 5 kilometres west of Darchen, where the Kora route begins. During the Saga Dawa festival in late spring, Tarboche is inundated with thousands of pilgrims. Each year, a huge flagstaff is erected, from which strings of prayer flags radiate like the fluttering spokes on a giant wheel. Tarboche is located at the mouth of a broad gorge that wraps around Kailash on its western side. ... "

" ... A ring of dark clouds hides the summit of Kailash, but we can see the mountain’s lower slopes encrusted with bands of snow and ice. At Tarboche stands a small chorten with a passage through the middle. This is called Hemdwar by Hindu pilgrims, which means ‘gateway to the snows’. ... "

No, Hema (with a short a), or Hem, is gold in Sanskrit, so it's Golden Gate, meaning to a world above paradise, where highers Gods dwell. 

"From this point onwards, until we complete the Kora, most of our party will be riding horses, with yaks and porters carrying tents and supplies. Only two of us have chosen to complete the Kora on foot, myself and a man named Chandrashekhar, from Mumbai. Bhim and the Chinese tour guide must organize the caravan of men and animals that will travel up the valley. We have been told that nobody is allowed to share a horse and you cannot carry your pack while riding, requiring a porter to shoulder this extra load for an additional fee. Happily leaving behind the bickering and chaos of pairing horses with riders and yaks with loads, I set off up the valley. Chandrashekhar and I walk together for a ways, then agree to each continue at our own pace, glad for the solitude of the Lha Chu Valley, known as the gorge of the river gods.

................................................................................................

"A good-sized stream, 10 metres wide and milky with snowmelt, flows through a broad expanse of valley, almost a kilometre across at its mouth. On either side spectacular cliffs of red rock ascend above me, framing the sky with weird formations. ... Reining in their horses, they ask if I want a ride. I shake my head and they carry on, the embroidered saddle cloths and strings of brass bells around the horses’ necks reminding me that I am in Tibet, not Colorado. A few minutes later, two motorcyclists overtake me, heading up the valley. Their bikes are loaded with supplies. The trail is nothing but a rough footpath. They manoeuvre between the rocks, until one of them takes a corner too sharply and topples over. By the time I catch up with him, he has righted his bike and kicked the engine back to life. Within minutes, the roar of the motorcycles is consumed by the silence of the valley.

"Waterfalls cascade down the cliffs, their fluid strands bending in the wind like frayed ropes dangling from the rocks. Between the jagged spires and layered towers of stone, I catch glimpses of snowfields and glaciers. The sun is straight above me and I am sweating as I walk. After seven days of sedentary travel, it feels good to be carrying my pack. Though the air is thin, our ascent is gradual and my breathing is not strained. I feel the exhilaration of being alone, moving of my own accord. Nobody is responsible for my progress except myself. Clouds keep passing overhead, their shadows sweeping across the canyon walls, casting transient pools of shade that disappear as quickly as they form.

"At almost every turn of the path stand cairns of stones, reminding me that millions of pilgrims have gone before us. Some of the cairns are not man-made but natural mounds of conglomerate rock with stones of different sizes, from tiny pebbles to massive boulders that have been fused together. The variety of rocks seem infinite, every shade from crystal clarity to creamy white, burnt umber and tawny gold, salmon with streaks of yellow, orange, pink and rose. Each of them looks like hardened fragments of light. From a distance the ridges around us appear a uniform colour of reddish brown. Kailash itself is stark black granite, but the stones in the valley are variegated hues of every shade and texture."

" ... Guru Rinpoche, Padmasambhava, the sixth-century Indian saint and teacher who was a great reformer of Buddhism and set the faithful on the true path of righteousness. The concept of terma also takes on a special significance in more recent history, when many relics and texts were hidden to protect them during the Cultural Revolution, which destroyed and desecrated most of the monasteries and religious sites in Tibet.

"Padmasambhava is said to have rescued Buddhism from occult and profane influences, including the so-called sorcery and shamanism of Bon tradition that permitted animal sacrifices. He preached nonviolence and compassion as the key tenets of Buddhist doctrine, though the religion continued to promote Tantric rituals, which are rooted in the older shamanistic practices. ... For Buddhists from other traditions, the Tantric practices in Tibet are often disturbing. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... As I walk around Kailash, following timeless paths that wheel about its axis, I become conscious of the hidden taproot of this mountain. Even as it rises more than 6,000 metres above sea level, Kailash extends deep into the earth. ... "

"The landscape in this treeless valley has a hypnotic quality. Rocks and boulders take on weird and magical shapes like an optical illusion. Lama Govinda, the Bolivian-German mystic who helped introduce Tibet to the West, writes about lung-gom. While on an extended pilgrimage to Kailash and the abandoned kingdom of Guge in far-western Tibet, Govinda claims to have experienced trance walking himself, after getting lost in the mountains:

""…to my amazement I jumped from boulder to boulder without ever slipping or missing a foothold, in spite of wearing only a pair of flimsy sandals on my bare feet. And then, I realized that a strange force had taken over, a consciousness that was no more guided by my eyes or my brain. My limbs moved as in a trance, with an uncanny knowledge of their own, though their movement seemed almost mechanical. I noticed things only like in a dream, somewhat detached. Even my own body had become distant, quasi-detached from my will-power. I was like an arrow that unfailingly pursued its course by the force of its initial impetus, and the only thing I knew was that on no condition must I break the spell that had seized me.""

................................................................................................

"By noon, I reach a cluster of tea shops, where Bhim has instructed us to wait for lunch. The western face of Kailash is clearly visible now, another facet of the pyramid with the same horizontal bands of rock and snow. But from this angle, the mountain seems to have a different character, sombre and almost menacing. The base is guarded by gargoyles of red rock, fearsome sentinels chiselled by the wind. Gazing up at the mountain, the sun is in my eyes. While Kailash itself remains imposing and serene, here in this valley there seems to be a surrounding chaos of eroded precipices that suggest wild and threatening forces, as if fierce storms and mountain demons have petrified into solid shapes."

" ... These tea shops are set up during the pilgrimage season, from the end of May through October, and will be dismantled during winter when the Kora route is closed. Tables and benches are arranged along one side with displays of Coke and Red Bull cans out front, as well as bottled beer. Entering a tea shop, I ask the proprietor for tea. She serves it to me in a thimble-sized glass, a murky pink infusion with a mildly salty flavour. ... Her daughter, a toddler, wears a whimsical plastic hat with propellers and spring-loaded baubles that nod as she walks, proud as a princess modelling her first crown."

" ... We are served a simple lunch of rice and lentils. I quickly eat and hurry on ... "

"It would be impossible to get lost in this valley, though there are dozens of trails that separate and re-converge along the eastern bank of the Lha Chu River. These paths seem to have been laid out over centuries by the wandering footsteps of pilgrims, each taking their own circuit around Kailash. Coming from the opposite direction, I pass a group of Bon pilgrims ... After an hour’s walk, I come to a bridge that leads to Drira Phuk Gompa, on the opposite side of the valley. Though After an hour’s walk, I come to a bridge that leads to Drira Phuk Gompa, on the opposite side of the valley. Though tempted to explore, I don’t know where our camp is pitched and whether I can cross the river farther up."

"Exploring above our camp, I reach a pile of mani stones. Ahead of me is a gorge that leads to the foot of Kailash, which looks deceptively close. I decide not to go any further, for the wind has picked up and I have left my jacket behind. ... "

"I am just about to give up on the sunset and retreat to my tent when I notice a faint amber glow on one of the lower snowfields. To the west, banks of clouds begin to part, as the sun slips behind the western crags of the La Chu Valley. ... a golden light ascends the mountain. Within a few seconds, Kailash is completely gilded and the cobra’s hood shines like a cornice of gold. The black striations stand out in contrast to the burnished snow and it feels as if the mountain has changed from two dimensions into three and then, perhaps a fourth—each crevice and cliff line standing out in bold relief. Holding my breath, I take a few pictures, then lower my camera, wanting only to experience this spectacle with my eyes, rather than viewing it through a lens. Already, the light is fading. Within three minutes the sunset is over and shadows enfold us in a frigid embrace."

................................................................................................

"CAVE OF MYSTERIES 

" ... To cross the 5,636-metre Dolma La pass today and reach our next campsite, we have been told that we must start by 4 a.m. The stars are brilliant and Kailash glows like a pale slab of marble leaning against a sequined sky. The yaks arrive in silence, matted shadows lumbering in the dark. The only sounds are the shrill whistles of their handlers. Just as we are about to leave, a new moon comes up over the ridge. For a couple of minutes, the entire circumference is visible as it rises, fading quickly into a thin crescent."

" ... The climb takes me diagonally up a rocky slope, with a few switchbacks at the steepest points. An hour from camp, I find myself at the top of a rise, where a Tibetan family has stopped to drink tea from a thermos flask—a father and mother with their teenage daughter and son. ... "

"Across the valley from us, Kailash is visible again after being hidden for most of the route from camp. While we remain in shadow, the peak is lit by the first rays of sunlight. Though not as dramatic as the evening glow, the morning light has a startling brilliance, its intensity increasing until I cannot look at the mountain without dark glasses. From this angle, the main profile of the peak is identical to what I saw last evening, but the eastern ridge is now in view. Below this lies the main glacier that skirts the north face."

................................................................................................

"Stepping over plastic bags and empty juice packets, I find myself getting angry and frustrated. Like everything else on this journey, it seems symbolic of something greater, a paradox that defines the contradictions of human nature. ... "

He forgets, plumbing is only a couple of centuries old even in West, and it was far more filthy then than India; but as to the garbage litter, a large part of the problem is industrial era and its packaging. Even in the cleanest of societies West, garbage collected has the disposal problem not quite solved, merely pushed away out of sight. US has a mountain of it in Eastern coastal states, and Pacific ocean has an island of it due to US litter disposed, but that's without counting the scrap US sends to Asia for disposal at a cost - paid by US in currency and by Asia in environmental erosion. 

................................................................................................

"One of the landmarks I have been searching for is a small pond called the ‘Mirror of Yama’, the looking glass of death. There is only one pool of water on this side of the pass, hardly 15 metres in circumference and a short distance from the trail. ... The valley around it lies in shadow but the water captures the bright blue of the sky. To the southwest, Kailash stands out. This will be the last clear view I have of the mountain during my Kora. Though I will see its eastern face after descending the pass, only sections of the mountain are visible beyond this point.

"7 a.m. Three hours have passed since I left camp and now the horses are beginning to catch up. I can hear the sound of their hooves on the rocks and the clucking of the horsemen urging them on. As I step aside to let a group go by, some of the pilgrims greet me, while others sit slumped in their saddles with expressions of misery. Heads throb under woollen hats and nausea makes every turn on the trail a stomach-churning ordeal. Last night, one of the yatris from Maharashtra became violently ill and was taken back to Darchen. Nobody knows if he has survived and his companions are anxious. The sure-footed ponies pick their way through patches of snow that are covered with dung and dirt. Heading directly east, into the sunrise, it is impossible to see the crest of the pass because of the glare. A hundred metres from the top we cross from shadow into sunlight, the harsh rays blinding as they light up thousands of coloured prayer flags that cover Dolma La like a patchwork quilt."

" ... Having promised friends and family that I will bring them souvenirs from my journey, I collect a dozen pebbles from the pass, tiny fragments of the mountain, each of which is a miniature version of Kailash.

"Though I feel a sense of elation on reaching the pass, there isn’t the same experience of awe and reverence that I felt when we approached Kailash on the first day, or last evening when I saw the sunset lighting up its northern face. Dolma La is as dramatic a landscape as any we’ve crossed but, emotionally, it does not move me, beyond a feeling of relief and appreciation for the eroded features of the mountains. Kailash itself is hidden from view. ... "

"Just below Dolma La is another pond, slightly larger than the Mirror of Yama but no more than 9 metres across. Hindus call this Gauri Kund and Buddhists refer to it as the Lake of Compassion. For much of the year it remains frozen but in summer the water melts to a chalky green colour. The snow-capped ridge above is reflected in the surface. Being several hundred feet below the pass and surrounded by steep cliffs and rocky slopes, the lake is seldom visited by pilgrims, who follow a trail that circles above Gauri Kund. Some yatris brave the difficult descent to bathe in the water but most take darshan from a distance, allowing their prayers to reflect upon the jade-like surface of the pool."

Alter gives here story of birth and a bit more of Ganapati, presumably for purposes of entertainment of non-Indians, non-Hindus. 

" ... This myth is a familiar episode in Hindu mythology and I have visited more than one place that is said to be the setting for this story. Here in Tibet, well above the range of any elephants, ... "

Alter forgets that the legend belongs to before Himaalaya was quite so high, and that Kailash is far older,  geologically; that there's no reason to presume that at the time of the legend coming into being, everything was as is now, and elephants avoided the surroundings for some mysterious reason despite its being completely accessible! He doesn't say why that would have been so, even though elephants are natural from Assam to Kerala, and were natural to most of ancient Indian land. Tibet hadn't been lifted quite so high then. And if China hadn't finished off everything in sight by eating, elephants might have existed in Tibet, China, even Mongolia. But then, China finished off even cattle, something so vital and essential to an agricultural land in tropics. Chinese cuisine, unlike India or Europe, has no dairy product component. 

................................................................................................

"From the crest of the pass, we can see our trail cutting down a steep slope, traversing a field of rocks and boulders. Farther on, the Lham Chu Valley opens up and leads us back toward Manasarovar. Many of the pilgrims are taken by surprise when they realize that they must descend on foot. The path is too steep for horses to carry riders to the valley floor and the horsemen quickly vanish. As I start down, I see them hurrying ahead of me, abandoning their riders. While the trail is treacherous at points, not all of it is impassable on horseback and this seems more of an excuse for the horsemen to rush ahead and have tea at the foot of the hill.

"As it turns out, we still have 12 kilometres to walk, though most of this is level ground and easy trekking. Kailash remains hidden from view, except for brief glimpses of its eastern face. Unlike the other three sides of the mountain, there are no telltale bands of rock and snow. Instead, this side of the peak is a pure white cone wedged between clefts in the ridges.

"Early in the afternoon, I come in sight of Zutrul Phuk, a monastery and settlement where the poet-saint Milarepa took shelter in a cave and meditated for many years. The gompa, with its red walls, stands next to a whitewashed boulder shaped like a natural chorten. There are several guest houses and shelters, but we camp in an open field close to the river. By the time our tents are set up, the wind has gained force, a relentless torrent of air that tugs at the fabric, straining the guy ropes. The broad valley offers no protection from this fierce gale, which seems intent on blowing us back toward Dolma La."

................................................................................................

"Soon after departing Zutrul Phuk, I see a moving shape silhouetted against the sky between the yawning jaws of a canyon. For a moment it is there, then it vanishes. A few seconds later, it reappears, like the fleeting shadow of a crescent moon. Though far away, I recognize the outstretched wings of a large bird circling on the air currents. As it flies above me, I try to identify what it is but only when it turns can I see the distinctly wedge-shaped tail of a lammergeier or bearded vulture. These magnificent raptors have the largest wingspan in the Himalayas, nearly 3 metres from tip to tip. According to Hindu and Buddhist mythology, they are associated with Garuda, the vehicle of Vishnu. ... To see a lammergeier circling the slopes of Kailash seems an auspicious sign and confirms for me the significance of this place—a sanctuary open to the sky, a place where mountains rise above us ... "

"Elated by this vision, I carry on. An easy two-hour walk from Zutrul Phuk brings me to a small settlement called Tangsar, where the Lham Chu Valley narrows into a horseshoe gorge. By the time I reach the end of our circuit, the drivers and Land Cruisers are waiting for us. My fellow pilgrims are overjoyed to have undertaken the parikrama. They embrace their companions and touch one another’s feet in acknowledgement of having completed the most sacred pilgrimage of all. It is moving to see how happy they are despite the struggles and deprivation of the last ten days. The loudest and most abrasive of the Gujarati pilgrims puts his arms around me and bursts into tears of joy. We hold each other as brothers, though we have hardly spoken until now, and, after this journey, will never meet again."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"HEALING LIGHT 

"Himalayan landscapes reflect a luminosity that doesn’t exist on the plains. Partly, it is the clarity of the air but also the angle of the sun, slanting above the earth’s curvature to meet the sudden upheaval of these high ranges. Refraction in the atmosphere at extreme elevations contributes to a greater brightness, as well as subtle adumbrations that tease our perception, as if the light were emanating from the mountain itself."

" ... The sublime magnitude of the Himalayas leaves us with profound feelings of reverence as well as trepidation. ... "

................................................................................................

"ASCENT AND RETREAT 

"A goat path follows the blade of the ridge, less than 20 centimetres wide, with a drop of several hundred metres on either hand. We are climbing the crumbling remnants of an extinct glacier that carved this valley into a scalloped bowl centuries ago. A steep rib of moraine rises out of a boulder field and leads to the peaks above. Its surface is loose scree with sparse ground cover, dwarf rhododendrons and juniper that grow close to the soil. From a distance it looks as if the ridge is bare. Yesterday, I watched a herd of bharal cross these slopes, moving with the agility of mountain creatures for whom the cliffs and fissured rocks offer countless hoofholds. Commonly known as blue sheep, their natural habitat lies above the treeline, making them one of the highest-ranging mammals in the world."

" ... To the east, amidst the clouds, I can see the summits of Srikantha and a dozen other mountains above Gangotri, the flared crest of the Garhwal Himalayas rising to almost twice our elevation."

................................................................................................

"THE MONKEY'S TALE

" ... Fraser’s description of Bandarpunch is probably the first account in English of this mountain, which he observed on his way to Yamunotri. Both the mountain itself and the sacred lore of this peak caught Fraser’s imagination ... "

" ... The high peaks of Garhwal and Kumaon are some of the most regulated ranges in the world, with all kinds of restrictions, especially for foreigners like me. The Person of Indian Origin (PIO) card, which allows me to stay in India without a visa, states clearly that it isn’t valid for ‘missionary activities, mountaineering and research’. Somehow, I feel as if they’ve singled me out but after making inquires, Rimo tell me that Bandarpunch is an ‘open peak’ for which special permission can be granted on payment of exorbitant climbing fees."

"The Bhagirathi tributary, full of silt washed down from the mountains, is the same colour as the strong, thick tea brewed at roadside stalls. Just above Uttarkashi, we pass Gangori, where the traditional route to Bandarpunch cuts off and climbs to Dodital. A year ago, flash floods on the Assi Ganga washed away the bridge and a dozen buildings. The military Border Roads Organization has replaced the bridge but Gangori still looks like a disaster zone. Hundreds of people died in last year’s floods, many of them undocumented labourers working on a hydro-electric project along the Assi Ganga, trying to harness the power of the river, which turns lethal in the monsoon. Five weeks ago, training for my climb to Bandarpunch, I trekked up this route to Dodital and the Darwa Pass."

" ... Many of the newer buildings stand well below the high-water mark of earlier floods, inviting disaster. The Ganga View Hotel on the outskirts of Uttarkashi has its foundation in the riverbed. The town of Bhatwari is sliding into the Bhagirathi and may disappear within a couple of years. ... "

Alter speaks of "religious chauvinism" of Hindus, without mentioning the word Hindu. He gets downright abusive. It's easy and cheap, when mouthing off is only against India and against Hindus. 

"The Himalayas are often depicted as the pristine seat of spiritual enlightenment, the fountainhead of Hindu tradition, the reclusive retreat of sages and sadhus. But along these valleys, where an increasing number of pilgrims travel in a continuous caravan of zealous fundamentalism, the politicized face of Hinduism has evolved into a grotesque visage spouting dogma, prejudice and venal theologies. The mountains themselves rise above the Ganga, which flows resolutely on, washing away the filth of millions who pollute its waters, even as they chant her praises and call her ‘mother’. Natural phenomena are turned into religious metaphors and then debased by the tawdry embellishments of faith. Even ancient myths lose resonance here."

Inquisition, anyone remember, wasn't an institution of India, or of Hinduism. Nor is the concept of 'convert or kill', used for ethnic cleansing in Kashmir in January 1990. 

................................................................................................

"When we finally arrive at Sukhi late in the afternoon, I find the team from Rimo Expeditions camped in a village house at the side of the road. Kunzang, the trip leader, whom I have met before in Delhi, introduces me to the others, including our Liaison Officer. He is Nandan Jaiswal, a young mountaineer in his late twenties from West Bengal. The others in the group are Phurbu and Tenzing, both Sherpas from Darjeeling. Our cook, Gokul, is Nepali, and our three high-altitude porters are from Kumaon—Soop Singh, Kamal Singh and Dhan Singh. Kunzang explains that another fifteen porters are arriving tomorrow to help ferry loads up to base camp.

"Suddenly, my fantasy of a small, compact team has expanded into the equivalent of a minor military campaign. It seems absurd that so many people have to be marshalled together to accompany me up the mountain. Documents from the IMF identify me as ‘Team Leader’ but I feel immediately self-conscious and ambivalent about being the instigator of this elaborate operation. I’m not sure what I had imagined but certainly not marching out of Sukhi at the head of a band of twenty-five men. Of course, mountaineering is very different to trekking, and my outfitters are experts in this field, so I quietly retreat to a room at the Sunshine Hotel, Sukhi’s finest, awaiting word that the Chief Wildlife Warden has signed our papers. His approval is essential, since our party will be passing through reserve forests, the protected habitat of rare species like musk deer, panthers and bear. Obviously, he is a busy man: attending a Railway Board meeting in Delhi to discuss recent collisions between wild elephants and express trains, and then rushing on to Ramnagar, where a tigress has been found dead in Corbett National Park. Compared to these crises, our expedition to Bandarpunch is hardly worthy of the ink in his pen. So, we wait at Sukhi another twenty-four hours until we are finally told that permission has been given and we can move forward."

................................................................................................

"SETTING OFF

"Nandan is built to be a rock climber, slight and compact, with an economy of movement in his limbs. His restless but attentive eyes look as if they could decipher the most cryptic rocks. This year, he applied to the IMF to be a liaison officer, as the post would give him a chance to climb more peaks. He plans to add Bandarpunch to his résumé, though it is much lower than Kamet. Next year he hopes to tackle Everest, if his club can raise the funds. Their motto quotes Vivekananda: ‘Take a handful of soil from your home and carry it to the top of a mountain.’ In 1900, Vivekananda attended the world conference on religion in Chicago, becoming one of the first interpreters of his faith to export Hindu teaching to the West. He founded the Ramakrishna Mission, which promotes Vedanta theology, perceived by many to be a ‘pure’ strain of Hindu philosophy distilled from Sanskrit texts like the Bhagavad Gita."

" ... Gokul tells me that he grew up in the forests of western Nepal, where he learned to identify all kinds of wild vegetables and herbs. He claims he can even make a dish with dock weed, picking only the smallest leaves and cooking them with potatoes. He plucks another plant near our tents and tastes it, then spits it out, saying he mistook it for something else. Gokul has a boyish, infectious laugh. Though we speak in Hindi most of the time, his English is good and occasionally he interjects comments that take me by surprise, saying, ‘Life is a struggle,’ or nodding seriously, ‘I understand the situation.’ For dinner, he cooks a robust pasta with tomato sauce and lingra stewed in garlic. Watching him in the kitchen tent, I can see that he is a master chef of the outdoors, juggling pots and pressure cookers over kerosene stoves."

................................................................................................

"DAWN IN THE VALLEY

"We break camp after breakfast and set off up the right bank of the valley, through fir forest, pine and yew, then into stands of birches. A species of white lilac is blooming and I can smell its fragrance as my pack brushes the blossoms, scattering them on the ground. Farther on, Nandan discovers his first wild strawberries in an open glen. ... "

" ... Instead of crossing here, we keep to the right bank and continue climbing through groves of birches, where wild irises and rhubarb are blooming. At the head of the valley, we descend along a steep escarpment to a snow bridge. Above us is a waterfall that crashes down the cliffs before disappearing under a sheath of ice. This snow bridge is all that remains of a massive glacier that must have dominated this valley years ago. Atop the cliffs we can see the maw of the upper glacier, hanging there like fractured battlements of a frozen fortress.

"Clouds have gathered as we cross the snow bridge, which creaks underfoot. As I clamber up the opposite slope, rain begins to fall. Gokul and I take shelter in a narrow cave under a giant boulder. Below us, we can see the porters crossing the snow, like a line of beetles moving over bauchy ice. When Kamal Singh joins us, he shows me a shard of mica he has found, peeling it apart and passing me a slice. Through its crystal lens, I can just make out the shapes of the mountains. And when I cup my hand around it, I stare into the reflective surface, and see a faint mirage of myself. The mica reminds me of old glass negatives, scratched and faded but preserving fossilized images inside translucent leaves, tectonic chapters overwritten from the Carboniferous or Eocene age, a palimpsest of geological history. 

"Half an hour later, when the rain stops, we arrive at base camp—a sloping field of grass and rubble next to a stream—from where we can look back down the valley. Porters straggle in. One of them had to be sent back because he was suffering from altitude sickness. The rest shrug off their loads and leave as soon as they’ve been paid, almost running down the trail."

................................................................................................

"EXPLORERS AND FOREBEARERS

"A few months before setting off on our expedition, I met Gurdial in Dehradun, at the home of Nalni Jayal, an alumnus of The Doon School and former Environment Secretary of the Government of India. Both men have climbed together on several expeditions and Nalni now runs the Himalayan Trust, advocating ecological awareness. Gurdial, whose friends and students call him ‘Guru’, tells me that he will turn ninety on 1 January 2014. Despite his years, he is a tall, imposing man, with a camouflage cap on his head. His memory remains sharp as an ice axe, recalling early attempts on Bandarpunch.

"Their team approached the mountain from the southeast, walking from Mussoorie to Dodital, then climbing on to the high bugyal meadows and working their way up through the watershed of the Hanuman Ganga. Through his connections in the Himalayan Club, Martyn recruited three Sherpas from Darjeeling for their expedition, one of whom was Tenzing. Gurdial shows me a photograph of the summit ridge taken by another Doon School master, R. L. Holdsworth. His Leica captured the stark dawn shadows, outlining snow and rocks against an overexposed sky, which is almost black, the kind of image that digital photography cannot replicate. Gurdial’s finger traces the route. ‘Martyn and the rest of our party got up this far and then turned back because it was too difficult, but Tenzing carried on to the summit.’

"He shakes his head in disbelief. 

"‘We had very little equipment. When I think of what we wore…’ Gurdial was inspired by mountaineering books in Martyn’s and Gibson’s libraries, classic accounts of Himalayan exploration by Shipton, Tilman and Smythe. I ask if he had any training as a mountaineer and he laughs. ‘We learned as we went along. After all, climbing is little more than putting on crampons and tying a few knots. In those days we didn’t know what pulmonary edema was. We didn’t know anything about acclimatization. We just kept going.’

"Though Gurdial didn’t make it to the top in 1950, he returned to Bandarpunch twenty-five years later, in 1975. With an expedition from the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, he successfully climbed the mountain by the route we are attempting. 

"‘May I ask how old you are?’ He fixes his eyes on me. When I tell him fifty-six, he nods. ‘Still young,’ he says. ‘You must tell me about the climb when you get back.’

................................................................................................

"Several writers have identified Gurdial Singh, Roy Greenwood and Dawa Thondup’s climb of Trisul in 1951 as the advent of Indian mountaineering. Nalni Jayal was also a member of this expedition, though he did not reach the summit. Gurdial, Greenwood and Thondup were the second team to reach the top of Trisul, which was first climbed by Tom Longstaff in 1907. They approached the mountain through a section of the Rishi Ganga Gorge, now part of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. 

"‘It was perfectly still and clear on the summit,’ Gurdial tells me, ‘with a layer of clouds below us at twenty thousand feet. I remember kneeling in the snow and changing a reel of film. I had an Agfa camera.’

"A famous photograph published in The Himalayan Journal shows him doing a headstand on the summit of Trisul. When I ask if he had planned it ahead of time, Gurdial shakes his head and smiles. ‘No, it was a spontaneous decision. Roy Greenwood had done a handstand, so I decided to do a headstand.’ The picture, taken by Greenwood, shows a carefree exuberance for the adventure of climbing and reminds us of an innocent age of mountaineering. Instead of planting flags or posing triumphantly on vanquished summits, Gurdial and Greenwood literally turned the heroics of the climb on its head."

"Willi Unsoeld was also a friend of Gurdial’s. They met when the young American first came to India in 1949 and attempted Nilkanth. The two of them spent almost a month together, including a week in the Bhyundar Valley, climbing nearby ridges and photographing wildflowers. When Unsoeld returned to India in 1976 to climb Nanda Devi with his daughter, they had planned to get together in Dehradun. But after Devi died on the mountain, Unsoeld went straight back to America and they didn’t have a chance to meet."

................................................................................................

"BLUE SHEEP

"It is still early in the year for wildflowers but we find plenty of herbs, including thyme and a species of allium with white, star-like blossoms. Known as wild garlic, its leaves have a pungent, oniony smell and taste. Yesterday, Gokul collected enough to make a vegetable dish, mixed with potatoes. Armed with my camera, I wander about the rocks and meadows, crossing snow fields above our camp to reach the outer margins of the valley. Pikas, or mouse hares, populate the glacial debris, darting from one rock to the next. They are skittish animals and I’ve never been able to get good pictures. But this time, with some patience, I am able to sit still, until their curiosity gets the better of them."

" ... These caterpillar mushrooms contain a potent steroid and are used in Chinese medicine. According to some accounts it is an undetectable ingredient in performance enhancing drugs for Olympic athletes. A single piece of keeda ghaas can fetch Rs 400 and a kilo makes a man rich. Kamal Singh told me that he had recently been up at the Kuari Pass and whole families were camped out there, searching for the desiccated remains. Though the conditions in the Son Gad Valley were ideal for finding keeda ghaas, our searches went unrewarded."

" ... These huge blocks of granite are as big as pilgrim buses parked amidst natural plantings of juniper, primulas, gentians and marsh marigolds. From a distance the giant rocks look as if they have recently broken off the mountain, but once I reach the spot, it is obvious that they were dragged here by an extinct glacier that melted long ago after exerting its natural engineering on the landscape.

"The boulders are of different colours: beige and grey, dull green and red, flecked with silver and yellow. Veins of gneiss running through the rock look like seams of crystalized treacle. One of the boulders has a crack down the middle through which I can see the waterfall beyond our camp framed within the fissure. Everywhere is evidence of erosion, water’s corrosive touch—its freezing and melting, its constant flow. Even the gentle moisture on the breeze, over centuries, can mould the hardest surfaces as if they were malleable clay.

................................................................................................

"Only a few birds appear, a dark blue whistling thrush like those that frequent our garden at Oakville, a white-capped redstart, flaring his tail to show off the russet rump that gives him his name. A couple of monal pheasant sail out of the rhododendrons higher up, while a flock of snow pigeons keep their distance from me. Whenever they take to the air, their wings are like grey and white prayer flags.

"I am looking for bharal and finally spot them on a snowfield higher up along the western rim of the valley. In early summer, before the goatherds and their flocks arrive, these wild sheep have the new grass to themselves. For an hour I watch them graze above me, more than thirty animals altogether, both ewes and rams. Eventually they drift toward a south-facing pasture 400 metres from our tents. The wind carries my scent in the direction of the herd and they seem wary but allow me to stalk them."

"By our third day at base camp, the bharal had grown so used to us that they wandered in amongst our tents just like the peaceable herds that Shipton and Tilman described in the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, back in the 1930s."

................................................................................................

"REFLECTIONS ON A LAKE 

"Preparing for our expedition to Bandarpunch, I took several shorter treks, including a four-day hike to Dodital and Darwa Pass. ... "

"Instead of walking all the way from Mussoorie, as others did in earlier days, I was able to drive to Uttarkashi and on to Sangam Chatti, where two branches of the Assi Ganga flow together. The year before, catastrophic floods had ravaged the valley, and it was barely recognizable from earlier visits. Buildings and bridges were washed away, as well as most of a hydro-electric project being built below Sangam Chatti. Accompanying me on this trek was my nephew, Aaron, his friend Maura, and Suman, whose home is the village of Agora, below Dodital. Over the past few seasons, Aaron and Suman have been taking anglers trout fishing on the Assi Ganga, until last year’s flood washed most of the fish away. This year, they had been given permission by the forest department to begin restocking the Assi Ganga with trout from Dodital.

"Though the lake has become a popular tourist destination, we went up ahead of the crowds, in mid-April, before the route opened for mules and trekkers. It remains one of the most beautiful walks in Garhwal, a steady climb through forests of oak and rhododendron, with showy red flowers covering their branches and littering the path. ... "

................................................................................................

"Brown trout are not a native species of the Himalayas. Salmo trutta were brought to Garhwal from Scotland a century ago. Aaron has researched their genealogy and DNA testing traces the fish back to Loch Leven, one of the primary sources of trout for stocking throughout the British Empire. Though forest department records confirm brown trout have been swimming in these waters for a century or more, the exact process by which they arrived is still unclear. Whether eggs or fingerlings were carried by ship to India, a journey of several months, including the slow riverboat passage up the Ganga, and then transported by mules or porters into these mountains, it is hard to imagine how the translocation of this species was accomplished. One theory is that brown trout were brought here by the Himalayan entrepreneur and adventurer, Frederick ‘Pahari’ Wilson. After deserting the East India Company army, he supported himself by hunting musk deer in Garhwal and later cut a deal with the Maharaja of Tehri to fell timber in these mountains and float it down the Ganga. He is also credited with building the first bridge across the Bhairon Ghatti Gorge so that pilgrims could reach Gangotri (after paying him toll). Wilson spent part of the year in Mussoorie, where he acquired several properties by extending mortgages to British officers and then foreclosing on their loans. Kipling modelled his title character in ‘The Man Who Would be King’, on Pahari Wilson. It seems likely that the trout in Dodital and rivers downstream may have been brought here from Scotland by this imperial renegade, considered ‘beyond the pale’ of colonial society, because he married not just one, but two Garhwali women."

What other evidence does anyone need of the British and European caste system, far more rigid than anything of India? 

This man who caused major environmental damage that only snowballed as time went by, and robbed not only India but British too, was branded only for adapting to the land they colonised, in marrying locally - instead of ordering a British bride, or picking one from the shiploads that arrived on each boat, tells quite enough about British caste system!

................................................................................................

" ... The north side of the Darwa Pass was covered in snow and, there above me stood the two summits of Bandarpunch. Though only a few kilometres away as the crow flies, they looked higher and more distant than I had imagined. Still breathing hard from the climb, I dropped my pack in the snow and stood near the spot where my father rested in 1948, two years before Tenzing put his footprints on the summit. 

"Already, the clouds were closing in leaving the peak visible just long enough for me to take a couple of photographs. Within a quarter of an hour, the mountain was gone. Staring into the white vacuum, I wondered if I would ever reach the top."

................................................................................................

"FEAR OF FALLING

"My optimism quickly wanes as we begin the second load ferry to advance base camp. I find myself struggling up grass slopes that the bharal climbed with such obvious ease. In the end, I reach ABC, though the last 50 metres are even worse than the near vertical ascent below. Titu has warned me that this final section requires a fixed rope and, when I see it, I understand what he means. A snow chute rises from an angle of 60 degrees to almost 80, where it passes through a chimney in the rocks. For experienced mountaineers, this minor hurdle wouldn’t appear particularly difficult, but for someone like me, who has never clipped on a karabiner or crampons, it seems absurdly steep and treacherous, particularly since there is a drop of several hundred metres below.

"The others have a higher opinion of my climbing skills than I do. Phurbu has fixed a rope, which trickles down the ice, looking more like a fragile spider’s thread than something I would entrust with my weight. Nevertheless, up I go without a harness or jumar, grabbing the lifeline with my left hand and kicking into the frozen slope. Even in the polarized vision of my glacier glasses, the snow is blindingly white. At points it feels as if I am climbing a blank wall without any handholds, a vacant surface as empty as the air behind my back.

"At the top, I flounder over a crumbling lip of icy shale, like an exhausted trout flopping on to land, every ounce of resistance spent in a desperate struggle to survive. Only after ten minutes of gasping for air and lying still, can I appreciate where I am. Advance base camp lies a thousand metres above base camp, at roughly 4,500 metres above sea level. It is a broad balcony of rock and snow pitching down to a precipice that falls away to the southeast. Through the middle runs a stream of melt-water edged with mud. The only splashes of colour are purple primulas growing out of the frost-singed grass. I can see where tent platforms were excavated for earlier expeditions. Rusty tin cans and other refuse lie about, as well as the remains of fires where garbage has been burned. Unlike base camp, ABC is a precarious perch without any protection from the wind, though Phurbu assures me it is safe from rockfalls and avalanches. We stay for an hour and stow our gear under a blue tarpaulin, held in place with heavy stones.

................................................................................................

"The descent is worrying me, for I know that going down will be as much of an ordeal as coming up. Suddenly, mountaineering has lost its appeal—the physical risks involved and the cumbersome choreography of hauling equipment and supplies, the tedious process of moving from one camp to the next—taking two steps forward and one step back. While popular imagination, including my own, has always celebrated the heroics of solo alpinists and summit parties locked in an eternal battle of man versus mountain, the truth is that most major ascents, even alpine style, involve a complex system of logistics and support. Far from being a primitive, ascetic pursuit, mountaineering is a thoroughly modern enterprise that owes more to the industrial age than any primal passion."

" ... Overcoming the obvious limitations of our bodies isn’t easy, whether it be extreme temperatures that freeze our fingers or a shifting centre of gravity that is constantly being adjusted according to the line of ascent. ... "

"All of these thoughts and anxieties pass through my mind as I dig my heels into the snow and lower myself down the chute. This time I face outward, staring at the consequences of a fall. While we pick our way to the bottom, I keep worrying about the others as well as myself. Titu comes down the snow chute without holding the rope. Kamal Singh seems unaware of the drop below his feet, as he leaps from one rock to the next. Phurbu and Tenzing shadow me at the steepest points, placing their bodies between me and the drop, though one misstep would send the three of us cartwheeling down the ridge. I am putting myself at risk, but also the other members of our team. While I keep telling myself to focus on not being a liability rather than achieving heroic stunts, there is also a nagging fear that I am responsible for the lives and limbs of those who accompany me. Climbing Bandarpunch, no matter how grand a goal it might seem, is a selfish objective, a personal indulgence that puts everyone at risk."

................................................................................................

"BURNT OFFERINGS 

"This morning, before breakfast, Phurbu begins building a cairn of ten large rocks placed one on top of the other. The uppermost stone is tapered like an arrow, pointing toward the mountains. In front of this, he constructs a small stone altar, where he stacks a pile of dry twigs collected from around our camp. The shape of the cairn is similar to a Tibetan chorten, a tiered spire that also serves as an emblem of the peak we hope to climb. 

"Once Phurbu is ready, he calls us together for a pooja. Soop Singh has brought a tray on which are placed a husked coconut, an apple and a pomegranate, along with cashew nuts and raisins. Each of the men has decorated the cairn with wildflowers—yellow buttercups, saffron potentilla and white anemones. The fire is lit with birch bark tinder and white smoke begins to billow up in loose strands, braiding itself around the cairn.

"Phurbu settles himself in front of the altar. He props up a pocketsized triptych of Buddhist deities, at the centre of which is a photograph of the Dalai Lama. Opening a well-thumbed prayer book, he begins chanting softly in a low voice, as steady and muffled as the stream that flows nearby. I sit beside him, listening and watching without comprehension and yet in complete awareness of the purpose of this ritual. We celebrate a simple harmony of elements—earth and fire, water and air—the stones, the flames, the burbling stream and the clean, white smoke that makes the wind visible. During the ceremony, each member of the team assumes an attitude of devotion, though there is no formality. Some sit, some stand, one or two fold their hands. From time to time, Phurbu gets up and adjusts the burning twigs without interrupting his throaty incantations. I can see that others are praying too, lips moving silently in several languages."

Again, one notices - Alter isn't abusive of Buddhist rituals, while he won't let an opportunity to abuse Hinduism go waste, but indulges in copious verbal stone-pelting, as if afraid he'd be burnt at stake by his ancestors too, if he held back. The only exception is the title, here. 

"Eventually, Phurbu gestures to Soop Singh and directs him to take out coals with a ladle and put them on a flat stone directly in front of the cairn. Then a sprig of juniper is placed on top and it begins to smoulder. Each of us is called forward and we place more juniper on the fire. The smoke has a sweet, resinous fragrance, the purest incense in the world. Closing my eyes, I feel its warmth caress my face. Phurbu sprinkles tsampa flour and kernels of rice on the flames. He gives us each a pinch of tsampa, which we throw together on to the burning altar. Some of the nuts and other offerings consigned to the fire are wrapped in birch bark. Finally, Phurbu takes a cup of water from the stream and uses a juniper sprig to sprinkle water on the altar. With the same sprig, he anoints each of us, after which we are given water in our palms to drink. Soop Singh distributes prasad, blessed fruit and nuts as well as halwa. The entire ritual takes twenty minutes, though the burnt offerings and juniper keep smouldering for most of the morning. At the end, in deference to Hanuman’s presence on Bandarpunch, everyone shouts ‘Jai Bajrang Bali!’"

Very like a routine Havan - or more properly pronounced, Havana (every a short, all equal) - of India, of far older than Vedic era onwards right upto current times, except for the materials used. 

One could say Yajna, but that's more serious; an Havan or a Havana is more of a routine ritual, comparatively. 

"The rituals are comforting, intended to give us confidence to face the mountain. Today, again, is a rest day, our final acclimatization before we move on up towards the summit. ... "

"The altitude hasn’t bothered me so far, but lying down and reading, I begin to feel breathless. As soon as I get up and walk around, the feeling passes and I wonder if it’s nothing more than anxiety. The snow chute still worries me, a recurring fear of falling that I can’t shake out of my head. ... "

Sounds more like altitude induced pulmonary edema. 

................................................................................................

"CLOUDED DREAMS 

"During the early hours of the morning, well before dawn, I wake up suddenly out of a terrifying dream in which I am falling. Still half-asleep, I sit up in my sleeping bag, feeling as if the earth has dropped away beneath me. In this nightmare, which seems so real it leaves me breathless, I lose my footing on the ice and skid towards the drop below, picking up speed while dragging others with me on a rope. Before we hit the rocks, my eyes open abruptly in the darkness, a hollow, hopeless feeling in my chest. The rain has stopped and the night is black and silent. I know that I am in my tent yet the immediacy of the dream sharpens my anxieties. Wrapping both arms about my knees, I tremble with fear. 

"After several minutes I am also shivering from the cold. As dawn approaches, temperatures plunge. Rolling back into my sleeping bag, I know I am alive and secure, though a lingering uneasiness keeps me awake. Lying there, I wonder why I am doing this. There is nothing to prove. Already, this expedition has cost me more than my last ten treks combined but the money doesn’t matter, even if I can’t afford it. Bandarpunch has personal associations and a sentimental link with my father, but I never intended climbing this mountain as a tribute to his memory. Tucked in my journal is an old black-and-white photograph of Dad but I have already decided not to leave it on the mountain. The gesture seems contrived. It is better to leave nothing behind. Maybe it is better not to go at all. I remember my father’s voice during our last phone call, telling me to be careful. Don’t take any chances. His warning, broken up by static, echoes inside my inner ear.

................................................................................................

"By the time the meniscus of my tent has brightened to the point where I can see my hands, I have made up my mind to listen to my fears and head back home. Already I am calculating the journey back. ... I begin to gather together my things. By the time Kamal Singh brings me a mug of tea, I am packed and ready to leave. Despite the fact that twenty-five people have walked up here with me, I’m quitting; despite the fact that the Indian Mountaineering Foundation has gone through innumerable bureaucratic contortions to make this possible; despite the fact that the Chief Wildlife Warden of Uttarakhand has finally signed our papers. All of this means nothing at this moment. I am completely content in my cowardice, happy at the thought that never again will I have to climb that treacherous chute of snow, or the pathways of ice that lie beyond.

"Last time I had no choice but to leave our expedition early because my father was dying. Now it is my decision alone, my failure, my inadequacy. A while later, when I explain my fears to Kunzang, he tries to persuade me to change my mind. I assure him that I will cover the cost of the climb and honour the agreement I have made with his employers. But he seems less worried about that than other consequences. ‘I think we shouldn’t have taken a rest day yesterday,’ he says. Maybe he’s right. Twenty-four hours of sitting around, worrying about the dangers ahead, has made me lose my nerve.

"Phurbu joins us, solemn-faced, as if his prayers and rituals have been called into question. The cairn he built still points toward the mountain, though the fire has burned out. He tells me that he believes I can make it to the summit. ‘You are fit and healthy. We will help you get to the top. We have a strong team. It’s not so difficult as it seems and we will take no risks.’ His eyes are full of honesty and concern but I shake my head. By this time, I’m conscious of the absurdity of my fears and the confusion I am causing. I try to reassure Kunzang and Phurbu that it has nothing to do with the team.

................................................................................................

"The morning brightens, though heavy layers of cumulous surround the upper ridges. My nightmare has faded. Yet, a part of me is already on my way home, tracing a path down the opposite side of the valley, to avoid the snow bridge that has washed away. 

"Finally, after the others have talked among themselves, Nandan comes to my tent. He speaks with formality, assuming his role as Liaison Officer. If I am turning around, he says, then everyone must go back. He reminds me that I am the leader of this expedition and his duty is to stay with me. Nobody can climb the mountain once I retreat. 

"As he speaks, I realize that my fears and doubts will destroy any chance the others have of climbing Bandarpunch. Just as it was a selfish decision to undertake this expedition in the first place, so will it be an act of placing my own anxieties before the aspirations of the team, even if I am a client paying them to help me get to the top. My weakness threatens their success."

................................................................................................

"ABC

"With tents set up, advance base camp is more hospitable than my first impressions allowed, though the slopes across from us keep shedding rocks, which sound like firing squads. Volleys of boulders cannonade down the cliffs. ... Looking down from the ledge behind my tent, I can see base camp a thousand metres below, but soon the clouds come spilling into the valley and fill it up with a dense white tide. It is almost as if ancient glaciers have returned to cover the valleys, a broad expanse of white that looks perfectly solid, though I know beneath those clouds it must be raining steadily. Above the storm, we can see other mountains, like islands separated by estuaries of emptiness. Beyond the ragged summits of the Gangotri Group, I recognize the sharp profiles of the Bhagirathi peaks overlooking Gaumukh. Shivling isn’t visible but amidst layers of clouds, contours are precisely outlined, creating a depth of field that delineates distances. To the human eye, light shapes the mountains in an instant, just as water does over time.

"Compromising with my fears, I have told the team that I will come up to ABC with them and we will send a group ahead to explore the route, after which I will make up my mind to proceed or not. My second ascent up the grassy cliffs and snow chute was no easier than before but I am relieved to be here. After a lunch of khichdi, Phurbu and Titu set off with a load of equipment to investigate what lies ahead, while Tenzing stays back to give me a climbing lesson in using crampons, jumar and descender. He fixes a couple of ropes on an ice field above our camp, before showing me how to get into my harness. I wear Koflach climbing boots, a livid lime green colour, stiff and awkward. Though I was taught all this two years ago, I have forgotten the knots and the sequence of clipping and unclipping.

"The difference between trekking and mountaineering is like the difference between snorkelling and scuba diving. With my boots and crampons there is a secure attachment to the ice, though they feel as unnatural as walking with flippers on a beach. The harness grabs me around the thighs and is cinched at my waist. Tenzing knots a nylon strap that extends from my navel to my chin like an umbilical cord to which a jumar is attached. This simple mechanism allows me to move up a rope but stops me from sliding down.

................................................................................................

"Trying to reassure me, Tenzing says that this is how clients go up Everest on fixed ropes. His father has been to the summit five times ‘by five different routes,’ he tells me. Tenzing is the youngest in our group, though Nandan and Titu are about his age, all of them younger than my own children. This lesson in mountaineering is as much an effort to persuade me to keep going as it is a training exercise. Though I haven’t agreed to attempt the summit, the others have made it their mission to get me to the top. Tenzing’s solicitous lessons give me confidence. Soon I am going up and down 30 metres of ice, clipping on karabiners and using the jumar. This is certainly better, I tell myself, than grabbing at a loose rope with one hand, while kicking at a frozen slope. I feel brave enough to lean back against the descender and rappel down the incline. The only point at which I feel uneasy is when my crampons scrape the rocks beneath the ice, losing traction for a moment or two. I remember Gurdial’s comment about climbing being nothing more than learning how to tie a few knots and putting on crampons.

"All of the signs today have been auspicious. Soon after we reached ABC, shafts of light broke through the clouds and a circular rainbow appeared above us. This perfect ring of light seems ethereal, encircling the sun with a faint halo of colours like an omen from heaven. Each person in our party offers a different interpretation. Some say the rainbow signals fair weather for the next few days. Others believe it means that temperatures will drop tonight, but everyone agrees it signifies good luck.

................................................................................................

"When Phurbu and Titu return, they seem confident that tomorrow we can reach our summit camp. From what they’ve seen so far, the glacier has shifted but the ice cliffs appear passable. Phurbu sketches out a map on his palm, showing me how we will negotiate our way up the ice. His index finger traces a path along his lifeline, as if circling a crevasse. Aware of my uncertainties, he explains that most of the route is easy, without any serious obstacles. I won’t need crampons most of the way. Because of the clouds, they were unable to explore beyond the ice cliff, but I remember photographs of the summit camp taken on our previous expedition. These showed a broad expanse of level snow, as flat and wide as a dozen football fields. When I ask Titu, he confirms that the campsite is completely flat and from there it is more a matter of walking than climbing. Compared to the exposed ledge on which we are camped and the ascent from base camp, it seems easy going from here on up, though I remind myself to be realistic. We are above 4,500 metres, which means we still have more than 1,500 metres to ascend. From behind my tent, I can see the snout of the glacier to the right. It is broken up into huge slabs of blue and grey ice, like shattered glass, though I imagine farther on, where it winds its way around the summit cone of Bandarpunch, it is like a frozen river, easily navigable on foot.

"The pendulum of emotions on this trip has been extreme, taking me from hours of fear and depression to moments like this when our objective seems simple and well within my reach. Our plan is to set off in the morning tomorrow and camp by midday, after which we’ll rest for ten or twelve hours. The final push to the top of Bandarpunch will begin soon after midnight, so that we can get there by dawn. Within the next thirty-six hours it will all be over. Settling into my tent after dinner, I am relieved that the others persuaded me to keep going and happily embarrassed by my earlier misgivings. Their optimism has infected me with a sense of exhilaration and I fall asleep to images of myself walking across a placid moonscape of snow and ice, my headlamp casting a silvery glow, roped securely between two others, confidently advancing toward the summit.

"Tom Longstaff, one of the Himalayan pioneers, wrote in his memoir, This My Voyage: ‘To know a mountain, you must sleep upon it.’"

................................................................................................

"GATHERING STORM

"Several hours later, thunder rouses me from a dreamless slumber. I am confused at first because the sound comes from below us in the valleys and then above, beyond the reef of ice that we must cross tomorrow. Flashes of lightning illuminate the struts of my tent and heavy rain begins to fall before dawn.

"We have no access to weather reports and our group isn’t carrying a satellite phone, which the Government of India does not permit, fearing espionage or terrorist plots in the Himalayas. Our mobile phones stopped receiving signals after we crossed the pass above Sukhi. There is no way to tell if this rain is the beginning of the monsoon or just a passing squall. When I unzip the flap on my tent and peer outside, the clouds are as thick as matted wool and my headlamp barely penetrates the gloom. Whatever cheery predictions we made yesterday, based on a rainbow encompassing the sun, have been disproved. Just as I am about to zip shut the tent, something dashes through the mist, silent as a ghost, a sooty figure on four legs. The bharal are here to visit us, scavenging for salt and kitchen scraps. A young ram with stubby horns floats out of the mist, his wet fleece bedraggled, but shining eyes fixed on me, as if I am the interloper. Seconds later he flees the camp, followed by a dozen others. The bharal seem to leap away into nothingness, plummeting headlong down the cliffs.

................................................................................................

"Sheets of rain wash over my tent, which tugs at its ropes as the wind tries to uproot us. The lightning has ended but there is distant thunder from all sides, as if the mountains were shuddering at their foundations. I can hear rockfalls too, dislodged by the rain. Even if I were to try counting wild sheep, it wouldn’t send me back to sleep.

"Two hours later, Phurbu confirms what I already know. We will have to wait another day because of the storm. For some reason, it doesn’t worry me anymore and I am content to lie here within my dry cocoon. I could be anywhere on earth. The Himalayas have vanished in the clouds and this rocky patch of soil beneath my air mattress could just as easily be the prow of an ancient continent drifting toward another. Aeons tick away instead of seconds. It doesn’t matter how long we wait. The mountain will always be there.

"Hours later I sense that the wind has changed direction and the downpour eases. All of us emerge and gather for tea as clouds swirl about, taunting us with vaporous fingers. Gradually, it seems to be clearing and Phurbu decides that he will take more equipment up to the glacier and try to fix a rope on the ice cliff below our summit camp. This will save us time tomorrow, he explains. What he doesn’t say is that the monsoon has arrived and we will soon be locked into a cycle of storms that offer only brief windows in which to climb.

................................................................................................

"Kunzang and Tenzing decide to go with him, along with Titu and Nandan. They ask, half-heartedly, if I would like to join them, but I can tell that I will be an impediment from here on up. I’ll wait until the ropes are fixed. They set off slowly up the slope, a string of figures that grow smaller and are hidden for awhile amongst the rocks, then reappear on a snowfield higher up. Folds of mist converge around them. They look as if they are walking on the clouds, before they vanish altogether.

"Sitting with Soop Singh and Dhan Singh by a kerosene stove, we boil water to make tea and eventually prepare a simple lunch. Gokul is unusually silent and lets the others speak. Dhan Singh tells me that he comes from Loharkhet, the roadhead for the trek to Pindari Glacier, where I’ve been many years ago. He nods and smiles as I try to recall the stages of that trek—the forest rest houses at Dhakuri and Phurkiya, where we camped as a family in 1976. Dhan Singh corrects my memories of the trek and tells me there is a new route now, from a village called Khatti. ‘You can reach the glacier in just two days,’ he says. Soop Singh confirms this, telling me he’s done the Pindari Glacier trek with several groups. His village is located in the same district, Bageshwar, but on the other side of the valley, toward Almora and Ranikhet. I ask if there are any tea estates nearby but he shakes his head and says only apple orchards, though the crop is disappointing. Like their fathers and grandfathers before them, Dhan Singh and Soop Singh have no choice but to find work away from their families and villages in Kumaon. Even a hundred years ago, harsh conditions in this region forced men to leave their homes and join the army or seek employment in the plains. Being high-altitude porters and camp staff is an uncertain business but whenever there is work, it pays relatively well. I ask if they enjoy their work and both men smile and shrug, as if to say, It’s a job, nothing more or less.

................................................................................................

"When the others don’t return, I begin to worry, though Dhan Singh laughs when I suggest they might be in trouble. We wait until three o’clock to eat lunch, but still there is no sign of them. Whenever the clouds part, I study the snowfield where I saw them last, waiting for our team to reappear. Finally, around five, I spot a figure coming down alone. Minutes later, two more men appear and within half an hour everyone is back in camp. Tenzing is the first to arrive. Before I can ask him how it went, he makes a gesture of frustration, throwing up both hands and waving in the direction of base camp. 

"‘All of us will have to go back,’ he says. ‘There’s no way up!’

"Drinking hot lemon squash to revive themselves, they describe how they crossed the lower end of the glacier without any trouble, then fixed ropes on the ice cliff and started up. But instead of finding open fields of snow where Titu and the others set up camp two years ago, more ice cliffs and crevasses blocked their route, some of them 5 or 6 metres wide. What used to be a featureless plateau of ice is now a fractured snowscape, impossible to cross without the right equipment. The glacier has broken up. ‘We would need ladders and much more rope,’ Kunzang tells me. ‘And ten more days, even if the weather clears.’ Titu and Tenzing have taken photographs, which they show me, gnarled palisades of seracs and broad lesions in the ice, where bergschrunds have separated from the slope. ‘To climb down one side and up the other would take all day…very technical and dangerous,’ says Phurbu, in case I have any illusions of arguing with him. For a brief moment, I wonder if they are exaggerating the risk to give me some sense of consolation before we turn back, but their exhausted faces do not suggest anything other than the truth. We have no choice but to abandon our attempt on Bandarpunch."

................................................................................................

"CONSOLATION

" ... Fulfilment comes from knowing that correct decisions have been made and whatever we have attempted has been undertaken to the best of our abilities. ... "

" ... Kamal Singh and Dhan Singh decide to take a shortcut down a snow field, still hoping to find keeda ghaas. They plan to slide their heavy packs in front of them. But before they can accomplish this, both men slip and the rest of us watch them tumbling and sliding down the ice, along with duffle bags and empty jerry cans—a comical re-enactment of my nightmare. They slide a hundred metres or more but both men land safely in a heap at the edge of a stream."

................................................................................................

"DEPARTURE 

"On our last evening at base camp, we have a feast. Phurbu and Tenzing make momos and thukpa while Gokul bakes a cake, frosting it with the message, ‘See you again, Steve.’ Next morning, three of us leave—Titu, Soop Singh and myself. We will go ahead and contact the porters, who are expecting us to return next week. As we say farewell after breakfast, Phurbu presents me with a white scarf, placing it around my neck. Email addresses and mobile phone numbers are exchanged, though none of these have any relevance here. After two weeks together, we embrace and part, promising to meet again in Mussoorie or Delhi."

"Our journey is almost over, yet none of us could have predicted what happens next."

................................................................................................

"FLOODED MOUNTAINS 

"Within twenty-four hours the rain becomes a torrential monsoon storm that lasts for three days and three nights without cessation, dumping four times the normal rainfall, almost 400 mm of precipitation every twenty-four hours, setting records for the month of June. Rivers rise more than 15 metres, gouging out long sections of the road. A huge reservoir in the sky has burst its banks, inundating the Central Himalayas in a sudden onslaught of moisture. Homes collapse and fields are washed away. Villagers flee to higher ground, only to find the ridges above them sinking into the valleys. Hotels built along the banks of the Ganga are torn from their moorings and swallowed by the flood. Statues of Hindu gods made out of reinforced concrete are swept away in the relentless current. Billboards fall like playing cards and whole sections of riverside towns disappear into the Ganga. For some it must seem like the end of the world. Others never know what hit them, killed instantly beneath mud slides or drowned in their sleep. ... Roofs collapse, walls implode and foundations drop away into whirlpools. Ninety-three bridges, some of which have stood for more than a century, are consumed by the rivers they span. Water rises so high that pylons on either side are ripped free from the rocks. Buses and cars are carried away in the flood, tossed about as lightly as flotsam. Power lines and telephone cables snap and communication towers fall. Trees are torn from the earth and whole sections of the mountains slough off, avalanches of earth and forest."

"Unaware of what is coming, Titu and I hire a jeep from Sukhi and drive downriver through heavy rain for most of the night, escaping only a few hours ahead of the flood. By the time we reach Mussoorie, much of the Bhagirathi Valley is cut off. If we had continued with our attempt on Bandarpunch, we would have been stuck on the mountain in the storm. Suddenly, our expedition and adventure becomes meaningless, set against the cataclysm of the flood. All of the four main sources of the Ganga and their temples, visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year, have become totally inaccessible. The worst damage is at Kedarnath, where a glacial lake bursts several kilometres above the temple, sending a deadly slurry of mud and rock streaming into the heart of the pilgrim complex, burying resthouses where yatris lay asleep, filling rooms to the ceiling with dirt and debris. The main temple, made of stone, remains undamaged, though all around it every other structure is flattened.

................................................................................................

"Four days go by before I am able to contact our team. When I finally get through to Nandan’s mobile phone, he reports that they have been able to reach Sukhi but are now stranded, along with thousands of pilgrims who have been visiting the Gangotri shrines. Every day the newspapers and television carry more and more disturbing stories of settlements vanishing and walls of water carrying away everything in their path. Rescue operations begin. The army and air force are called in to carry food and water to the region, while bringing out the elderly and injured. Helicopters fly back and forth but the huge number of people makes it an impossible task, especially with the rain still falling. Corpses are buried under mudslides or washed down into the rivers. Nobody knows for sure what the death toll might be but estimates rise quickly into the tens of thousands. 

"Finally, twelve days after abandoning our attempt on Bandarpunch, we get word that Kunzang and the rest of the team have reached Delhi. While stranded, they assisted with the rescue operations, using their ropes and mountaineering equipment to help yatris negotiate the hazardous route out. Eventually, after walking to Uttarkashi, they were able to get transport home. Gokul calls me the day after they escape. It is a relief to hear his voice and familiar laugh. When I ask if they are all okay, he says, ‘Of course! Why were you worried about us?’"

................................................................................................

"INVOKING TRAGEDY 

"The devastation in Uttarakhand was headlined as a ‘Himalayan Tsunami’ by journalists and politicians hard-pressed to describe the scale of destruction. The comparison is not far-fetched, for huge waves of water poured down the valleys. Narrow gorges added to the velocity and force of the current, which had nowhere else to go. Though the violent storms took everyone by surprise, there was nothing new about these floods. Only last year, the Assi Ganga overflowed and washed out sections of Uttarkashi. Similar catastrophes have occurred in the past. In 1978, a landslide near Gangnani blocked the river for a couple of days before it burst and swept away parts of the towns and settlements downstream. Hundreds died and survivors were said to be picking fish out of trees as if they were fruit. In 1880, Pahari Wilson, who built his palatial home in Harsil and floated deodar logs down the Ganga, was rumoured to have drowned in a similar flash flood on the Bhagirathi. Presumed dead, his obituaries appeared in the papers. A week later, however, Wilson came sauntering down the Mall Road in Mussoorie, just as his two wives had gone into mourning."

" ... In hindsight, a great deal might have been done to limit the damage and suffering, but the flood itself was as inevitable as earthquakes, a violent process of erosion that has, over countless epochs, created these valleys and sculpted the mountains.

"Of course, none of this mitigates the loss of life and property that occurred during the 2013 Uttarakhand floods, but as I read or listened to news reports and heard helicopters flying over our house in Mussoorie, I couldn’t help but think of the bones at Roopkund. Five hundred years ago, an anonymous party of pilgrims died in the Himalayas, seeking a path to god. Since then, many others have lost their lives, including victims of altitude sickness at Mount Kailash, their spiritual quest ending in physical anguish and mortal finality. ... "

Alter expounds on mistakes here, but doesn't compare the disaster with say, houses on California coastal areas being brought down due to landslides. 

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"REACHING FOR CLOSURE 

" ... It is late September once again. Bar-headed geese will soon begin crossing the Himalayas southward, retracing the flyways above Flag Hill, their soft honking like plaintive voices, almost human."

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CONTENTS 

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A NOTE ON THE HIMALAYAS 

FLAG HILL: Distant Prayers 

BIRTHRIGHT 

RECOVERING MEMORY 

WHAT MOUNTAINS MEAN 

NANDA DEVI: Chasing Bliss 

APPROACHING THE GODDESS 

SLAUGHTER ROAD 

LAKE OF SORROWS 

WRITING WITH MY FEET 

KAILASH: A Pilgrim’s Crossing 

ENTERING THE MANDALA 

FRONTIERS OF FAITH 

TRANS-HIMALAYA 

BRAHMA’S DREAM 

UPON THIS THRESHOLD 

CIRCLING THE SUMMIT 

CAVE OF MYSTERIES 

BANDARPUNCH: Returning Home 

HEALING LIGHT 

ASCENT AND RETREAT 

REACHING FOR CLOSURE 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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REVIEW 

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A NOTE ON THE HIMALAYAS 

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"The pronunciation and spelling of the word ‘Himalayas’ has been a matter of dispute from the time it was first translated into English. In Sanskrit ‘hem’ or ‘him’ means snow and ‘alaya’ denotes the ‘place of’. ... "

In Sanskrit, 'Hima' with a short 'a' at the end is snow (or ice, too?), but 'Hema' with a short 'a' at the end is gold, not snow or ice. 

" ... When I was a boy, we were taught to stress the second syllable (Himaalaya), rather than swallowing the vowel (Him’laya) as many people do. We believed this was the correct pronunciation, though it differed from the original Sanskrit. ... "

No, it's not different from original Sanskrit. Indeed its a very mathematical language, and 

Hima+Aalaya=Himaalaya, 

as per Sanskrit rules of joining words. 

The pronunciation he claims he was taught is, indeed, the correct one, and it's as per rules of Sanskrit. Whoever told him that "it differed from the original Sanskrit" was either lying or an egotistical illiterate idiot. 

" ... As for spelling, many purists assert that Himalaya, without the ‘s’, is more accurate and gives the mountains a singular grandeur. ... "

More accurate, certainly. Grandeur of the very term is inherent in the original nomenclature, cheapened by anglicising with the 's'. 

" ... Common usage has devolved into the plural form that I have chosen for this book. My purpose is simply to avoid confusion amongst readers who may not be aware of the arcane nuances of this debate. ... "

Or simply racism, preferring readership amongst West ' and bootleggers thereof? 

" ... In the end, of course, no matter how we transliterate their name, the Himalayas will always rise above the perverse inadequacies of language."

Himaalaya is always above, risen from ocean millions of years ago, as witnessed and recorded then by India. 

As for the 'perverse inadequacies of language' that's author's, India rose above it, tolerating its myriad - and silly - shortcomings and faults, and more. 

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October 05, 2022 - October 05, 2022. 

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FLAG HILL: Distant Prayers

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"If the red slayer think he slays, 

"Or if the slain think he is slain, 

"They know not well the subtle ways 

"I keep, and pass, and turn again. 

"—Ralph Waldo Emerson"

Sounds like he translated Bhagawadgeeta, or interpreted it, in his own terms. 

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"BIRTHRIGHT

"The true face of the mountain remains invisible though its southern aspect presents a familiar profile. Two corniced summits, with a broad intervening ridge draped in snow, fall away more than 3,000 metres into the valley below. From certain angles and at certain times of day, just behind the eastern peak, a pale, indistinct shadow becomes visible, the hint of something else beyond. This is the third summit, hidden but higher than the other two by a hundred metres. During the dry seasons—late fall and early spring—dark grey shapes begin to appear on the mountain. Avalanches have carried away the snow, and ice has melted, revealing the underlying strata of rock tilted skyward by interminable forces of geology."

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"A year later, putting his urn in the ground, I felt an overwhelming connection to these mountains, this place that we call home. Once again, my mother had travelled halfway round the world, carrying his ashes, just as she first ventured here from Pennsylvania to Mussoorie, sixty-five years ago, to marry my father. Dad was born in Kashmir, in 1926, a child of the Himalayas. His parents were Presbyterian missionaries and my father followed in their footsteps. He spent most of his life in the mountains, as a teacher and principal at Woodstock School, then later working with village communities in the surrounding hills, promoting drinking water projects, public health, education and environmental awareness. Laying his remains to rest in sight of the high Himalayas seemed to finally close the circle."

"My father’s illness and his death made me intensely aware of our separation and the physical distances that we have put between us as a family. India and the United States seem farther apart than ever before. Wooster and Mussoorie are almost opposite points on the globe. My grandparents originally came from Ohio and Western Pennsylvania—and before that our forefathers immigrated to North America from Switzerland and Scotland—but I have never felt any strong associations there, no ancestral tug of war.

"I was born in Mussoorie. These mountains are my birthright. ... "

"birthright"?????? 

The way  whole continents were clsimed by various conquistadores setting out from Europe? Or Arabia? Mongolia?

" ... Our family has lived here for almost a century, since my grandparents first spent a summer in Mussoorie in 1916. ... Yet, despite all this, I am conscious of my own dislocation, the foreignness of settling here in the foothills of the Himalayas. Sometimes it feels as if I have taken on an assumed identity. Earlier, growing up in India, I never felt that I belonged anywhere else, despite my American passport. Whenever I left the Himalayas, an instinctual urge pulled me back, a sense of surety that this was home. Only in recent years have I begun to experience doubts and discontentment, the uneasy, persistent ache of alienation."

He fails to connect the two - the fact of a US passport, kept despite being born and educated in India, despite the pull he describes to his birthplace, despite coming back to settle in the home that belonged to his parents. 

"My attempt to climb Bandarpunch was driven mostly by a need to overcome the physical and emotional trauma of a violent incident that happened at Oakville three years earlier, when Ameeta and I were stabbed and beaten by four intruders. Even as I mourn my father, I find myself returning to those brutal memories. This is something I would rather forget. The indelible experience of our attack still evokes a sense of violation and loss…as if I have become a stranger within the sheltering mountains of my birth."

He forgets the violence routine in US, perpetrated against citizens and non-citizens, regardless of race or gender or age. 

Did he expect that being Scot or Swiss by ancestry haould have rendered him immune from intruders, theft, or violence in a country because of his US passport? 

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"RECOVERING MEMORY 

Explicit, detailed description of the said attack by the intruders, perpetrated against author and his wife, in their home at Oak Hill. 

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"‘Take the TV if you want,’ I told them, trying to point. ‘Leave us alone.’ But they kept asking where the money was hidden, voices calm but insistent, as if they were still inquiring about painting the house."

" ... As he turned to look at the others, I caught a glimpse of his smirking features. He was in his early twenties, clean shaven, with wavy hair and a dark complexion. I noticed scars of acne on his cheeks. Though I didn’t recognize him, the impression that remains is the cynical amusement on his face, as if he took sadistic pleasure in seeing me bound and bleeding."

" ... The choking sensation was worse than the blows to my head. ... After more than a minute, which felt like an hour, the man unclamped his hand and asked again, ‘Where is the money?’"

"‘ ... Tell us where the money is or we’ll shoot your wife—madam ko goli mar dengey!’ As I gasped for breath, I remember thinking it was strange that they called Ameeta ‘madam’ after they had beaten and stabbed her. Once again, I told them we had no money in the house."

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"The random cruelty of our assault was matched only by the overwhelming expressions of love and concern that we received in the aftermath. The doctors and staff at the Landour Community Hospital were exceptional in their skill and compassion. Family and friends gathered in our hospital room while we recovered. The townspeople of Mussoorie, many of whom I’d known since childhood, formed a crowd outside the hospital while we were in the operating theatre. When I finally emerged from surgery, the hall was filled with familiar faces looking down at me as I was wheeled toward our room."

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" ... There was no question that the attack had already changed me, even a few hours after it was over. For one thing, I knew that I would never feel invincible again. Yet, somehow, I wanted to set a physical goal for myself that took me beyond mere survival and challenged my body to become stronger because of my injuries. Someday, I wanted to outdistance my fears and leave behind the horror, to reach destinations that would prove I was whole and well again…"

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"The doctors cleared our room a couple of times, insisting that we needed to rest and warning that there was danger of infection with so many people coming and going. But the first two days in the hospital were like a circus, a constant stream of townspeople and politicians coming to express their sympathy and concern. Everyone kept saying, ‘We never imagined that something like this would happen in Mussoorie.’ Emotionally, it was exhausting and I went from casual banter to sudden tears without being able to control myself. I suppose it was good to keep talking about what had happened, telling and retelling the events. ... "

" ... My parents were travelling and only learned what happened three days after the event. Two of Ameeta’s sisters flew in, from Australia and London, while our daughter, Shibani, boarded a plane in Boston to be with us."

"Two policemen were assigned to the case—Inspector Tamta, an officer from Dehradun, and Kukreti, the SHO in Mussoorie. These men interrogated us more than a dozen times over the next three months. They were pleasant enough, always polite and respectful, but it soon became clear that they were clueless. Tamta and Kukreti were caricatures of bumbling policemen, flourishing a lot of bravado, claiming to have uncovered leads that took them nowhere and questioning suspects who provided no information. Most of our conversations were in Hindi and like our attackers the police referred to us as ‘madam’ and ‘uncle’. ... "

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" ... We were put in a police van with tinted windows and driven a kilometre from our house. At the side of the road, with two constables keeping guard, stood a young man they had apprehended. Ameeta stared at him through the darkened glass. At first, she was convinced that he was one of the attackers, then doubt began to skew her memory. Finally, in frustration, she rolled down the window and spoke to the man, asking if he recognized us. He shook his head, but the frightened insolence in his eyes brought back the sickening immediacy of the attack and left us anxious for several days.

"Perhaps the most unnerving aspect of any form of violence is the sense of estrangement that follows, as if your identity has been violated. Mussoorie has always been my home, the town where I was born and raised, yet the attack made me acutely aware of being a foreigner. ... "

He means, no longer master race who wouldn't expect being attacked. 

Because, of course, in US he wouldn't be a foreigner, but could expect to be attacked, and not feel a foreigner. 

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" ... They had come and gone anonymously, disappearing into India’s billions, out of which it would be impossible to identify anyone. Though I have no proof, I believe they were petty criminals from the plains who came up to the mountains in search of easy victims. The man who wore the ski mask was probably from Mussoorie, a local accomplice who showed them where we lived. More than likely they were after money to buy drugs, which is why they didn’t take our cameras or computers. They wanted cash, which we didn’t have in the house. Of course, this explanation is as much conjecture as any other and I can’t prove it, unless one of the men is eventually apprehended, which isn’t likely to occur."

" ... At the same time, I know that if I were ever attacked again, my first instinct would be to kill those men. Never before had I come face to face with evil. Even now, I have difficulty using that word, though there is no doubt in my mind that the men who attacked us were undeniably evil. Unlike obtuse moral debates in religious or philosophical discourse, this form of evil was not an abstract concept or some form of spirit possession. It was real and present. The man who held me down and tried to smother me was evil. Those who kicked and stabbed Ameeta were equally evil. ... "

"Walking around the chakkar in Landour, there are times when Ameeta and I see a group of young men loitering by the side of the road, and instinctively we turn back or take another route. We often wonder if any of the faces we pass in town are the men who assaulted us. Even if we don’t recognize them, do they recognize us? The idea of a stranger knowing who you are and what he’s done to you is more frightening than whatever fragments of memory remain, and it adds to our vulnerability. We have become more alert to possible threats and wary of strangers. For each of us it is different, of course. Even after thirty-six years of marriage, I could never begin to understand everything Ameeta feels, how she copes with the frightening memories and the possibility that it might happen again. Though we have decided to remain in Mussoorie we often speak about leaving, going away to some place where we can feel safe and secure again, moving closer to our children in America, away from the shadows that still haunt us, far away from those dark monsoon mornings when we lie awake listening for a sudden knock at the door.

"Ameeta does not share my sentimental attachments to the Himalayas, though she has spent much of her life in Mussoorie and invested a lot in making Oakville our home. An artist and a gardener, she has created a beautiful place for us to live in, preserving the heritage of the property while filling the flowerbeds with colours and bringing light and warmth into each of the rooms. Without her, I could not live here and she has stayed on mostly for my sake, sacrificing opportunities and interests elsewhere.

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"A month after the attack, when I was finally able to walk more than a couple of steps, I set myself a goal of climbing a nearby hill, 3 kilometres from our home. This forested ridge is called Flag Hill because the Tibetan community ties prayer flags at the top. From the summit there is a spectacular view of the high Himalayas, snow-covered peaks like Swargarohini and Bandarpunch. Looking eastward, the Gangotri group—Srikantha, Jaonli, Kedarnath and Chaukhamba—are clearly visible, a crenelated wall of mountains that flank the headwaters of the Ganga. On a clear day, far off to the east, you can see Nanda Devi, a white pyramid silhouetted against the sunrise."

" ... Leopards prowl the paths around Flag Hill and, occasionally, in winter, bears come to feed on acorns. Rhododendron arboreum bloom in spring, setting the slopes ablaze with scarlet blossoms. During summer, before the rains, forest fires ignite the pine needles. From mid-June to mid-September, the rain is constant and the hill is clad in ferns and mosses, overgrown with wild ginger and peacock orchids. But autumn is the finest time to climb Flag Hill, when the monsoon mist has finally dispersed and the air is so clear it feels as if you could inhale the sky in a single breath. 

"There is nothing I would rather do on an October morning than walk from our home to the top of this hill and see the range of snow mountains framed by fluttering strings of prayer flags. Often, I have sat and looked out at those white summits, emptying my mind of errant thoughts and focusing on the sharp profile of the Himalayas, losing myself in silent contemplation. Early in the morning, the only sounds one hears are the distant beating of drums from village temples across the valley, or the shrill cries of whistling thrushes and the cackle of a koklass pheasant."

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" ... The most I could do was walk a short distance along the path that leads from Oakville to a meditation bench my father built, from where he liked to watch the sunrise. Here, a few of the snow peaks can be seen through a lattice of branches. Flag Hill is visible from the bench, its rounded summit like the hump of a bull. Walking down the path, six weeks after leaving the hospital, I needed a cane for support. My legs felt unsteady, as if they would never be able to carry me up or down a mountain again.

"On purpose, I had come alone. Flag Hill has always been a place of solitude for me…a private sanctuary. Seldom do I meet anyone along these paths, except an occasional dairyman gathering fodder or firewood. That Sunday, in late September, nobody else was around. As I passed a jumble of boulders that I usually clambered up, I felt suddenly uneasy and afraid. Being by myself in the forest has never troubled me, and I have trekked alone in the Himalayas for days at a stretch. Yet, all at once, I was gripped by a feeling of vulnerability. It was my sixth sense, a primal impulse warning me of danger. Though I had noticed a ropey mass of leopard scat lower down the path, it was human predators that frightened me. The fear was unexpected and overwhelming. I had to resist an urge to turn around and hurry home, even though the trail was familiar. I knew exactly how many switchbacks there were to the top. But at that moment, I was completely terrified, as if confronting a malevolent presence. Every shadow seemed to conceal a threat. Every rustling leaf signalled ambush. I felt as if one of our attackers had followed me to this secluded spot. Any minute now, he would rush from behind and put a knife to my throat."

"When I reached the top, my anxiety had dissipated. I no longer felt any immediate danger. In front of me lay a panorama of snow-capped mountains. Between the branches of oaks were dozens of prayer flags bearing block-printed images of wind horses, snow lions, conch shells and other emblems. During the New Year festival of Losar, Tibetan refugees come to Flag Hill. They offer prayers and burn incense in front of the mountains, beyond which lies their homeland. Throughout the day, they worship here, tying fresh flags to the tree limbs, as well as playing cards, drinking chhaang beer and dancing. For these Tibetan exiles, Flag Hill is a place where they can gather and gaze out at the mountains across which their people fled, more than half a century ago. 

"Their prayers and invocations are printed on the coloured flags and relayed on the breeze beyond those far white summits, towards Mount Kailash. This sacred mountain, also known as Kang Rinpoche, is not visible from Mussoorie, for it lies across the Zanskar Range in Tibet. Kailash is considered the keystone of the Himalayas, the mountain which holds all other mountains in place. For Hindus it is the austere ‘abode’ of Shiva and for Buddhists it is Mount Meru, navel of the universe. Though I could not see Kailash, I was aware of its distant presence, a hidden source of spiritual inspiration that exerts its force throughout the Himalayas."

" ... Northward, the main thrust of the Himalayas rose up in solid grandeur, a reef of ice and snow ... "

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Here, in the process of talking about a peak named Bandarpunch, Alter not only refers to a Hindu deity in the fashion of West as monkey God bot also gets his story mixed up. 

Burning of Lanka by Hanuman preceded the war, and since Hanuman visited Himaalaya to fetch Sanjeevanie, he could have dealt with his burns then, if not earlier. There was no second burning of Lanka. 

With confidence that insulting India is a non-sequitur, he proceeds to label Raamaayana a myth. 

Would he do that with doctrine of virgin birth, immaculate conception, or guilt blamed fraudulently on Jews instead of Romans for crucifixion? 

" ... Hidden behind Bandarpunch is a third peak that is barely visible, except from certain angles. Known as ‘Black Peak’ or ‘Kaala Naag’ (Black Cobra), it is the highest summit of the three. Together, the monkey’s tail and cobra’s hood evoke a mysterious, allegorical landscape that promises answers to eternal riddles and has fascinated me since boyhood.

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"East of Bandarpunch the mountains concede a valley where the Bhagirathi tributary of the Ganga cuts a passage through the main thrust of the Himalayas. Farther on, the Gangotri group and Kedarnath bulge up in a monumental heap of snow-capped ridges. But the peak that catches my eye is Nanda Devi, punctuating the eastern corner of my vision, faint as a watermark against the sky. This is the highest and farthest mountain I can see. With the sun behind her, she is featureless, a pale silhouette, as delicate as a moth with folded wings. Nanda is the ‘bliss giving’ goddess. Her blessings dispel all doubt and despair. A dangerous and vindictive deity, she often reveals her violent aspects but those who worship Nanda are showered with the comforting grace of her benevolence. She is the mountain bride of Lord Shiva, who sits in meditation on Mount Kailash. If I were to ride on the wings of a Himalayan griffon across the mountains, soaring from Bandarpunch to Nanda Devi, then follow a straight line towards Tibet, the trajectory of our flight would take me directly to Kailash, no more than 300 kilometres away.

"These mountains represent for me three different aspects of the Himalayas. Bandarpunch offers healing and solace, while Nanda Devi promises ananda or happiness that releases us from anger, fear and doubt. And Mount Kailash, beyond my line of sight, marks an elusive threshold of transcendence. Each is linked to the others by a mysterious triangulation of the soul, an inner cartography that maps the routes I must follow. This trinity of sacred peaks signifies the stages of my search for reconciliation and recovery. Tracing their profiles in my mind, I scan the crags and ridgelines for hidden passages through the mountains. Together the three summits pull me towards them, as if through an instinctual force of nature, the same primal impulse that carries a migratory bird across the Himalayas."

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"WHAT MOUNTAINS MEAN 

"The fifth century Sanskrit poet Kalidasa opens his epic poem Kumarasambhava with lines in praise of the Himalayas. He proclaims them a ‘proud mountain-king!’ crowned with a ‘diadem of snow’ in this early translation by British orientalist, Ralph T. H. Griffith, author of Specimens of Old Indian Poetry: 

""Far in the north Himalaya, lifting high 

"His towery summits till they cleave the sky, 

"Spans the wide land from east to western sea, 

"Lord of the Hills, instinct with Deity. 

"For him, when Prithu ruled in days of old 

"The rich Earth, teeming with her gems and gold, 

"The vassal Hills, and Meru drained her breast, 

"And decked Himalaya, for they loved him best, 

"While Earth, the mother, gave her store to fill 

"With herbs and sparkling ores the royal Hill…""

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" ... Krishna replies: ‘Those who set their hearts on me and ever in love worship me, and who have unshakable faith, these I hold as the best Yogis. But those who worship the Imperishable, the Infinite, the Transcendent unmanifested; the Omnipresent, the Beyond all thought, the Immutable, the Neverchanging, the Ever One; who have all the powers of their soul in harmony, and the same loving mind for all; who find joy in the good of all beings—they reach in truth my very self.’ (12:1-4) 

"Ralph Waldo Emerson understood this when he gave up his parish in New England to seek a transcendent path through the woods. And yet, the most important step towards becoming a mountain is to close the books that others have written and read only those texts imprinted upon rock and ice or in the forests and streams that cascade from above. ... "

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" ... Lightman concludes with a story about ospreys nesting near his summer home on an island off the coast of Maine. He explains that he and his family observed the ospreys for several years, watching the nesting pairs return from their winter migration. One summer, after seeing the eggs hatch and studying the progress of the fledglings, he stood on the deck of his house, witnessing the young birds’ first attempts to fly.

""On this particular afternoon, their maiden flight, they did a loop of my house and then headed straight at me with tremendous speed. My immediate impulse was to run for cover, since they could have ripped me apart with their powerful talons. But something held me to my ground. When they were within 20 feet of me, they suddenly veered upward and away. But before that dazzling and frightening vertical climb, for about half a second we made eye contact. Words cannot convey what was exchanged between us in that instant. It was a look of connectedness, of mutual respect, of recognition that we shared the same land. After they were gone, I found that I was shaking, and in tears. To this day, I cannot explain what happened in that half-second. But it was one of the most profound moments of my life.""

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" ... Alan was attacked by ardent atheists for conceding that faith and science might be, somehow, compatible. A few weeks earlier, a team of physicists had announced their discovery of the Higgs boson, the so-called ‘God particle’, which is partly named after S. N. Bose, one of India’s most eminent scientists and thinkers. In the press there was a lot of discussion about science unravelling the mysteries of creation. Though I have no real understanding of physics, Alan and I talked about it around the fireplace at Oakville in the evenings. ... "

" ... We have dreamed up gods so that we can reassure ourselves that somewhere, someday, somehow, after this life is over, something awaits us: a presence that recognizes who we are. But if we approach a mountain instead, accepting that we are nothing more or less than an integral part of its existence, our ego merges with the nature of the mountain."

" ... The cowboys and sheepmen of the American West failed to understand that by eradicating wolves, they would ultimately turn their pastures into dust. Leopold believes that the ranchers had ‘not learned to think like a mountain’."

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"Near our camp was a small stream that fed into the Zanskar River. While most of the mountains were bare and dry, this spring irrigated narrow margins of grass and wild herbs along its banks—chives, caraway and thyme, which were blooming in the short Ladakhi summer. The place felt as close to wilderness as anywhere I’ve been in the Himalayas, though today it is probably nothing more than a bend in the road, with jeeps and lorries rumbling by. Recalling the eyes of the wolf and the rampant horse, as well as the sprig of fragrant thyme pinched between my fingers, I can think only of Dylan Thomas’s line, ‘… the force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age…’ I was twenty-four years old at the time, and about to become a father.

"Ehrlich explains that after viewing an exhibition of scroll paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, she set off for China to visit the sacred mountains depicted by those painters. She was entranced by the fluid lines and brush strokes that show crags and hilltops draped in mist, with waterfalls and hermits’ huts and staircases ascending the rocks beneath crooked pines. As a student of Buddhist teaching, Ehrlich seeks the sacred truths in these landscapes and their healing message. Her first destination is Mount Emei, in the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas, described by ancient poets as ‘the most beautiful mountain in the world’. What she discovers is the wholesale corruption of natural beauty beginning with the ‘Stalinesque’ architecture of the buildings in the town below ... Her final ascent is by tram instead of on foot where the summit has been flattened into a concrete arcade of tea stalls and gaudy souvenir shops with loudspeakers blaring Chinese pop music."

"Though the book ends with notes of redemption, played on flutes by Naxi musicians, most of Ehrlich’s story is about disillusionment and the impositions of a modern industrial society on the once pristine ... "

"Gretel Ehrlich visited Mussoorie as part of a literary festival I organized. We had never met before but I had read most of her books. On the second day of her visit, I led a group of writers including her to the top of Flag Hill so that we could see the snow peaks arranged to the north. Climbing the hill, she asked about our attack, and I remember telling her in detail about the men who stabbed us and the fact that I felt no pain as the blades cut into my flesh. Between pointing out the birds and trees on the hill, I kept recounting those events, probably more than anyone wanted to hear, as if the story was enmeshed with this place. Afterwards, she said, ‘You might as well write a book about it.’ In her memoir The Solace of Open Spaces, Ehrlich escapes the trauma and loss of a lover and companion by going off to Wyoming and finding redemption in the wild vast spaces of the American West, herding sheep and attending Native American festivals and ceremonies. But more than anything it is the landscape that consoles her and gives her the strength to move on. ... "

"Gretel owns a home in Wyoming under the slopes of the Wind River Mountains, south of Jackson Hole. When I stopped by for a visit the summer after she came to Mussoorie, it struck me that she’d found the perfect place. Instead of the sacred mountains of China, or the ice floes of the Arctic where she has spent whole seasons accompanying Inuit hunters, here was her own ‘home on the range’ with pronghorn antelope roaming nearby and the late afternoon sun painting the mountains with brushstrokes of light.

"Mamang Dai, a writer from Arunachal Pradesh, in the northeastern corner of India where the Himalayas taper away toward Burma, has written a poem titled ‘The Voice of the Mountain’. The poet’s point of view and the ‘I’ of the mountain merge in these verses, so that in the closing lines it is impossible to say who is speaking: 

""I am the breath that opens the mouth of the canyon, 

"the sunlight on the tips of trees; 

"There, where the narrow gorge hastens the wind 

"I am the place where memory escapes the myth of time, 

"I am the sleep in the mind of the mountain.""

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"A primal sense of spiritual longing draws us towards the mountains, just as skeins of geese and other migratory birds are guided by magnetic forces emanating from the earth. Even the most pragmatic climbers speak at times of mysterious forces they encounter at great heights. More than any other range on earth, the Himalayas contain a rarefied atmosphere of sanctity. Most seekers are content to find their gods on the lower slopes and passes as well as in the valleys below these peaks. But some believe that they must ascend into the snowy heights in order to achieve transcendence. An extreme example was Tulshuk Lingpa, a Tibetan shaman who led a devoted band of followers across Sikkim and on to the slopes of Kanchenjunga, promising that he would open a portal to the ‘promised land’, a beyul or valley of immortality that Tibetans believe exists beneath the surface of the landscape. Claiming supernatural powers of navigation, Tulshuk Lingpa interpreted events following the Dalai Lama’s exile as an auspicious moment when the gates of the promised land would open for those who believed. In October 1962, he set off with three hundred true believers to find this hidden paradise. Thomas Shor has written an account of their ill-fated journey in A Step Away from Paradise. The conclusion of this quest leaves open the question of whether Tulshuk Lingpa achieved his goal, even as the mountain opened up and drew him in.

"Equally passionate and irrational was the bizarre story of Maurice Wilson, a quixotic Yorkshireman who flew his single engine plane to India in 1934 and sneaked into Tibet, following in the footsteps of the first British Everest expeditions. He believed that the true path to God lay up the highest mountain in the world and, if he could reach the top, he would be lifted into heaven. Disguising himself as a pilgrim, Wilson reached the Rongbuk Glacier accompanied by a band of porters who finally abandoned him below the North Col. Wade Davis tells this tale in Into the Silence, a tragic history of the early expeditions to Everest. With barely any equipment and no experience of mountaineering, Wilson made a remarkable effort to achieve his spiritual goal. His frozen corpse was discovered the next year by British climbers above the glacier at an altitude of 6,400 metres. Earlier, while pioneering the same route, George Mallory achieved a form of immortality when he and Sandy Irvine disappeared beneath the summit of Everest, their fate a cause for eloquent obituaries suggesting they became one with the mountain, part of an imperial dream and a fatal catharsis following the devastation of World War I."

Wasn't body of Mallory found in recent decades, sans the photograph of his wife which he had securely zipped in his coat, intending to leave it at the top? 

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As usual with this author, written with some flourish but wrong as far as knowledge of languages of India, especially Sanskrit goes - even at its simplest! 

"Amongst all of its muscular and esoteric contortions, yoga includes the tadasana, or mountain stance. It is one of the simplest of all physical postures in which a person stands erect with his or her feet firmly planted on the ground, arms held at the sides, palms facing inward. The chest is pushed out and the chin raised, no different than a sentry standing at attention. In this way, an adept practitioner of yoga takes on the mountain’s lofty demeanour, its resilience and dominating stature. Breathing is controlled and eyes are closed. Sinews and skeleton, nerves and blood vessels, mucous and bile, every gland and organ becomes an integral part of a somatic metaphor while the practitioner focuses on a mental image of a perfect mountain, unattainable yet fully realized in mind and body."

All very nice, except - the name tadasana is derived from the word Taada, pronounced Taad, which isn't a mountain; it's one of the species of palm trees, and its fruit is shaped a little like a water chestnut, but much larger, and not as dry or floury. The connotation of the name of the yogasana named after this tree is illustrated by the description provides above. 

If it were named after a mountain, the pose would have ones arms raised at least halfway to, if not completely, horizontal.

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"‘When the sage climbs the heights of Yoga’, the Bhagavad Gita explains, ‘he follows the path of work; but when he reaches the heights of Yoga, he is in the land of peace’. (6:3) 

"The Katha Upanishad echoes these thoughts with the exhortation: ‘Awake, arise! Strive for the Highest, and be in the Light! Sages say the path is narrow and difficult to tread, narrow as the edge of a razor.’

"Challenging his followers to engage in a physical and spiritual renaissance, Swami Vivekananda, the great Hindu reformer who helped introduce Hinduism to the West, has written: ‘You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the Atman when your body stands firm upon your feet and you will feel yourselves as men.’

"Arjuna’s dilemma in the Gita is how to reconcile his duty as a warrior with the battle he must fight against his kinsmen. Through their discourse on the field of war, Krishna, his divine charioteer, reveals the higher purpose of Arjuna’s actions and the illusory nature of life and death, which leads to the final annihilation and absorption of the soul, the atman, becoming one with the cosmic whole, with brahman. 

"Emerson paraphrases lines from the Gita in his poem, ‘Brahma’: 

""If the red slayer think he slays, 

"Or if the slain think he is slain, 

"They know not well the subtle ways 

"I keep, and pass, and turn again."

"These verses were originally published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1857, a year in which India saw its first rebellion against British rule, and plenty of redcoats were killed, after which they retaliated with vengeful slaughter. The same lines, as translated by Juan Mascaró in 1962, offer a somewhat different gloss. ‘If any man think he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows the ways of truth. The Eternal in man cannot kill: the Eternal in man cannot die.’ (2:19) Profoundly ambiguous, these lines resurface, word for word, in the Katha Upanishad, translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester: ‘If the slayer think that he slays, if the slain think that he is slain, neither of them knows the truth. The Self slays not, nor is he slain.’"

" ... But though the verses remain opaque, steeped in enigma and paradox, I find them strangely comforting."

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" ... the sky was brightening and I could begin to see the profiles of the ridges around me, the layered shadows of surrounding mountains. By now a dawn chorus of bird calls had begun: the burbling whistle of green pigeons and the cackle of laughing thrushes, the single, plaintive note of a hill partridge and the wailing of barbets. At no other time of day do the mountains seem so alive, so full of sounds and smells, the sour-sweet odour of mouldering oak leaves and the resinous scent of pines. The air at daybreak seems as if it has never been breathed before and the light is young, full of unseen possibilities. Sitting on a grassy knoll, huddled in my canvas jacket against the cold, I listened and waited, alert and silent. 

"Below me in the valley, I could hear the murmuring whisper of a stream falling over rocks. In the sky, the last few stars were burning out and the moon was sliding beyond the ridge behind me. Grass was brittle with frost and I could see my breath condensing in the air. Across from me, the opposite side of the valley rose up a hundred metres away at its closest point, extending high above me to the ridgeline. ... Gradually, shapes began to coalesce—oaks and rhododendron trees forming out of the darkness. The day was brightening far above me but the valley had still to emerge from the night. ... "

" ... My eyes scanned the opposite ridge as my fingers tightened around the cold gunmetal and wooden stock. The stillness at dawn is like a meditative trance. It holds us in perfect stasis, as if time has stopped, and breathing slows, while the current of blood in our veins is no longer seething but moves without a pulse. I felt totally connected to the mountain, transfixed within its vastness, as well as in the immediacy of this particular spot, the moist earth and dead grass beneath my feet. 

"And then, I saw the slightest movement across from me, as if a single leaf had turned over on the breeze. A shadow seemed to rustle within the foliage, the indistinct form of an animal still hidden from view. My eyes strained to confirm its presence even as I began to lift the rifle—slowly. It was there and not there. I saw patterns shifting and, a moment later, a goral stepped into view, its grey coat nothing but a smudged blur in the half-light, with a faint white patch on its throat. The animal’s ears flicked nervously as it looked across at me. In that moment, we were each alone in ourselves, yet one with the mountain."

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October 05, 2022 - October 06, 2022. 

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NANDA DEVI: 

Chasing Bliss 

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"APPROACHING THE GODDESS 

"Nanda Devi is often translated as the ‘bliss-giving goddess’, though the Sanskrit word ‘ananda’ at the root of her name is better understood as ‘contentment’. ... "

One, author should consult someone before making pronouncements on Sanskrit. He's generally wrong, and it's due to lack of knowledge coupled with a hubris. 

Here, he's already wrong more than once. 

Ananda, pronounced and in Indian languages, written 'Aananda', is not the root; if anything, Nanda is closer to the root, while aa added as prefix amounts to 'with, until, upto', ... 

Equally wrong is his interpretation. Aananda is Bliss, neither contentment nor jumping about, but more than joy and felicity both, a complete experience, that's bliss. 

" ... Bliss and joy are forms of happiness that suggest the kind of ecstatic faith that often borders on insanity. ... "

Alter is wrong. 

" ... However, the darshan I seek releases me from discontentment rather than evoking euphoria. Most importantly, darshan does not require the intercession of a priest, which is why it appeals to me. The act of darshan is unencumbered by liturgies, pious rhetoric or moralizing. As an atheist, I can appreciate the spiritual experiences others claim through darshan without accepting the theology and dogma."

" ... And on a midsummer morning in the gardens of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City, I received darshan from a snow-white peacock that appeared out of nowhere like a bird from a fairy tale. ... Or in the autumn forests of New England, where shimmering leaves of gold made me feel I was hallucinating, dazzled by the fiery blaze of dying foliage.."

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"HIGH PLACES

"My search for Nanda Devi begins at the Kuari Pass ... Trail crosses over into the Dhauliganga Valley above Joshimath. At an altitude of 4,264 metres, the pass is relatively low by Himalayan standards, but it opens on to a spectacular panorama of snow peaks, which rise to almost twice that height. The challenge of Kuari Pass is to reach there as early in the day as possible. Clouds often gather by mid-morning and soon there is nothing to be seen."

"Kuari Pass overlooks the inner core of the Garhwal Himalayas, which form an arc of 180 degrees, from Chaukhamba, the four-pillared mountain, across to Nilkanth, Mana and Kamet. Directly in front of us are Ghori and Hathi Parbat, the horse and elephant peaks, caparisoned with fresh saddles of snow. And, farther east, Dunagiri’s white pyramid cleaves the sky. Seated next to a cairn that marks the pass, I feel as close to the mountains as I can be without actually setting foot on their slopes. The only disappointment is that Nanda Devi is hidden behind the Pangarchula Ridge. We will have to wait until we descend a thousand metres below the pass before the goddess reveals herself."

"The traditional approach to Nanda Devi, before motor roads cut their way through the valleys of Kumaon and Garhwal, was to walk from Ranikhet or Almora, across the foothills and over the Kuari Pass to Lata, which is the last village before the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. ... "

"In his memoir, Upon That Mountain, Eric Shipton extols the pleasures ... on their way to Nanda Devi in 1934: 

"" ... Our way led over ridge after ridge of forest-clad hills; not the oppressive rain forest of the Eastern Himalayas, but gentle wooded slopes interspersed with grassy glades, moss and bracken and splashing streams. The rhododendrons were in bloom, and many kinds of Alpine flowers. Above were the sparkling white peaks of Trisul and Nanda Ghunti. The soft music of running water, the murmur of a light breeze in the trees, the summer note of the cuckoo, these were the sounds we awoke to each morning. With such a small party, we could camp far from the dusty villages, wherever we chose. We rarely bothered to pitch a tent, but lay, instead, on a luxurious bed of deep grass, beside a huge log fire. We lived with a sense of perfect freedom and deep physical and mental well-being. We wanted nothing."

"At Chitrakantha, which means picturesque point, we finally catch sight of Nanda Devi emerging above the ring of peaks that guard her sanctuary. The steepled summit is like a vast cathedral that has taken millions of years to carve, buttressed by eroded ridges and corniced with ice. By this time clouds obscure all of the other mountains and only Nanda Devi is visible. In the sky above her floats a gibbous moon so faint that I mistake it for a scrap of cirrus. The same colour as the peak, pale white and blue, it looks as if it has chipped off the mountain, and is now orbiting her sacred summit."

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"UNCERTAIN ALTITUDES

" ... Nanda Devi was considered the highest peak in the world. Today, at a carefully measured 7,816 metres above sea level, her rank has been reduced to twenty-third in elevation, though Nanda Devi has never surrendered her stature or sacred prominence. This beautiful yet forbidding mountain remains the highest peak inside the borders of India. Her perpendicular faces of rock and ice have been calculated as one of the steepest ascents. When asked which mountain he considered most difficult, after having just climbed Everest, Tenzing Norgay identified the eastern summit of Nanda Devi."

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"THE EYE OF CREATION

" ... The clouds and snow spume that drift about her summit are said to be the smoke from sacred fires of mystics who sit atop the mountain performing rites of worship for the goddess. ... This mountain stands out from the rest, not only because of her altitude but through a natural symmetry that suggests perfection. Daubed with vermillion at sunset, she is an uncarved image, the raw shape in stone that a sculptor sees before chiselling a face, the hidden idol awaiting discovery beneath the surface of a rock. ... "

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"PENETRATING THE SANCTUARY

" ... Aitken’s fascination with Nanda Devi grew from that first moment he saw her, rising above the lower ranges of Kumaon. Over a period of twenty years, he pursued the goddess, an infatuation that was both physical and spiritual. After several arduous treks, he was finally able to enter the sanctuary of Nanda Devi, nearly slipping to his death on the Rhamani slabs, an exposed rockface that bars the way. Eventually, he scrambled up the crags with the help of sure-footed Garhwali porters. Arriving in the monsoon, Aitken found the mountain hidden behind clouds. Building a small shrine in which he placed an image of Nandi, Shiva’s sacred bull, he waited for the goddess to reveal herself. Eventually, she consented to give him darshan:

""As I sat on the cave roof facing the black ramparts across the echoing river, the shredded mist higher up the mountain suddenly revealed a patch of blue. It was the first hopeful sign in five days of wet marching that the weather might clear. Contented, I sat back to breathe in the pleasure of the moment and as I idly stretched in the warming air the great moment happened. The top layer of cloud began to thin and tantalisingly the outline of the main peak began to flicker into recognition. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Unknown to me I had built the temple to Nandi exactly facing the Goddess. It seemed a minor miracle that the sun should choose this moment to reward my labours. ... Only her peak was revealed, as lovely a portrait in ermine as any queen could wish for. She sailed majestically against the brief blue of eternity and I could not take my eyes off this stunning apparition. Everything I desired had come to fruition. There was a feeling of utter fulfilment and a song of thankfulness welled up from that core of contentment that follows the union of heaven and earth; the perfect end to all our striving."

"Even today, thirty-five years after that moment, Bill continues to describe his darshan of the mountain as ‘a supreme moment of cosmic consciousness’. He believes that Nanda Devi told him to write, inspiring the book about his quest for the goddess as well as several other travel memoirs about his experiences in India. Though Bill writes with spiritual flourish and passion, he remains a totally grounded mystic with a dry sense of humour."

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"ILLUSIONS OF CONQUEST

"Eric Shipton described the first ascent of Nanda Devi, in 1936, by Bill Tilman and Noel Odell as ‘the finest mountaineering achievement ever performed in the Himalayas’. Two years earlier, Shipton and Tilman, along with Angtharkay, Pasang and Kusang, were the first men to find a route up the Rishi Ganga Gorge into the natural sanctuary at the foot of this mountain, a bowl-like valley that is all but inaccessible. During the early years of Himalayan exploration, Nanda Devi remained an elusive summit, frustrating the skills and determination of the best mountaineers of that generation, including Dr Tom Longstaff and his Italian guides, the Brocherel brothers. Virtually unapproachable, Nanda Devi and her sanctuary are protected by a chain of peaks over 6,000 metres that guard the innermost sanctum of her domain."

" ... Houston, Tilman and Pasang Kikuli completed an epic crossing of Longstaff Col, a near vertical route out of the sanctuary, which brought them into the Gauri Ganga valley.

"Severe floods in Garhwal and Kumaon in 1936 coincided with Tilman and Odell’s successful climb. Many believed that the conquest of Nanda Devi provoked the wrath of the goddess. Whether it was the tin of corned beef or those first bootprints on the summit, climbing Nanda Devi amounted to a form of sacrilege in the minds of many Hindus who believe that the upper reaches of the Himalayas are sacrosanct, the domain of deities, not human beings."

" ... Following the creation of Nanda Devi National Park in 1981, mountaineers have been refused access to the sanctuary. Now that entry up the Rishi Ganga Gorge is forbidden, recent expeditions have focused on Nanda Devi East, which stands 400 metres lower than the western summit and is accessible from the Milam valley and Longstaff Col. Nanda Devi East was first climbed by a Polish team in 1939.

"In 1993 a joint expedition of the Indian Army Corps of Engineers and naturalists from the Wildlife Institute of India undertook an environmental survey of the sanctuary and removed more than a ton of garbage from the area near base camp. Several members of this team also successfully reached the summit. Following their report of widespread pollution, poaching and destruction of juniper, yew and birch forests, the sanctuary remains closed to trekker"

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"PATHFINDING HERO 

"Nobody alive today has more first-hand experience of Nanda Devi than Dorjee Lhatoo, who has climbed the mountain on three occasions and reached both summits—east and west. His first encounter was during the Indo-French expedition in 1975 when he stood on top of Nanda Devi East along with Yves Pollet-Villard and Walter Cecchinel. The following year, he returned to the mountain with an Indo-Japanese expedition, in which two Japanese team members successfully climbed both summits and completed a traverse of the connecting ridge. Lhatoo supported the Japanese climbers by ascending from the west and replenishing their oxygen and other supplies. Bad weather intervened to stop him from attempting a traverse in the opposite direction. His third and final encounter with Nanda Devi was in 1981, when he participated in the joint Indian men’s and women’s expedition. One of the country’s most distinguished mountaineers and a member of the elite community of Sherpa climbers in Darjeeling, Dorjee Lhatoo summited Everest in 1984, and successfully ascended a number of other major Himalayan peaks.

"Despite his many excursions, today Lhatoo is reluctant to leave his home in Darjeeling, where he was an instructor at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute from 1962 to 2000. A dignified, soft-spoken man in his seventies with a trim, athletic build, Lhatoo looks as if he could still climb a mountain with ease. His manner is casual but cultured, almost courtly ... His living room contains climbing mementoes and pictures on the walls, including one of himself as a young man, standing between his mentors, Tenzing Norgay (the first man to climb Everest) and Nawang Gombu (the first man to climb it twice). Lhatoo is taller than both, with a rakish hairstyle that makes him look a little like Elvis Presley.

"On the opposite wall is a large photograph of the snow peaks one can see from Darjeeling: a dramatic panorama with Everest and Lhotse to the west and Kanchenjunga massif in the centre. The panorama extends eastward to Chomolhari, a 7,315 metre peak on the border of Bhutan and Tibet, which Lhatoo climbed in 1970.

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"This mountain has special significance for him because it overlooks the Chumbi Valley, his ancestral home. A narrow corridor between Sikkim and Bhutan, this strip of land is part of Tibet, one of the many anomalies of Himalayan cartography, where borders never follow a straight or predictable line. Until Nepal opened up, the Chumbi Valley was the only route to Everest, travelled by George Mallory and other climbers in the 1920s and ’30s. Lhatoo was born in Yatung, a small settlement along the caravan road from Gangtok to Lhasa. His father was caretaker for the Himalayan Club dak bungalows on this route. When Spencer Chapman led the first successful expedition to Chomolhari in 1936, he stayed with Lhatoo’s family.

"‘Chomolhari is considered a sacred mountain by the Bhutanese,’ he explains. ‘In Thimpu, before we set off, the king gave us an ornate copper pot called a yangu, and asked us to place it on the summit. It was very beautiful and contained all of the different minerals known to man, including gold and diamonds. I put it in my backpack and carried it to the top. All along our route, villagers came out to see who was carrying the yangu and they pressed their foreheads to my pack as I walked by.’

"Lhatoo smiles hesitantly. ‘I’m not a religious person. ... Having been asked to carry the yangu, I was determined to fulfil my responsibility, whether I believed in it or not.’

"Like Nanda Devi, Chomolhari is named after a goddess who is both protective and full of wrath, a paradox that symbolizes the unpredictable and ever-changing elements of Himalayan mountaineering, where disaster often follows in the footsteps of success. Though Lhatoo and another Indian climber reached the summit, their second team vanished completely.

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"Five years later, Lhatoo made his first ascent of Nanda Devi East as part of an Indo-French expedition attempting a traverse. That year there was a lot of snow at lower altitudes, which made the difficult entry into the sanctuary even more treacherous than usual.

"‘In retrospect it may seem like a great experience but while you are climbing in and out of the sanctuary it is very difficult, very exposed, with rocks falling from above, and then, below you…’ Lhatoo gestures to indicate a fall of 1,000 metres or more.

"Concerned about the safety of their porters, the French team fixed ropes all the way from Dharali into the Rishi Ganga Gorge. The Indian team leader, Colonel Balwant Sandhu, organized helicopter drops of supplies from Joshimath, which reduced the need for porters.

"Lhatoo explains how the Indian team provided food up to base camp, after which French cuisine took over. ... "

" ... The expression he chooses most often to describe a climber’s death is that he ‘disappeared on the mountain’, a gentle, respectful euphemism for the bone shattering tumble down unyielding rock and ice."

"Being a refugee from Tibet, Lhatoo expresses ambivalence towards the experience of exile. India is very much his home, yet he has vivid memories of what lies beyond the ranges. A few years ago he accompanied a Canadian film crew to Everest base camp in Tibet. They had hoped to enter the Chumbi Valley but, at the last minute, permission was refused by the Chinese authorities."

"Lhatoo’s final experience on Nanda Devi was in the summer of 1981, with an Indian expedition that succeeded in putting the first women on the summit: Chandraprabha Aitwal, Harshwanthi Bisht and Rekha Sharma. Following an extended stay in the sanctuary to acclimate, they moved up the mountain to Camp IV. The men and women were paired off and roped together. After having been stranded at high altitude for four days because of high winds and severe cold, the team set off at 4 a.m. Lhatoo was climbing with Rekha Sharma and they were the last to leave camp. With so many recent expeditions on the mountain, ‘there were ropes fixed all the way up Nanda Devi, like telephone lines,’ he recalls. Yet, progress was slow. Lhatoo and Rekha finally reached the top at 5.30 p.m. Ordinarily, the climbers would have turned back well before, but they knew this was the only opportunity they would have."

" ... An Indian Army paratroop expedition was on its way up Nanda Devi as they were coming down. One of the climbers was a former student of Lhatoo’s from HMI, an officer named Lakha Singh. ‘Sandhu told us to leave our fixed ropes behind for the paratroopers, as well as our tents and extra supplies of fuel and food. They would bring the equipment down for us after they finished. But Lakha didn’t like Sandhu and he insisted that they would fix their own ropes.’

"The paratroopers seemed overconfident on the mountain. If three ‘girls’ had climbed Nanda Devi, they believed it would be easy enough for them. Caught in a storm on his descent from the summit, Lakha died of exposure. Another paratrooper was killed while rappelling down the rope that Dorjee had fixed just below the summit.

"‘There was no knot at the end, nothing to stop him. He came down jumping, the way they teach them in the army, though the Sherpas warned him to be careful. When he reached the end of the rope, he just kept going…’"

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"MATERNAL HYMNS

" ... this region recognizes Nanda as the chaste daughter of the mountains who is given in marriage to Lord Shiva, the supreme ascetic and master of the universe. Nanda lives most of the year with her husband in his remote and inhospitable home on Mount Kailash, but she longs to return to the familiar comforts of her natal village in Uttarakhand. Pilgrimages like the Raj Jat Yatra re-enact the ritual journey of the bride leaving her parents’ home and being carried away in marriage. Pilgrims literally and figuratively ‘escort’ the goddess with songs and prayers. Her leaving is accompanied by sadness and mourning, while her return is greeted with joy and thanksgiving."

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"DAUGHTER OF THE MOUNTAIN"

The chapter is titled inappropriately, being about a girl named after, not daughter of, the mountain, if it's about Himaalaya and Nanda Devi. 

"In 1948 two young Americans who had recently survived the war against Hitler stood by the side of US Route 66 in Los Angeles, heading east. They carried rucksacks, ropes, ice axes and a cardboard sign that read: ‘Swiss Alps’. What they didn’t tell anyone as they hitchhiked across the United States, then caught a freighter to Europe, was their real destination—the Himalayas. Willi Unsoeld and his companion had summited most of the major peaks in the Pacific Northwest but they were determined to gain entry into the competitive fraternity of international mountaineering.

"After kicking around Switzerland for a couple of months and scaling peaks like Jungfrau and the Matterhorn, they ran out of money. Undeterred, the first post-war American Himalayan expedition headed to Gothenburg, Sweden, where they got jobs in an iron foundry to pay for their passage to India. Eventually, working as deckhands, riding third-class trains from Bombay to Delhi and on to Dehradun, swapping stories for meals, they reached their ultimate destination: Nilkanth, a 6,596-metre peak in the Garhwal Himalayas that stands near the Tibetan frontier. Edmund Hilary tried to climb it once but gave up, claiming it was ‘too bloody steep for me!’

"Bad weather and dysentery kept Unsoeld from reaching the summit, but standing on Nilkanth, he looked across to see what he would call ‘the most beautiful mountain in the world’—Nanda Devi, two spires of rock and snow that remained an obsession for the rest of his life. Though Unsoeld failed on Nilkanth, he returned to the Himalayas several times and became one of the first Americans to reach the top of Everest in 1963, pioneering a first ascent of the difficult West Ridge. This expedition almost cost him his life as he and three other climbers were forced to spend a night huddled together at 8,500 metres without sleeping bags or tents. Unsoeld sacrificed eight of his toes to frostbite on Everest. Settling in Oregon, he went on to become an advocate of wilderness preservation and adventure learning, a guru of the outdoors, whose passion for the mountains became a spiritual quest. When his wife, Jolene, gave birth to a daughter, Willi Unsoeld named her Nanda Devi after his favourite mountain and the bliss-giving goddess who watches over her slopes.

"In 1976, Unsoeld returned to the Garhwal Himalayas, leading an Indo-American expedition, intent on climbing Nanda Devi. Willi had recently turned fifty. Arthritic hips and missing toes made it unlikely that he would reach the summit but he had ambitions for his daughter, who was a member of the team. Nanda Devi Unsoeld was clear about the significance of this climb: ‘I feel a very close relationship with Nanda Devi. I can’t describe it, but there is something within me about this mountain, ever since I was born.’

"Though the lead climbers, including John Roskelley, made it to the summit, the Unsoelds’ obsession with Nanda Devi ended in tragedy. Trapped in a blizzard at 7,300 metres, Devi developed acute abdominal pain complicated by altitude sickness. Unable to carry her down from the mountain, Willi and others desperately fought to save her life, giving her mouth to mouth resuscitation until ‘her lips turned cold’. In an article for The American Alpine Journal, Unsoeld recounts the moments after his daughter’s death:

""As our faculties gradually returned to us, we discussed what was to be done. We agreed that it would be most fitting for Devi’s body to be committed to the snows of the mountain for which she had come to feel such a deep attachment. Andy, Peter and I knelt in a circle in the snow and grasped hands while each chanted a broken farewell to the comrade who had so recently filled such a vivid place in our lives. My final prayer was one of thanksgiving for a world filled with the sublimity of the high places, for the sheer beauty of the mountains and for the surpassing miracle that we should be so formed as to respond with ecstasy to such beauty, and for the constant element of danger without which the mountain experience would not exercise such a grip on our sensibilities. We then laid the body to rest in its icy tomb, at rest on the breast of the Bliss-Giving Goddess Nanda."

"Devi’s death and the strained relationship between Roskelley and Unsoeld flared into controversy. Roskelley’s book, Nanda Devi: The Tragic Expedition, describes an acrimonious team, and he accuses his fellow climbers of being undisciplined and irresponsible. Reflecting on his daughter’s death, Unsoeld recounted part of this experience in a lecture to outdoor educators: ‘In the face of reality, it’s difficult to know what to say. Upon our return to Delhi I was asked at the news conference, “Do you have any regrets?” and my answer was startled out of me—“No!” And then I wondered, “How can I say that?”’ Later, Unsoeld became more philosophical. ‘… this experience has opened my life to the reality of death and I can never look at it in quite the same way. Intellectually, I feel I’ve handled it. But emotionally, how does one handle the death of such a surpassing human being? And my answer is—you don’t. It handles you. It rubs your nose in the reality of your mortality. We are helpless before death’s onslaught and I guess therein lies a very great lesson that’s difficult for us control-types to learn. We’re not in charge in the face of reality and nature, and in the final analysis, I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

"Three years later, Willi Unsoeld was killed in an avalanche on Mount Rainier. 

"Near base camp in the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, Indian climbers have erected a memorial to the American girl who died on the mountain for which she was named. The inscription is taken from her diary and speaks of a personal moment of communion: ‘I stand upon a windswept ridge at night with the stars bright above and I am no longer alone but I waver and merge with all the shadows that surround me. I am part of the whole and am content.’"

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"DESECRATION"

That subtitle betrays the church roots of the authors ancestral roots, despite his stance of atheist conviction proclaimed repeatedly, as often as that of his being born and brought up in India. 

No one with roots deep in ancient Indian culture would use that title or have that feeling on the topic, and this despite a deep, real reverence for Himaalaya as land of Gods and Goddesses. 

"According to M. S. Kohli and Kenneth Conboy’s book, Spies in the Himalayas, the clandestine expedition to Nanda Devi began at a cocktail party in Washington. Speaking with US Air Force Chief of Staff, General Curtis Lemay, Barry Bishop, a National Geographic photographer and climber who took part in the first American ascent of Everest, is said to have proposed the idea of putting an early warning device atop a Himalayan summit. Initially, Kanchenjunga was proposed but Nanda Devi was ultimately chosen as a more viable option."

" ... When news of the lost sensor reached India’s Parliament more than a decade later, it caused political uproar, partly because of cooperation with the Americans but also because of fears that the plutonium would pollute the headwaters of the Ganga."

" ... The spymasters who set the plot in motion, B. N. Mullik and R. N. Kao, are no longer alive. Tucker Gougelmann, the CIA’s station chief in Delhi and a paramilitary expert in Vietnam, is long gone. So is Barry Bishop, whom Kohli once disguised in a turban, pretending he was the Maharaja of Patiala, while they chatted up girls at a bar in Anchorage, Alaska. Lute Jerstad, Harish Rawat and Sonam Gyatso are also dead. By some accounts, several of the Sherpas who carried plutonium up the mountain died of cancer caused by radiation. M. S. Kohli is one of the last survivors of the Nanda Devi mission and he tells the story with relish."

"After their training sessions, the Indian climbers did some sightseeing, including a visit to the New York World’s Fair. Kohli says that he initially opposed the plan to plant a listening device on Nanda Devi because it was a difficult peak to climb. He suggested Nanda Kot instead. After the first sensor was lost, the Americans finally took his advice and Kohli successfully planted another sensor on Nanda Kot, a peak he’d already climbed on one of his first Himalayan expeditions. Though commissioned as a naval officer, Kohli was deputed to the newly formed Indo-Tibetan Border Police, a paramilitary force that guards India’s Himalayan frontier.

"‘A year after it was installed, the device on Nanda Kot stopped working, and we had to go back up,’ he recalls. ‘It was buried under snow, but because of the plutonium power source, the ice around it had melted, forming a cave.’ He describes the weird scene they discovered as if it were a miraculous phenomenon: a radioactive totem enshrined in a cavern of ice."

"In an effortless segue from espionage to religion, he tells me how he was camped high up on a mountain. In the middle of the night he heard the sound of horse’s hooves and saw a vision of Guru Gobind Singh, the martial saint of Sikhism, riding a white stallion. ‘Immediately, energy flowed into me,’ he says. ‘I woke up my men and told them, chai banao! (make tea), and then I put on my crampons and set off, kicking steps in the ice, making my way up the mountain.’"

................................................................................................

"SACRAMENTS

"As we scramble up a landslide, where the main path to Lata has washed away, Mukesh explains there are two sections of the village, about a kilometre apart. The upper homes are occupied in summer but as soon as it snows, the villagers move down to their lower quarters. The residents of Lata are preparing for winter. Red chillies, kidney beans and apricot pits are spread on the rooftops to dry, where TV antennae and solar panels have been rigged up, amidst sheaves of harvested amaranth and buckwheat. Women with their heads covered in shawls of rough spun wool are carrying firewood down from the forest above. An old man is ploughing his fields with a pair of oxen. He tells us that he is planting winter wheat, which will sprout only after the snow melts in spring. The slate-roofed houses are built close together with staircases and narrow lanes leading from one courtyard to another. In each of the households, women are threshing grain and grinding it in stone mortars."

" ... Mountain Shepherds is a grass-roots effort to tap into Uttarakhand’s eco-tourism industry. They have organized my trek to Kuari Pass. ... "

" ... up to the Nanda Devi temple at the centre of the village. A straggling procession of men is working its way up a steep flight of stairs between the village homes, leading a young ram with yellow ribbons tied to its horns. The drummers maintain a steady rhythm as they climb towards the temple."

"Nanda Devi’s temple at Lata reflects the iconic shape of Mount Kailash, a tiered dome rising above a square stone platform. The door of the temple is locked. Next to it is Latu’s shrine, positioned at right angles, almost like a sentry box. At the far side of the courtyard stands a stone cistern filled by a spring that used to be the main source of drinking water for the village until the government provided a pipeline. Carved fragments of granite and broken columns lie about. Dhan Singh explains that these are the remains of earlier temples felled by earthquakes."

" ... Nanda Devi Unsoeld and her father stopped here and took darshan of the goddess before setting out for the summit, as did Shipton, Tilman, Houston and Odell."

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"SLAUGHTER ROAD 

" ... Soon after I bought my watch, I can’t remember when exactly, I made a decision that I would keep it for the rest of my life. To own only one watch seemed a wise and frugal choice, but more than that, it symbolized a resistance to change that appealed to my conservative nature. 

"But in 2003, I lost my watch. We were living in Reading, Massachusetts, and I was teaching at MIT. ... "

Funny how he disdains mentioning, teaching what, exactly. 

"About three weeks later, when I was about to tear down the signs I’d posted, and several heavy spring downpours made me think my watch could never have survived, I came back home from work to find it lying on the steps of our house. My HMT Quartz had been placed there carefully by someone, I don’t know who. It was working perfectly, the second hand circling like a spider weaving its web, the scratched crystal intact. Someone had returned it to me, an anonymous neighbour who did not want to claim the reward, or answer questions. ... "

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"LAKE OF SORROWS 

"Seeking Nanda’s darshan, I follow another path, east of Kuari Pass. This trek ... leads in a different direction, towards a small, high-altitude lake called Roopkund. Unlike my trek in November, when the panorama of snow peaks were clear and close at hand, this journey takes place during the monsoon, nine months later, when the mountains are covered by clouds.

"Few places in the Himalayas have aroused as much speculation, dispute and exaggerated expectations as Roopkund, a glacial pond at 5,029 metres above sea level, which remains frozen most of the year and only melts between July and September. During these few weeks, when the ice and snow recede, hundreds of human bones are revealed in the shallow, green waters of the lake and along its rocky shoreline. The presence of skeletal remains is a mystery. Nobody knows for sure why they are there.

"Carbon dating suggests that the bones are at least five hundred years old. According to popular lore they can be traced back to the fourteenth century. The most plausible explanation is that a cataclysmic storm or avalanche killed a party of pilgrims who were trying to cross Junargali, the pass of death, directly above the lake. This pilgrimage, which reenacts the bridal procession of the goddess, is the longest and most arduous ritual journey in Uttarakhand, beginning at Nanda’s natal home in the village of Nauti, then circling through the watershed of the Pindar and Nandakini rivers. Roopkund is the penultimate stage of this pilgrimage, beyond which the goddess in her palanquin crosses Junargali and descends into Shila Samudra, the ocean of rock, a seemingly endless expanse of glacial moraine at the foot of Trisul."

But on Google maps, photographs show more. It might be an archeological site, although unexplored as yet. 

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" ... Unlike the staid and relatively comfortable pilgrimages to shrines at the primary sources of the Ganga, which attract pilgrims from all across India, the Raj Jat Yatra is held only once every twelve years, and the participants are primarily from this region. Many devotees complete the 280 kilometres barefoot, protected from sun and rain by parasols of split bamboo or birch bark. The Raj Jat Yatra takes place at the end of the monsoon, when the mountains are obscured by mist and trails washed out by landslides. The yatra culminates at the source of the Nandakini River, a tributary of the Ganga that flows out of Shila Samudra. ... "

"On earlier monsoon treks, during the months of July and August, I have remained wet for days on end, soaked through by constant showers, until it is impossible to tell the difference between perspiration and precipitation. Nothing stays dry and my sleeping bag becomes a clammy cocoon. With each cloudburst, paths turn into rivers and you find yourself wading upstream or down, over slick boulders or through channels of mud. No matter how many layers of plastic, nylon or Gore-Tex you wear, the enveloping dampness seeps into your skin. Walking through mist, the air becomes so saturated with moisture, it seems almost too thick to breathe.

"But when it clears, as it always does, after a few hours, a day or a week, the brilliant green of the forests and mountains is so vivid, it feels as if everything is alive, even the soil and rocks beneath your feet. On our way to Roopkund, we set off from Lohajang, a village whose name means ‘battle of iron’, though it is a quiet wayside settlement with no evidence of military history. The night we arrive, however, a violent thunderstorm echoes with the sounds of warfare—the clanging of giant swords and booming of cannons.

"By dawn the sky is bright and still. Above us, we can see the snow-blanched face of Nanda Ghunti, the veil of the goddess, one of the many peaks that hide Nanda Devi from view. The mountain is like a wedge of ice driven into the upper end of the forested valley. Our destination lies close to the foot of Nanda Ghunti, amidst cliffs and snow. From Lohajang the broad ... trail descends into a forest of oak and rhododendron, our path festooned with peacock orchids and wild begonias. Though it isn’t raining, my boots are soon soaked by flowing streams that follow our route. Groups of schoolchildren, dressed in neat uniforms of blue and white, are coming up the path from nearby farms. Some of them carry their shoes so they won’t get wet. Book bags are heavy with homework. One of the girls warns us about a landslide that blocks the way on ahead, though she has made it across.

"In the first hour, we drop 300 metres. The opposite slope of the mountain grows steeper as the valley narrows, and it is obvious that we will soon be forced to regain altitude. Below us, hidden from view by a canopy of foliage, the Bedni Ganga roars in the depths of its gorge. Descending into one of the side valleys, we cross a bridge over a lesser stream that falls in a torrent between banks of bamboo and tree ferns that rise above our heads. The arched branches on either side of the bridge are draped with polypods and moss.

................................................................................................

"The landslide turns out to be less of an obstacle than we imagined. Scrambling across grey mud and shale, we come to a series of abandoned terraces, overgrown with weeds. The path disappears as we bushwhack through thickets of marijuana 3 metres tall, resinous florets dangling over us like limp green tassels. Soon after we have battled our way through this fragrant jungle, the foliage turns to stinging nettle and we are forced to retreat and take a detour through another field. Eventually, after vaulting over a stone wall we re-join something that looks like a path. A hundred metres ahead is another stream where the bridge has washed away and we will have to wade across.

"As soon as I begin to unlace my shoes, I realize that my feet and ankles are covered in leeches. They look like black stitches coming undone, fastening and unfastening themselves to my skin. No matter how quickly I pick them off, others appear. They cling to my fingers as I try to flick them into the stream. After counting at least twenty-five, I lose track of numbers. Fortunately, because the bridge is washed out, we have been forced to stop and remove our shoes before crossing the stream, otherwise our feet would have become sieves of blood. Several leeches have already gorged themselves and fallen off. Red welts on my calves and between my toes are oozing red. ... "

"One of my companions, Titu, has worked as a trekking guide and completed the basic and advanced courses at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering. I have hiked with him before and know that he is a strong walker and resourceful when it comes to setting up camp. More to keep him company and allow me to be alone whenever I choose, I have also hired a friend of his, Akshay, who has little trekking experience but seems eager for the adventure.

"Though I crave the solitude of trekking alone, there is still a residual fear from our attack, an uncertain, uncomfortable feeling of being vulnerable and exposed, unable to defend myself. Having Titu and Akshay with me is reassuring. They help lighten my load and will be there if we face an emergency."

That's the normal prudence of India - which, if the couple had learnt in the first place, they wouldn't have opened the door to a bunch of intruders in pre-dawn dark of night in the first place. 

................................................................................................

"Soon after we ford the stream our path crosses a bridge over the Bedni Ganga and the climb begins. From here to Roopkund is a steady ascent of 3,000 metres. Over the course of three days we pass through every variety of Himalayan botany, from semi-tropical foliage full of liverworts and mosses, ground orchids and ferns, through various bands of deciduous forest marked by different species of oaks—banj, moru and kharsu. Each of these trees provides fodder for cattle at different times of the year, as the dairymen move their herds up and down the slopes during spring and fall. The conifers change too with altitude, chir pines giving way to cypress and cedar, then spruce and fir, and finally thuner, the Himalayan yew, a hardy tree with delicate needles and papery bark. An experienced naturalist can gauge the elevation without an altimeter simply by marking the presence of different species. Once you climb above the treeline at 3,000 metres, bugyal meadows provide a lush zone of grass and wildflowers, layered between forest and crags. These summer pastures attract herdsmen with their cows, buffaloes, goats and horses. For trekkers, the bugyals provide a brief respite from the relentless climb, their rolling slopes less steep and strenuous, before the final ascent into rock and snow."

" ... As she escapes from the buffalo demon and takes refuge in the forest, Nanda curses the turmeric and potato plants which offer no protective shade, banishing them underground. Tripping on the stubble of a wheat field, her tears of sorrow and anger leave the soil barren. Nanda also curses the pines, because their needles fail to hide her from the demon. Their branches will never regenerate themselves after they are cut. However, as consolation, she grants the pine a boon to serve as the flagpole at her shrines. After finally hiding behind a kunju shrub, a thorny bush with dense foliage, Nanda blesses this plant, saying that it will never lose its leaves: no goats or cattle will eat kunju for fodder, and men will not cut it for fuel or timber."

................................................................................................

"The climb grows more and more precipitous, until we are scrambling up a ladder of tree roots along the spine of the ridge. The oaks cast plenty of shade but it is hard work and sweat pours down my face. Too late, I realize that I have made the mistake of not drinking enough water before leaving Didana. Halfway up the ridge, my legs begin to cramp. Though I swallow half a bottle of water, it doesn’t help and I know that we must stop. Somewhere to our left, I can hear the sound of a stream, but it lies beyond dense thickets of ringal bamboo. The ravine looks even more precipitous than the ridge. Fortunately, Titu is able to scout for a campsite and after exploring in the direction of the water, he finds enough flat ground for us to pitch our tents. Though I am not particularly tired, my legs continue to cramp. Frustrated and discouraged, I drink a litre of water and lie down to rest. 

"Before long, clouds sweep in and it begins to rain. It was fortunate that we stopped here, because the storm would have caught up with us ahead. Impatience is a walker’s downfall and I wish I hadn’t forced our pace. There is no real urgency driving us on, and my body has signalled its resistance. Though I know that the cramps will be gone by nightfall, I wonder whether I will be able to complete the trek. After a bright beginning we spend the first evening in a sober mood, the mossy limbs of trees dripping on to our tents and thunder bellowing above the bugyals.

"Next morning, when I test my legs, they feel much stronger. Breaking camp after breakfast, all three of us are in a better mood. Blundering through the bamboo, I locate our path and start slowly up the trail. With each step, I keep expecting my calves and thighs to knot up but the muscles have regained their elasticity. Despite the climb, I am able to appreciate the forest again. The ground is covered with mushrooms and other kinds of fungi, including a bright orange variety, as large as dinner plates. Another species that grows out of a tree stump has the appearance and colour of scrambled eggs.

................................................................................................

"After half an hour, I stop to rest, waiting for Titu and Akshay to catch up. Minutes later, I hear children’s voices and three young girls come up the trail. They are ten or twelve years old, each of them carrying baskets woven out of split bamboo. Seeing me sitting on a fallen tree, they stop abruptly, as if confronted by a demon. Greeting them, I try to reassure the girls that I am not dangerous, though they leave the trail and skirt around me cautiously. Only when they are a safe distance up the path, do they ask where I am going.

"As we keep passing each other over the course of the morning, stopping at different points to rest, the girls and I carry on a fragmented conversation. They are headed to their chaan, a summer shelter where goats and cattle are kept at pasture. The girls are from Didana and their family chaans lie at one end of Ali Bugyal. When I ask if they attend school, the eldest says they study at the temple because the nearest school is 10 kilometres away and they have work to do at home. All three walk steadily up the slope with purposeful maturity. Learning that I am going to Bedni Bugyal and Roopkund, they want to know if I am going to make an offering to the goddess. Unlike the man who followed me the day before, their questions are carefully asked and they consider my answers with thoughtful expressions. While he was an adult with the mind of a child, these are children who seem much older than their years. They do not ask for anything and seem completely self-reliant. The baskets they carry contain bags of rice and flour, as well as steel darantis (small sickles) for cutting firewood and fodder.

"When we finally reach the treeline where my path continues up the hill and theirs cuts across the lower edges of the meadow, the youngest girl points toward a plume of wood smoke rising from their huts. Smiling with anticipation, she tells me, ‘Chaan pey bhaat banayenge—When we reach our chaan we’re going to cook rice.’ The simple satisfaction in her statement makes me appreciate the hardship and deprivation these girls endure, as well as the false pretence of self-sufficiency that I carry on my back. Compared to theirs, my life seems far too complicated and full of dubious privileges.

................................................................................................

"Ali Bugyal is one of the largest alpine meadows in Uttarakhand, rolling fields of grass that spread for 30 square kilometres across the upper flanks of a broad ridge that leads on to Bedni farther up. Thin curtains of mist begin to drift across the meadows as we wade knee-deep through fields of anemones, potentilla and lousewort. Wild salvia and thistles grow along our path, which converges with dozens of other trails, trod out of the meadow by cattle and sheep. Animals are grazing all around us, appearing and disappearing in the mist. During the monsoon, bugyal meadows are peaceable, plentiful pastures where the mountains provide an abundance of food until they are covered by snow in winter. At one place, half a dozen horses seem to race the retreating mist. Two of them are foals testing young limbs as they chase their mothers. We can hear cowbells as we walk, a gentle, clanging sound from somewhere in the clouds. These meadows are the summer gardens of the goddess, a symbol of her fertility."

"Bedni, where we spend the night, is one of the primary halts on the Raj Jat Yatra. Here we join the main pilgrimage route that comes up from a village called Wan, which has a large temple dedicated to Latu, Nanda’s bodyguard. For most of the year, above this point, the path is covered with snow and ice. The bugyals at Bedni have plenty of water. An artificial lake has been created with the help of a concrete dyke, converting a marshy wetland into a sacred pond. Trekkers’ huts and a makeshift tea shop stand nearby, along with a forest department outpost. These haphazard structures and mangled strands of barbed wire mar the natural sanctity of the bugyal. Yet, Bedni has an eerie beauty, particularly after a storm. We arrive in the rain and take shelter in a trekker’s hut, a domed structure made of fibreglass and tin, with a wooden floor. By early evening the clouds begin to disperse. I watch as they slough off the cliffs, spilling across high ridges like milk boiling over the rim of a pan.

"A few minutes later, I can just make out the shape of a snow peak emerging from the mist. Its silhouette is barely visible at first but gradually takes shape before my eyes, until I recognize the scalloped summit of Trisul. ... From  Bedni the three points of the trident are not clearly evident but there is no mistaking Trisul’s towering crest that rises 7,120 metres above sea level. Eventually, the entire mountain is revealed, though the clouds keep it wrapped in shadow, while the sunset picks out more distant ranges to the west. Far off, beyond a fretwork of ridges, I recognize Chaukhamba glinting in the waning daylight.

"Near the lake at Bedni stands a small Nanda Devi temple, as well as a shrine for Latu. Made entirely of rock, no mortar holds the stones in place, though moss has grown between the crevices. The central niche of Nanda’s shrine houses two small idols of the goddess, carved from stone. Next to these is a single conch shell, white as a lump of snow. ... "

" ... Devi’s idols are bathed in the pond and devotees are cleansed by submerging themselves in its cold, spring-fed waters. Her images are worshipped at this shrine, which serves as a transitional shelter during the Raj Jat Yatra, the ‘big pilgrimage’ that occurs every twelve years, when the goddess is carried on to Roopkund and Shila Samudra Glacier."

" ... After a few wrong turns while crossing the meadow, we reach the main pilgrim trail, which is easy to follow. Chunks of slate are placed vertically as rough cobblestones, creating a path that doesn’t get mired in mud or dung. With the next Raj Jat Yatra only a year away, work has started on improving the trail and I can see where fresh sections of stones have been laid. 

"Our climb grows steadily steeper as we follow the contours of the ridge. Trisul remains hidden behind clouds. All I can see are precipitous slopes of grass falling away from the side of the trail and disappearing into the mist. ... Eventually, we reach a place called Pathar Nachuni, where the exposed rocks look like the ruins of a giant amphitheatre.

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"Climbing steadily, we pass several shrines. One of these lies at a pass called Kelu Vinayaka, where a new stone structure has been built containing an image of Ganesh ... As the eldest child of Shiva and Parvati, Ganesh is revered throughout India. ... "

Wrong again! 

Why this repeated racist hubris by someone who claims birth and growing up in India? It's easy enough to ask and correct these mistakes that Alter insists on committing! 

No, Kartikeya is the elder, being the reason Gods helped Parvati succeed by sending Madana and Rati to disturb the Dhyaan Samaadhi of Shiva, so thst he'd become aware of Parvati, marry her, and Kartikeya born of this marriage would defend Gods and defeat their adversaries. And so it came so be. 

Ganapati is younger, but smarter and wiser, according to more than one amusing legend, but even generally it is so understood. 

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"Vinayaka marks a point where steep grasslands merge into the uppermost margins of rock and ice. Here too, another trail comes up the opposite side of the ridge from the village of Sutol, an alternate route for pilgrims. Cloaked in mist, the wayside shrine seems less a portal to another world than a forgotten milestone in the clouds. The benign image of Ganesh ... "

" ... The face of the mountain has been quarried by erosion, exposing slabs of stone cracked and fissured by the freezing and melting of ice. Glaciers and avalanches have dragged the rocks and scattered them like the flattened ruins of a vast citadel devastated by an earthquake. Walking through frayed curtains of mist, it feels as if we are the first to arrive in the aftermath of a natural disaster, with no survivors left to rescue.

"Our camp for the night is Bhugubasa. We reach there in the early afternoon but the sky is so dark it feels as if the sun is about to set. Amidst the rocks, I can see wild rhubarb and sedum but my attention is focused on locating a level place to pitch our tents. We reject an abandoned cave with rough stone walls enclosing its entrance, a temporary shelter for shepherds or mendicants, as uninviting as a yeti’s den. Just beyond, we find a sorry-looking cluster of broken walls and collapsed slate roofs, the abandoned remains of a pilgrim shelter. The stone floors inside two ruined huts offer the only level ground that we can see. As the rain continues to fall, I quickly erect my tent amidst the ruins at Bhugubasa, while Titu and Akshay head off to search for drinking water."

" ... While the lower stretches of our trek have been marked by constantly changing belts of foliage, and even the slopes below Kelu Vinayaka are covered with dark-blue gentians, buttercups and edelweiss, at this point we seem to have entered an altitudinal zone of near desolation."

" ... A story is told of G. W. Traill, the first British commissioner of Kumaon who was a mountaineer and explored much of this region in the 1830s. A pass above Pindari Glacier bears his name. When Traill ordered the shifting of Nanda’s temple in Almora, he was warned of the goddess’ wrath. Soon afterwards, while climbing in the mountains, he suffered a severe attack of snow  which was interpreted as divine retribution."

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" ... The breeze is cold but the mist has evaporated and there is a clarity to the air, as if the storm has polished the atmosphere into a perfect lens that magnifies everything in sight. What startles me most of all are the greenish white blossoms of the brahmakamal flower, which grows in profusion. I can’t believe I didn’t notice them the day before. Known as Brahma’s lotus, they are considered a sacred bloom. Dried brahmakamal are often suspended above the doors of temples in Garhwal. The flowers look more like giant poppies than lotuses, though the crepe-like petals are cupped together in the shape of a supplicant’s folded hands. 

"Brahmakamal grows above 3,500 metres, one of the last plants found on any Himalayan climb. Most times I have seen no more than a dozen scattered amongst the rocks but at Bhugubasa thousands of brahmakamal cover the slopes, as if they have all burst forth in the aftermath of the storm. Their pale, luminous shapes are as delicate as Chinese lanterns, fields upon fields of blossoms that seem to have appeared overnight, a spontaneous miracle of nature."

................................................................................................

"Eventually, we come to a crumbling staircase of stones that brings us to a loose rockfall, where I can see traces of a path. Scrambling up this slope, I keep my eyes on the ground in front of me, to avoid looking at the drop below. A short distance on ahead, the rocks turn to gravel as we traverse an unstable stretch that looks more like a landslide than a passable trail. Just as I begin to wonder if we have taken a wrong turn, we crest the rise and there below us lies Roopkund, not more than 12 metres long and 6 metres across. Ice-scarred rocks form a natural chalice beneath the cliffs and its jade waters have a poisonous tint. A dense ceiling of clouds hangs above us, obscuring all but the closest crags. To our right lies a glacier of dirty ice, worming its way through a notch in the ridge. Westward, the lower slopes of Nanda Ghunti are streaked with snow, though most of the mountain remains hidden. Only below us is an unobstructed view of the rain-scoured valley extending to Bhugubasa and beyond."

"Descending to the lake, a short glissade down steep funnels of debris, we carefully avoid the mud, which is a morbid grey colour, contrasting with the green water. Most accounts of Roopkund describe hundreds of skeletons, though it is hard to imagine how anyone could have counted the bones, which are scattered and mixed together like a conglomerated bed of fossils. I estimate no more than thirty to forty victims of whatever catastrophe occurred, though it’s possible that members of the Himalaya Enjoyment Association, and other visitors like them, have carried off grim souvenirs.

"Only a dark rind of ice remains at one end of the lake, from which a trickle of water spills through the rocks. The cliffs above are fiercely toothed and wreathed in fog. ... "

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"WRITING WITH MY FEET 

"We climb toward Taktsang, the Tiger’s Nest, in Bhutan. ... This cliff-top monastery is built around a cave where Guru Padmasambhava meditated, after flying here from Tibet. His consort turned herself into an airborne tigress so that she could transport him over the Himalayas. Prayer flags are draped across a precipice, fluttering shreds of sacred texts that mark the trajectory of the guru’s flight."

Amusing to notice that Alter treats Buddhist lores with far more respect, never branding them as myth, while he never faults doing so several times per paragraph about lores and legends of ancient Indian culture by any name, as if terrified thst he might be accused of having lost caste - racial, that's caste by caste system of West, of course - and 'gone native', the most supreme sin for anyone of ancestry from Europe. 

But then, Buddha was of India in every way possible, and merely one of a long tradition of Divine descent on earth in a live girl, recognized as such; also, he didn't convert to anything abrahmic, although he did of course precede the later abrahmic faiths which are conversionist. 

So why does the disdain bordering on open, compulsory disrespect for India that's routine from writers of West, not extend to Buddhism? 

Is it because Buddhism is seen in context, not of its very Indian teaching and roots, but the military prowess of its far more numerous followers in East Asia? 

Of course, West respects brutal force, however idiotic and ignorant, overcoming and destroying other, however far more advanced, cultures. 

"My flags won’t pray for a better life next time round or forgiveness for sins I don’t regret—evil thoughts, perhaps, but not the daily transgressions that I’m supposed to confess. ... "

Does Alter realise this is a choice, a freedom India gives, but abrahmic creeds don't, and in saying this more than in anything else, he's unconsciously proved himself true, not to his ancestral distance from ancient culture of India, but to his birth and early years, his growing years, of India? 

"For close to fifty years, I haven’t prayed. Others have performed the task on my behalf. But on this walk the wind and trees seem to tug words from my soul. At Taktsang, I watch a Bhutanese family prostrating themselves in front of the guru’s image. A girl of four or five mimics her parents, flattening herself to the floor, as if doing calisthenics. The teenaged monk who unlocks the sanctuary for us trickles holy water into my palm from a silver vessel adorned with peacock feathers. I baptize my face and head, wondering what these rituals mean."

If that's not bring foreign, what is? 

Was he kept away, assiduously, from possible contamination of Indian thought, by family? 

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" ... Once when I was in high school, I became miserably depressed and angry for some reason that I can no longer recall. Returning home from school, I said nothing to my parents but picked up a 20-gauge shotgun and half a dozen shells, setting off into the forest on my own. Walking until it grew dark, I improvised a bivouac for the night, under a grove of wild cinnamon trees in the valley near a stream. I remember clearly how upset I was, the helpless misery bordering on the suicidal that comes out of adolescence. But I had taken the shotgun more out of habit than because I considered shooting myself. In fact, I did not even fire the gun, though several pheasants flew up in front of me. I had no matches to light a fire and no way of cooking the birds. This was late spring, warm and dry enough, so I needed no tent. Sitting alone on a sandy patch of ground near a shallow stream, beneath the branches of the cinnamon trees, I stayed awake all night. By this time the walk had settled my mind and I felt much better for being alone in the forest. At some point, an owl began to call, the only creature sharing my solitude. For a while, the moon came out and its pale aura filtered through the trees, but it soon gave way to darkness again. I had no watch with me, nor any kind of torch. 

"Hours later, when the first light of another day began to outline the ridges to the east, I climbed into one of the trees and peeled some of the cinnamon bark before scrambling out of the valley. By the time I got back home, breakfast was on the table. My parents must have been worried but somehow they understood and did not press me to tell them where I’d gone or why. I said nothing about my night alone. By this time, the sadness and anger had lifted. I felt cleansed by my aimless walk through the forest, those hours spent in darkness and the sweet perfume of cinnamon still lingering on my fingertips."

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October 06, 2022 - October 08, 2022. 

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KAILASH: A Pilgrim’s Crossing 

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"ENTERING THE MANDALA 

"Driving across western Tibet, somewhere between Lhasa and Mount Kailash we approach the crest of an unmarked pass, roughly 4,500 metres above sea level. All at once, a low canopy of clouds dissolves into rain, a rare moment of precipitation in this arid landscape. ... "

"At the beginning of our journey, the rolling steppes seemed almost colourless, like monochromatic tints in a sepia photograph. But as we travel over the Tibetan Plateau, mountain light reveals a range of mineral hues in the soil, from rust to ochre, amber and gold, as well as the whiteness of salt. Wherever there is a hint of water, living shrouds of muted green unfold within the valleys. Sand dunes glow like burnished copper. Bruised and dented, the surrounding ridges are varying shades of purple or indigo, their pigments changing with the shafts of sunbeams that slant in across the high Himalayas."

"A few minutes later, descending from the pass, we cross a shallow draw, where two gazelles race off into a canyon. Suddenly, several hundred metres ahead, I see a rainbow. It marks the edge of the storm, a perfect arch of primary colours like strings of prayer flags erected by luminous vapours in the atmosphere. Appearing as if out of nowhere, the rainbow could be a window to another world. Our road passes directly beneath this ethereal gateway, as if built to celebrate our passage. The driver, Sonam, guns the engine on his Land Cruiser, accelerating toward the rainbow. I expect it will disappear before we get there, vanishing because of the angle of the sun or a gust of wind. But there it is in front of us. The bow remains taut, an invisible arrow pointing our way to a hidden land… Shambala? Sunlight gilds the slopes beyond.

"Our vehicle leaps and plunges over the rutted road. Sonam will not slow down. Seconds later, we drive through the arch, cheering as we cross this gaudy frontier of light. All of us laugh with excitement, shaking hands, congratulating ourselves. Sonam grins and blows his horn. After hours and days of tedious driving, this is a brief moment of exhilaration and delight that makes us feel as if we have finally reached our destination, though we are only halfway there. 

"When I look behind us, the bright bands of colour are gone."

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"Tibetan mythology and folklore explain that the land itself has many guises. Rainbows represent the auras of saints and teachers who have passed away, or numinous markers leading to promised lands. What we see around us is only the surface, beneath which lie hidden realities—lost cities, subterranean lakes and buried treasure. In one account, the undulating highlands of the Trans-Himalaya are actually the body of a female demon (some would call her a goddess) who lies asleep beneath our feet. Another myth describes the mountains as tent pegs that hold the sky in place. Countless stories of Shambala promise the discovery of a secret, peaceable kingdom, closer at hand than we think, just beneath the taut dry membrane of these barren steppes. Only those who are blessed with sacred access can find the invisible gateways and forbidden caves that lead us into this idyllic country. Our ignorance makes us blind to sheltered valleys and neighbouring worlds."

"Before setting off for Kailash, if I had been told that I would be travelling for two weeks with a group of forty Hindu pilgrims from Gujarat and Maharashtra, driving ten to twelve hours a day over unpaved, dust-smothered roads, and sharing accommodation, sometimes as many as ten of us in a room together, beds crammed end to end and side by side with no privacy or ventilation, and no baths for the duration of the journey, I might have reconsidered my options. However, the decision to travel to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar was impulsive. Making arrangements at the last minute, I had no choice but to let a travel agent in Kathmandu squeeze me into a group that was already organized and approved by Chinese authorities."

"Kathmandu itself was unknown territory. Though I have lived most of my life in the Indian Himalayas, I had never visited Nepal before this trip. Just as my fellow pilgrims began their spiritual quest at Hindu sites in the city, I made my rounds of Kathmandu’s major shrines, starting with Pashupatinath temple, where Shiva is worshipped behind silver doors that are closed to foreigners. ... After circumambulating Boudhanath stupa in the Tibetan quarter of the city, I took darshan of the Maitreya Buddha at another shrine. ... All of this seemed the appropriate thing to do before setting off for Kailash, though I felt more like a tourist than a pilgrim, pursuing the exotic instead of the divine."

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"Geographically, Kailash and Manasarovar have immense significance, for they lie at the centre of the high tablelands of western Tibet and mark the watershed of South Asia’s greatest rivers. From the slopes of this mountain and the glaciers that feed this lake, the Indus and Sutlej flow westward through the Himalayas, before crossing into Punjab and Sindh, on their way to the Indian Ocean. The Karnali River also originates near Kailash, carving its way southward through the mountains of Nepal to become a major tributary of the Ganga. And draining to the east is the Tsangpo, or Brahmaputra, which flows in a huge arc across Tibet before entering northeastern India and setting its course for the Bay of Bengal."

"For me, Tibet has always represented a forbidden country. My hometown of Mussoorie is one of the places in India where Tibetan refugees have settled. Accompanying the Dalai Lama into exile in 1959, they established a displaced community and culture outside their homeland. In 1962, when I was an impressionable six-year old, India and China fought a war over disputed Himalayan boundaries and these regions became inaccessible to most civilians, especially foreigners. I had always imagined that entering Tibet would be like crossing a closely guarded frontier, traversing a dangerous, unyielding border that might close behind me without warning, like mountain passes buried in a sudden avalanche of snow."

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"FRONTIERS OF FAITH 

"4.15 a.m. My wakeup call comes earlier than expected. I have forgotten to adjust my watch to Nepal time, a quarter of an hour ahead of India. Throughout this journey there will be continuous uncertainty about time, as if clocks are meaningless. All of China operates on Beijing time, two hours and fifteen minutes ahead of Kathmandu, though our Nepali guides and Sherpas refuse to advance their watches. Adding to the ambiguity, after crossing the border we will be travelling 800 kilometres westwards. According to Chinese clocks, sunrise at Mount Kailash can be as late as 10 a.m.

"Before departure, a group of pilgrims gather in front of our buses and perform a brief pooja. They sing ... and recite a Sanskrit incantation, led by one of the elderly women. At the end, they cry out in praise of Shiva: ‘Jai Gaura Shambhu! Bam Bam Bholey!’ The ritual is improvised and awkward but satisfies a need to invoke blessings for our journey."

" ... One of the travel agents briefs us in English and gives us a lecture on the rigours of the journey and the importance of maintaining a ‘positive attitude’. He tells us that yatris come in three varieties: those who see the trip to Kailash as a spiritual journey; those who are interested in nature; and those who feel they are buying a chance to boast about having been to Mount Kailash. The third category, he explains, are the ones who cause the most problems. We are instructed to travel light and leave behind unnecessary items. Our clothes and other belongings must fit into a small duffle bag provided by the agency. The rest of our luggage will be left at the hotel in Kathmandu. Our duffle bags are numbered for easy identification, since they are transported by truck. My number is 51. I am permitted to carry a day pack with me. The tour operator then recites a litany of rules. We will not be allowed to bathe for the duration of the trip and shaving is discouraged. The guest houses where we will stay have no running water. ... "

Author describes a comment by tour operator to the effect that tibetans aren't hospitable. This is a horrible comment, considering that their position is no different from that of Jews in Germany during WWII, except thst Tibetan people are suffering this in their own homeland, so perhaps one should compare them to natives of the so-called 'New World', where European migrants and conquistadores claimed they'd discovered the new continents - even as original residents suffered genocide at hands of the new arrivals claiming the land in name of a monarch in Europe or an abrahmic creed. 

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" ... Nepali policemen in blue camouflage are taking shelter from the rain under a tin awning and wave us through. In contrast, the Chinese put on a stern display of martial discipline. Halfway across the bridge, two guards in lime green camouflage inspect our passports and scowl at us with rehearsed suspicion. Farther on, a pair of sentries wearing dress uniforms stand at attention inside glass booths. Their jaws twitch and eyes flicker but otherwise they could be made of wax. 

"The immigration and customs hall on the Chinese side of the river has X-ray machines, a duty-free shop and uniformed officials wearing white gloves. Signs are written in Chinese characters and in English. Yet, the whole effect of regimentation and formality is defeated by the procession of Nepali porters ferrying baggage back and forth. Each of them has a blue transit pass, which they wave at the Chinese officials as they shuffle by, bent double under bales of fabric and boxes of other merchandise. Both women and men carry huge loads on their backs, most of the weight supported by straps across their foreheads. This route has always been an important trade link between Nepal and Tibet, traversed by Newari merchants for generations. Today, instead of butter, tea and salt, the consignments are cartons of mango juice in tetra packs, cheap rubber sandals and denim clothes. On both sides of the border, glaciers of packing materials have been discarded down the hillsides into the river.

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"Gradually, I am getting a sense of my fellow travellers. Our party is made up of three pilgrimage groups clubbed together for the convenience of the travel agency and Chinese authorities. While I am eyeing my companions to assess their stories, they too are watching me. A few of the pilgrims have made small talk and word has gone around that I speak Hindi, but everyone is cautious, not wanting to seem too inquisitive. 

"Our official Chinese guide meets us in the immigration hall. He is a Tibetan from Lhasa, working for the China India Pilgrim Service Centre, an agency that handles Hindu pilgrims visiting Kailash. A thin, agitated man with a nervous grin, he speaks some English. When he learns that I am from Mussoorie, he tells me that his wife studied there at the school for Tibetan refugee children. We follow his instructions, joining one queue and then another, until we emerge on the other side. After an hour’s wait, our luggage and supplies are carried across and loaded on to a truck. Though customs notices forbid importing fresh vegetables and fruit, our group is vegetarian and huge baskets of cauliflowers, okra, bitter gourd, cucumbers and tomatoes are being carried with us from Nepal. While we stand and wait, money changers ruffle wads of yuan in our faces, taunting us for having exchanged our rupees at a lower rate on the other side."

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"Beyond the town, we ascend through moist green shadows, trees overhanging the road. Near the river grow elms, alders and rhododendrons, after which we move up into conifer forests of cedar and hemlock. One variety of spruce has purple cones as big as mangoes. At places the road has washed away. Labourers are rebuilding walls as bulldozers remove debris. Across the valley, we see precipices extending thousands of feet up and down, like scroll paintings: brushstrokes of bamboo, a cragged profile, clouds of negative space, and waterfalls that drop as silver threads down moss-covered slopes. The humid warmth of the valleys gives way to a damp chill. When we stop at a checkpoint, the armed guards are wearing quilted uniforms. In the gorge below, the Bhote Kosi writhes and roars like a chained dragon."

"The story of Nain Singh Rawat and his fellow ‘pandits’ is one of the great adventures of Himalayan exploration. Being secret agents of the British Raj, Rawat and other men from the border villages of Uttarakhand were recruited by officials of the Survey of India. They were trained in techniques of cartography and equipped with sextants hidden in boxes with false bottoms. Disguising themselves as Ladakhi merchants, they worried strings of prayer beads specially adapted to count their strides—100 beads instead of the usual 108. The maps they produced are remarkably accurate, though their equipment was unsophisticated. To gauge the level of the horizon, they carried bowls of liquid mercury. Altitude was calculated by measuring the temperature of boiling water, a procedure that required precision and patience, as well as plenty of yak dung for fuel. The pandits mapped the course of the Tsangpo and discovered that it became the Brahmaputra beyond the impenetrable gorges of the eastern Himalayas. Captured and jailed on several occasions, they returned to India with valuable intelligence. Their reports were published by the Royal Geographic Society in London but their names were erased from the records, anonymous explorers in ambiguous lands."

Sheer racism by British, exploiting talent and giving no credit, as per Macaulay policy. 

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"TRANS-HIMALAYA 

"The Land Cruiser’s engine roars back to life and we hurry to reclaim our seats. Three minutes later, we reach the Thong La pass and stop again. Here the wind is much stronger, buffeting the parked vehicles and flapping the massed streamers strung from a flagpole. A man in monk’s robes is selling prayer flags and tiny packets of printed prayers. From the direction of Nyalam, a motorcycle arrives, the rider wearing a heavy woollen cloak, his hair braided with red ribbons. Buying a packet of paper prayers, he tosses these into the air like confetti and shouts into the wind as the multi-coloured scraps scatter across the road and down the hill. Nearby is a line of wooden prayer wheels with cupped propellers that catch the wind. The wheels turn constantly on greased axles, driven by a steady gale at the top of the pass. Our drivers have trouble lighting their cigarettes. They hunker down and shelter their lighters between the upturned collars of their coats. While we are stopped, two Japanese cyclists on mountain bikes arrive at the pass. They look exhausted, having pedalled all the way from Lhasa, but I can see the relief in their eyes as they survey the downhill route ahead. 

"Fifteen kilometres farther on, we turn off the main highway and begin heading west towards Saga, our destination for today. Almost immediately, our progress is interrupted. The Land Cruiser that was having engine trouble earlier has broken down again. We stop at the side of the road to wait. By now the sun is unrelenting and we are stranded on an exposed patch of dust and grass, next to a marshy meadow. Yaks and goats are grazing nearby. A cluster of shepherd’s tents are arranged in the distance. Soon a crowd of women and children gather, begging for food and money. One of the women has a bracelet made out of a conch shell, which looks like a white gauntlet on her wrist. A few of the yatris give the younger children biscuits and one of the Gujarati women sticks bindis on the foreheads of the girls. The herdsmen’s clothes are tattered. None of them seem to have washed their faces for days, though there is plenty of water nearby."

That last sentence is from someone whose race persecuted poor Indian students relentlessly about restrictions they imposed regarding bathing no more than once a week - which the said poor Indian students flouted, as often as they could, having been used to bathing at least once a day, every morning, apart from routine washing before and after meals! 

So Alter criticising poor Tibetans for not washing - "though there is plenty of water nearby" (there never was a shortage of water in England, was there? Why did English persecute Indians for bathing?), even if implicitly, is merely

racism.

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" ... Beyond the courtyard wall is a stream banked with green grass and snow peaks to the south, but I can’t appreciate the view. After taking the Diamox, I feel drunk and disoriented. I keep thinking I’ve lost my hat, then realize it’s on my head. Just as we are about to start off again, I take a pair of sunglasses from my pack, which ease the glare. It isn’t the altitude that caused my headache, but the harsh sunlight.

"As we drive on, snow peaks continue to appear to the south, along the border with Nepal. Seeing them I feel even more disoriented, for I am used to having the Himalayas rising up in the north. Everything seems to be turned around and my sense of direction is confused. At times I cannot tell if these are clouds or mountains. Some of the peaks have enormous hanging glaciers and others are broken spires. I feel as if I am hallucinating, seeing an endless panorama of snow fields and summits that may or may not be there. As the landscape grows drier and more desolate, sand dunes begin to appear—waves of gold with rippled patterns. On ahead, a mirage appears—warped sunlight melting the horizon. Conscious of a watery blue surface, I tell myself it is an illusion, my vision distorted by pain. Then, all at once, we come to a large lake, fed by glaciers to the south. The blue expanse of water looks like a patch of sky that has fallen on to the plateau. For a moment, I think we have arrived at Manasarovar, though it is still more than three days’ drive from here. Later on, checking my map, I discover the name of this lake is Paigu Tso. I have lost track of time, delirious, drifting in and out of consciousness, despite the jostling and shaking of the vehicle. When I open my eyes again, there is another lake. This one is completely white. At first, I think it must be frozen, covered with snow, then realize it is salt. Far off on the perimeter, I can see men digging and remember a section of Nain Singh’s journals in which he describes two alkaline lakes where caravans load up to carry this mineral cargo across the Himalayas.

"Soon after arriving in Saga, we discover that the next leg of our journey, a stretch of 250 kilometres to a town called Paryang, is undergoing road work. The police are closing the highway during the day, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. This means that we will be forced to travel at night. Bhim and the Sherpas consult with the drivers and decide to set out at 2 a.m., though the exact time of our departure remains unclear. While our Nepali guides continue to operate on Kathmandu time, the drivers and Chinese officials are functioning on Beijing time and it is impossible to know exactly what to expect."

"Despite the extended misery of today’s journey, I am eager to leave Saga as soon as possible. When I go out to buy my bottled water, a woman with a baby strapped to her back begins begging for money. She is a young Tibetan in her twenties, haggard and dressed in tatters. It seems odd that anyone would need to be begging on the street under Communist rule, with all the promises of a paternalistic state. But almost everywhere we stop, women and children greet us with open hands."

Obviously, that so-called "Communist rule, with all the promises of a paternalistic state" is, in case of China occupying Tibet with brutal force, is limited to not shooting Tibetans down for begging. 

"The pathetic obscenity of this encounter leaves me with a sense of remorse and disgust, particularly the image of the child on the woman’s back, and the futile desperation that must drive her to offer hurried sex to strangers in this wayside town."

Obviously it's because some visitors - although it's unlikely it's any of the pilgrims from India, who are mostly over middle age and in a crowd - do take advantage of it, else she wouldn't have expected a response to such an offer. Equally obviously, she didn't expect her own self touched, so such acceptance must have been from racists. 

This, incidentally, is the fourth account one has been reading of travel to Kailash from India, and none of the other three mentioned this offer by a Tibetan, although two were by males and none by pilgrims. They were, though, all Indian. They did mention the poverty and begging part. At least, one did, perhaps two. 

So the random sample seems to indicate that Tibetans do not make these offers to Indians, the chief visitors to this region of Tibet. 

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"Just after midnight, I am awakened by a banging on our door. The Sherpas bring us tea—lukewarm and over-sweetened. After a couple hours’ sleep, my headache is gone. Only a mild itch of pain lingers around the rims of my eyes, which reassures me that it was caused by the sun, not altitude. Though we set out in the dark, I make sure my Ray-Bans are easily accessible."

" ... We drive another kilometre before the Land Cruiser stops again. This time we are stalled on a steep incline, halfway up a series of switchbacks, where a section of the road has been recently excavated. Huge pieces of earth moving equipment are parked close by, amidst mounds of earth. Every few minutes a truck labours past, sending up a cloud of dust and diesel exhaust. Whatever we might have gained from our early start is lost as we remain stranded at the side of the road, while the drivers disassemble the fuel pump and carburettor. They work in complete darkness, with only a couple of headlamps."

" ... The night sky is a pointillist fantasy, every bead of light shimmering amidst infinite patterns of the universe. I can imagine Nain Singh Rawat on a night like this, trying to get his bearings. Having taken his sextant from its secret compartment, he must have hesitated before fixing his coordinates, with so many stars from which to choose. I try to connect the dots of constellations but the sky is so crowded that all I can recognize is the Big Dipper, and Orion with his belt of stars. Beside him is Canis Major, his hunting companion."

" ... Finally, around 4 a.m., as the sky is beginning to brighten above the ridges to our east, the Land Cruiser miraculously comes back to life and the engine settles into a ragged growl. 

"Now that we are finally moving again, the road is even rougher than yesterday, with hundreds of detours across the rolling steppes. As Robert Fleming explains in his book, Across the Tibetan Plateau, western Tibet is really a series of high valleys and ridges, rather than an open plain. The drivers are exhausted, having been awake all night. Soon after sunrise, they stop for breakfast at a shack by the side of the road. Sonam and the others ignore the pleading of our guides to continue so that we can cross a police checkpoint before it closes at 9 a.m. Setting off again, at last, we find the barrier only half a kilometre ahead. Here, we are told that we can’t proceed until nightfall. The barrier closed five minutes before our arrival. After a long discussion with the sentry, Sonam comes back shaking his head. ‘Police say no chalo!’ he reports. Then he grins and steers his Land Cruiser off the side of the road, across open ground, while the sentry watches with helpless disapproval. On ahead, a yak herder flags us down. He insists that we are crossing his pasture and demands ten yuan, which we gladly pay, circling over a marsh before re-joining the highway, still within sight of the police barrier."

Wow! They weren't shot down by Chinese, and what's more, didn't expect to be! 

"Three hours later, we finally reach Paryang, another dusty, low-roofed town. In the distance, I can see the northern profile of the Himalayas framed by clouds. We are following the Tsangpo River, though our route crosses into parallel valleys and over broad passes that lead us north, then west, in circuitous detours. Each time we return to the river, it seems to have grown smaller, now a shallow stream. I find it hard to believe that this is the same river I crossed several years ago in Assam, where I could hardly see from one bank to the other. It took hours to navigate the vast, muddy current of the Brahmaputra by river boat. ... "

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"BRAHMA’S DREAM 

"Crossing Tibet, I am constantly aware that this is a country under occupation. Though sparsely populated, much of the region has been dominated by Chinese military and recent immigrants. Because of Beijing’s resettlement policies, ethnic Tibetans have become a minority in their own homeland. Though officially referred to as the Tibet Autonomous Region, there are few signs of independence, and any form of protest is ruthlessly suppressed.

"As transient pilgrims, we had few opportunities to observe the social and political dynamics of Tibet. But along the highways there was evidence of dramatic changes underway: concrete colonies and army installations appearing out of nowhere, walled enclaves blaring martial music. The road gangs working on the highway were mostly Tibetans, supervised by Chinese engineers and foremen. At several points during our journey, I saw evidence of intrusive power and an authoritarian regime that governed with arrogance and insensitivity.

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"All along the way, we were stopped and made to wait, ostensibly because of roadwork but often for no reason at all. On one occasion, during our return journey, we were stranded for twelve hours without any explanation. Two policemen had set up plastic stools in the middle of the road and blocked our way. A line of trucks and other vehicles stretched for half a kilometre. Hours dragged on while the policemen seemed content to sit in the middle of the road forever, accepting cigarettes from drivers but refusing to budge. Their jungle camouflage seemed out of place in the arid steppes.

"After four hours of waiting, two jeeps came roaring toward us from the opposite direction. Everyone sat up hopefully, thinking the road might open. Seeing six policemen emerging from one of the jeeps, I felt sure they had come to inform us that the road was clear. Instead, they went around to the back of the jeep and took out a watermelon. The size of a basketball, its colour matched the variegated green hues of their uniforms. As all of us watched, the melon was placed in the middle of the road, like some sort of fetish object. Meanwhile, a Chinese woman, dressed in tight black leather stepped out from behind the driver’s seat of the second jeep. She wore dark glasses and high-heeled boots, as if she were a dominatrix hanging out with men in uniform. The only thing missing was her whip. A senior police officer also emerged from this jeep, adjusting the red and gold epaulets on his shoulders. He and the woman stared past the line of waiting vehicles, as if we were not there, though everyone’s eyes were on them. At a signal from the officer, one of the policemen took out his knife and butchered the watermelon in the middle of the road with ceremonial precision. It was cut into slices and handed around among the policemen. The woman laughed as she took a bite. While the stranded drivers and passengers watched in silence, the policemen devoured the bright red flesh and spit out the seeds, leaning forward to avoid dripping juice on their clothes. When they finished, each of them hurled the watermelon rinds into the desert like boomerangs that would never return. Then, without once acknowledging the long line of vehicles still waiting to move, the policemen and the woman in black got back in their jeeps and drove off in the direction from which they had come.

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"We remained there another two hours, until, finally, one of the guards punched a number into his mobile phone and spoke for awhile. He consulted with his colleague and then, all at once, they removed their stools and waved us forward. Everyone dashed to their vehicles and engines roared to life, as the stranded convoy set off along the road with a screeching of tyres.

"Ten kilometres ahead, however, a police vehicle with its blue light oscillating wildly, came driving past us waving everyone to one side. Pulling over, Sonam shrugged impatiently and got down to see what was going on. 

"The senior officer in command of this stretch of highway arrived in his jeep. He was a caricature of a tiny dictator, hardly four and a half feet tall, wearing a uniform two sizes too large, a peaked hat and a pair of aviator shades. A cigarette holder clenched between his teeth, he marched about with a belligerent swagger and started barking orders. With him was a junior officer, carrying a construction helmet turned upside down.

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"As all of us watched, the officer ordered each of the drivers to put their keys and registration papers into the helmet. It was hard to know exactly what was going on, but later we learned that he was accusing the drivers of having jumped the checkpoint. He was furious because he hadn’t given an order to open the road. When the drivers protested that the guards had released them, the officer called back to the checkpoint, where the policemen must have denied letting us through. All this, we pieced together later but at that moment, the only thing I could see was the officer gesturing and shouting, as if we had broken every law in the country. Going up to one of the Land Cruisers, he demanded to know whose vehicle it was. When nobody came forward to surrender his keys, the officer picked up a rock and began hammering on the hood of the vehicle.

"Immediately, a driver jumped forward, complaining loudly and waving his arms. Once again, the rock came down on the hood, denting the metal and scratching the paint. Rallying together, the crowd of drivers converged on the police party. In addition to our group, twenty other vehicles had been stopped. The drivers surrounded the policemen in an angry mob and I noticed Sonam picking up a rock in each hand. The policemen were Chinese, the drivers Tibetan. For several minutes, it looked as if we were going to witness a riot, with the officer screaming and the owner of the damaged vehicle bellowing back at him.

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"Amidst the tension, I could see one of the junior constables frantically calling for backup. Just as the situation was about to escalate into serious violence, we heard a siren and saw two police vehicles coming in our direction, trailing plumes of dust. The drivers retreated as a group, marching away defiantly across the open plain, abandoning their vehicles and passengers. Again, we didn’t know what was going on, but it turned out that they were headed to a military outpost a couple of kilometres away to register a complaint. Meanwhile, the officer strutted about, triumphantly puffing on his cigarette holder. Our Sherpas and some of the pilgrims tried to reason with him, but he cut them short with an angry, ‘No!’ Being in charge of this stretch of road, he wasn’t about to have his authority questioned. The whole episode was like watching a cartoon in which the bellicose villain rants and raves, while everyone else looks on helplessly. The Indian pilgrims muttered to each other, wishing they were back in their own country, ‘where we could pay off the cops with a hundred rupees’.

"By now the sun was going down and there was nothing but empty highway stretching in both directions. After dark, the policemen departed and our driverless vehicles stood in a lonely queue by the side of the road with nothing around. For supper, the Sherpas handed out apples, which was all they could muster. As the temperature dropped, each of us put on as many layers as we could and tried to sleep in the vehicles, heads lolling from side to side, windshields fogging over with our breath. The seemingly limitless landscape shrank into darkness.

"A few minutes past midnight, I was jolted out of a fitful sleep as the driver side door was yanked open. Sonam pushed himself behind the wheel with an angry grunt and started the engine. Offering no explanation, he set off along the detour, circling the police barrier which was now deserted. Fifteen minutes later, we reached a guest house. In an airless room with beds jammed together, we scrambled for the nearest horizontal surface and finally fell asleep."

Upton Sinclair describes early era of nazi Germany in scenes not too different. 

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"A cloudy dawn paints the snow peaks to the south with gold and violet pigments as we leave Paryang. Seeing the mountains to the south, my sense of direction remains disoriented. All my life the Himalayas have been situated to the north and it confuses me to face them from this perspective, with the sunrise to my left."

" ... Most Tibetans eat flesh but observe Buddhist injunctions against killing living creatures. All of the Hindu pilgrims in our group are vegetarians and we do not eat at any of the roadside canteens or restaurants where the drivers order noodles with yak meat or mutton. The Sherpas too eat meat, though our cook prepares only rice, lentils and curried vegetables, a monotonous but healthy diet. I am more than content to be vegetarian for the duration of this pilgrimage."

" ... Our group is an eclectic mix of cultures. At least six languages are operating at once—Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, English, Nepali and Tibetan. My Hindi and English allow me to speak to almost everyone, except the drivers. I remember reading an anthropologist’s theory that pilgrimages like this are as much about cultural integration and breaking down social barriers as they are about sustaining religious beliefs.

"Niranjan introduces me to his friend Shivram, an accountant with IBM, based in Binghamton, New York. He and Niranjan have often travelled together. A few years ago they hiked up to Machu Picchu and, more recently, they sailed to Antarctica on an educational cruise. They admit this yatra isn’t quite the style of travel to which they are accustomed. Shivram visits India once in awhile, though most of his family now live in the US. ... Shivram’s son, Suraj, is a doctor in Philadelphia. He has just finished his residency, specializing in emergency medicine. The complete lack of sanitation in Tibet is a challenge for him but he has brought a generous supply of antiseptic hand lotion and sterile wet wipes. The fourth member of their group is Lalit. Like Shivram, he too is an accountant. His family were originally from Gujarat but settled in Kenya several generations back, then emigrated to England in the 1980s. This group of four men, all of them Hindus, represent the Indian diaspora. Yet, the pull of the Himalayas draws them back to South Asia. A mountain like Kailash has a magnetic force, a spiritual and geographical lodestone that attracts us all to its ancient source.

"While talking with Lalit I notice one of the Gujarati women eating a mango. She has smuggled it all the way from India and is sucking on the seed. When our eyes meet, she gives me a guilty smile. Niranjan has discovered that the Gujarati pilgrims have smuggled two extra duffle bags containing dry fruit and nuts, savoury mixtures and other snacks."

................................................................................................

"After another four hours of driving, we finally come within sight of Manasarovar. Ascending out of a shallow stream bed, our vehicles crest a saddle with a chorten and flagpole at the top. Prayer flags radiate in all directions, like a sagging circus tent. The drivers complete a clockwise circuit of the chorten and park the Land Cruisers on a level patch of ground overlooking the sacred lake.

"After four days of anticipation, we are suddenly here and our abrupt arrival takes me by surprise. Manasarovar is larger than I imagined, though I can see the opposite shore. The circumference of the lake is 88 kilometres. Ordinarily, we would be able to see Kailash from this spot but the sky is overcast and Bhim points in the direction where it stands, promising us that it is ‘compulsory’ for the clouds to eventually clear. The lake has a dark blue tint that turns to turquoise when the sun comes out from behind the drifting clouds. Partially visible to the south are the mountains and glaciers that feed Manasarovar. Gurla Mandhata (7,694 metres) is the main peak, a massive whale-backed summit fully clad in snow. In 1905, Tom Longstaff and the Brocherel brothers attempted to climb this peak and were swept 1,000 metres down its slopes by an avalanche, which they survived. The treeless landscape conveys stillness, despite the wind that riffles the prayer flags. Nothing else moves except for the clouds and their shadows that cross the water like phantom shoals. One moment the tawny ridges have hardly any colour—then, as the sun emerges, it brings out hidden pigments in the rocks and soil, a subtle alchemy of light.

"Manasarovar is known as Mapam Tso in Tibetan, a name that means ‘undefeated’, commemorating Milarepa’s victory over a Bon shaman. The Buddha’s mother, Maya, is said to have bathed in this lake before Gautama was conceived. In Sanskrit, ‘manas’ means mind and ‘sarovar’ is a lake. ... "

So far, ok. But then Alter's hubris takes over, giving wrong interpretations of Sanskrit words and texts, and of Hindu thinking. 

" ... Hindus believe that Manasarovar was first created within Brahma’s imagination—a divine illusion that became a geographical reality. ... "

"Imagination" is wrong interpretation, not only of the word Manasa - pronounced Maanasa - but, more specifically, in this context. But Alter wouldn't comprehend, because he's never opened himself to land of his birth, to its ancient culture. 

Not everything that's conception of Mind is imaginary. Numbers, for example. Or circles, ellipses, parabola and hyperbola, or any of the mathematical structures in geometry. They are real, despite being not seen or touched physically. So was Manasarovar, when conceived, before it was Realised onto the physical plane. 

" ... It is the highest freshwater lake of its size in the world and the clarity of its waters reflects the purity accorded to it in mythologies of different faiths. Those who bathe in Manasarovar are cleansed of sin and guilt, not only from this life but from all previous and future incarnations. Even the gods descend from heaven to purify themselves in its waters. The most devout pilgrims complete a Kora of the lake on foot, which takes three days, though trance walkers who practice lung-gom are said to circle it in a day."

"Historically, this region yielded gold and turquoise, though most of the mines in the surrounding hills are now abandoned. One of the popular legends is the story of a huge nugget of gold, the size and shape of a dog, which was unearthed by chance near Manasarovar. When it was found, nobody dared keep it, believing this was sacred treasure. The miners took it to Lhasa and offered it to the Dalai Lama. Instead of accepting the lump of gold, he instructed them to carry it back to the shores of Manasarovar, where it was reburied exactly as it was found. A stupa was built on the spot and named Serkyi (or Kyiro Serpo) which means golden dog.

................................................................................................

"Our route takes us around the eastern rim of the lake, circling Manasarovar in a clockwise direction. After 15 kilometres, we stop at a pebbled beach, where Bhim announces that anyone who wants to take a ritual bath is welcome to do so. ‘It’s not compulsory,’ he says, ‘but please, no shampoo or soap.’ Inside the Land Cruisers it is hot and stuffy but outside, the wind has a sharp edge and the temperature drops every time a cloud passes overhead.

"The glacier-fed waters of Manasarovar are not as cold as I expect, being shallow and warmed by the sun. Some say that hot springs heat the lake, though it remains frozen for nine months of the year. The deepest point at the centre is over 75 metres but near the shore its depth is less than a metre. We spread out along the beach and most of the men strip down to shorts. A few of the women enter the lake in their saris. Others scoop a little of the water into their hands and splash it on to their faces. The pebbles underfoot make it awkward to walk but I wade out about 20 metres from shore, where the water reaches my knees.

"Lowering myself backwards, I go under completely and dunk myself three times. Surfacing, I can feel the dust and grime of four days travel rinse away, along with the adhering filth of the places where we have stayed. My skin is pale, except where the sun has burned my arms and face. The scars on my body are a dull red colour, particularly the gash on my left calf and the stab wound on my thigh. Though fully healed, my injuries are still sensitive and there is a numbness from damaged nerves. As I scrub myself in the clear waters of Manasarovar, I try to imagine the scars washing away, releasing me from the violent memories of our attack. Opening my eyes underwater, I can see the colourful patterns of pebbles and the glint of sunlight on the rippling surface above. I want to swim out farther from shore but after a few strokes, I let myself sink below the surface again, content to float in the shallows. I feel a sense of buoyancy and calm, immersed in Brahma’s dream. Though I submerge myself in the lake, none of my sins slough off; at least, none that I am aware of. Yet I feel cleansed by these sacred waters, purged of a lifetime of transgressions.

" ... A flock of terns are squabbling above a sand bar. Manasarovar contains several varieties of fish on which these migratory birds feed. ... it is a quiet, meditative place, a natural sanctuary imbued with an atmosphere of peace.

"I collect a handful of pebbles from Manasarovar to take home with me as mementoes. Most of the other pilgrims are doing the same. Satish, the Gujarati in our vehicle, rushes over holding a strangely shaped stone. ‘Can you see Ganesh?’ he says with excitement, pointing to the raised contours on the surface of the stone. ... "

................................................................................................

"We continue circling the lake, passing a couple of small monasteries and pilgrim shelters that look deserted. Crossing a stream swollen with snowmelt, one of the Land Cruisers gets stuck, water swirling halfway up the doors. Fortunately, the driver is able to reverse out of the current and makes it across on his second attempt. From the southern shore of the lake, the road loops up a broad bluff and we are able to see Rakshastal, a second lake almost as big as Manasarovar, but irregular in shape and about 15 metres lower in altitude. ‘Rakshas’ means demon and this lake, which is salty and undrinkable, is associated with the darker forces of Hindu mythology. The two lakes lie side by side, like a misshapen ying and yang. It may be the grey canopy of clouds or the angle of the sun as it descends toward the horizon, but Rakshastal has a menacing demeanour, its surface rough with waves. 

"Minutes later, as we descend the other side of the ridge, a miracle occurs!

"Our route, which has been unpaved for more than 600 kilometres, suddenly merges with a perfectly tarred road coming in from the south. Asphalt never looked so beautiful and the yellow line down this two-lane highway is a ribbon of gold. We have joined the road that comes up from Taklakot, a historic trading post near the border with India and Nepal. For centuries this has been one of the main centres of commerce where tea and butter are still bartered for pashmina wool and yak tails. The short section of highway, hardly 30 kilometres from the border to the roadhead at Darchen has been paved by the Chinese to create the illusion of development. On the Indian and Nepal side of the border there is no motorable approach, only rough footpaths winding up precipitous gorges. In 1866, Nain Singh Rawat escaped from Tibet along this route and returned to India. Despite ongoing border disputes, a bilateral agreement between India and China permits a limited number of pilgrims to cross into Tibet on foot. From Taklakot they are taken by bus to Darchen. Originally, I had hoped to make the journey to Kailash by this route, which starts in Uttarakhand and avoids the long detour to Kathmandu. But permits are issued by lottery and the Indian government does not allow foreigners to cross the ‘inner line’ and pass through border regions."

................................................................................................

"I would be happy to drive for another hour like this but after twenty minutes we reach Chiu Gompa, where we spend the night at a guest house that is decorated with brightly painted yak skulls. Nearby is a dry channel that connects Manasarovar with Rakshastal, though water only flows between the two lakes during years of heavy rainfall when the level of Manasarovar rises. This is interpreted as an auspicious omen. The shore of the lake at Chiu is surrounded by mud and it is impossible to reach the water. One of the pilgrims goes too close and sinks up to his thighs in grey ooze. I walk out as far as I dare and find thousands of tiny snail shells, bleached white by the sun.

"The clouds disperse at nightfall and we are treated to a spectacular display of stars. Unlike night skies in other parts of the world where an electric glow allows only a few constellations to shine through, here the firmament above us flickers with millions of lights. The Milky Way spreads like a celestial glacier above the eastern horizon, its reflection faintly visible on the still, dark surface of the lake. Sirius, the Dog Star, gleams like a nugget of gold. A satellite passes overhead, a blinking firefly weaving its way through a net of lights. I keep expecting it to collide with one of the stars. Though the sky appears crowded, it is actually an empty sieve through which years of ancient light have drained to illuminate this moment. There is no moon but, to our south, the faint profile of the Himalayas rises above Manasarovar ... "

................................................................................................


"UPON THIS THRESHOLD 

"Hoping to see the sunrise over Manasarovar, I get up early the next morning and stumble past my sleeping roommates. Once outside, I am disappointed to find the sky is overcast. A murky dawn seeps through the clouds. After a few minutes, however, shafts of sunlight penetrate the grey curtains and shoot across the surface of the lake, giving it a metallic sheen. A little later I meet three of the Gujarati pilgrims who tell me that they have been awake all night and claim to have seen lights descending from the sky into the water. One of the myths of Manasarovar is that these lights are deities who descend to bathe in Brahma’s lake. I ask what kind of lights they were and they describe something between a shooting star and an emergency flare, phosphorescent streaks that drop out of the darkness before disappearing into the water. Others have described this phenomenon before, which is sometimes explained as St Elmo’s Fire, atmospheric bursts of static electricity. Whatever it may be, the pilgrims are delighted and they tell their story to everyone in the group.

"After breakfast, Niranjan and the other NRIs invite me to join them on a short trek up the ridge above the guest house. Today we are scheduled for a late start, leaving Chiu Gompa after lunch and driving only as far as Darchen, which is 25 kilometres away. Part of the reason for our walk is to test ourselves for the circumambulation of Kailash, which begins tomorrow. Manasarovar lies 4,556 metres above sea level. Oxygen is scarce and we keep stopping to catch our breath. Kailash is still obscured by clouds and I begin to wonder if we will ever have a clear view of the mountain. The landscape around Manasarovar is like a dented bowl that rises up on every side. Windswept and dry, the folded ridges are covered with patches of Tibetan gorse, a hardy plant with dark green leaves. Though it provides forage for wild and domesticated animals, its thorns protect it from over-grazing.

"From the ridge above Chiu Gompa, we can clearly see the dry stream bed between Manasarovar and Rakshastal. Sections of the channel appear marshy and at places it has a rime of salt caused by evaporation and minerals leeched out of the soil. Known as Ganga Chu, this occasional stream carries the pure waters of Mapam Tso into the demon’s lake, rendering it sacred as well. ... This year, Ganga Chu is inauspiciously dry. Summer rains have been scarce and the snowmelt off Gurla Mandhata is not enough to make Manasarovar overflow its banks."

" ... Clouds still hide Kailash from view. Atop the highest ridge we climb is a cairn of rocks where we have a dramatic view of the lake. From this angle, Manasarovar looks much larger, almost a perfect oval. ... "

In addition to his other shortcomings, in Alter there's an unfortunate manifestation of racism and a need to distance himself from anything that might provide anyone to hang an illusion that this person could be seen as belonging or even attached to India or her ancient culture - which manifests in a strange and repeated copy, sometimes exact, of the kast scene of a European film about Hungary one recalls having seen some time in early to mid eighties, a good film completely marred by that last scene, strangely alike a post-impressionist artist's work in a NY city museum one saw later, in 1983. 

................................................................................................

" ... Mount Kailash has suddenly emerged from hiding and stands out above the ridge with unexpected brilliance. The sun gleams off its snowclad features. ... "

"Darchen lies at the foot of the ridges below Kailash, though the mountain itself cannot be seen from the town. A dusty, unkempt settlement with two main streets that cross in the middle and rows of identical buildings, it is not a hospitable place. A line of shops sell trinkets and souvenirs to pilgrims, as well as dried herbs collected from the nearby hills. At the centre of town is the ‘Good Luck To The Supermarket’ and an ‘Abundance Wholesale Store’. Our accommodation is a government guest house that looks more like a jail than a hotel. Several yatra groups are staying here and we are allotted C-Block, a desolate yellow barrack. The usual jigsaw puzzle of beds is squeezed into each room, with barely enough space for anyone to enter.

"After unloading our bags, we set off again to visit the starting point of the Inner Kora. Sonam drives us up a series of switchbacks, along a steep, rough road. Less than 5 kilometres above Darchen, the valley opens out into a broad meadow with a stream flowing through the middle. From here, the south face of Mount Kailash rises directly above us, no clouds obscuring its brilliance. Bhim described this as a ‘Kailash darshan’, providing us with our first close view of the mountain. When we stop, even the drivers take out prayer rugs or spread their jackets on the grass, and prostrate themselves in front of the mountain. Conversations cease and each of us drifts off to separate areas of the meadow to contemplate Kailash, alone with our thoughts.

................................................................................................

"A short distance away, on the slope of a ridge, lies a gompa associated with the Jain religion, though it looks very much like any other Buddhist shrine, with red mud walls and prayer flags. In front is a chorten with a gilded spire. ... a small footpath leading up a dry, windswept ridge at the head of the valley. Several pilgrims, part of another group, are ascending this path and I decide to follow them. It is a steep climb, much more strenuous than our hike this morning and I walk slowly upward, eyes fixed on the mountain."

"The Bon identify a sacred Swastika in the patterns of these rocks. If one stares at the mountain long enough, the shape appears like a giant petroglyph. In India and Tibet, the swastika represents good luck and fertility. Many Hindus interpret it as a stylized image of Natraj, the dancing form of Shiva. 

"While the peak itself is considered the austere throne of Shiva who sits here in eternal meditation, a broad hill in the foreground is known as Nandi Parbat, representing the bull of Shiva who lies attentively at his feet. ... One of the nearby ridges is known as Kuber Parbat, where the god of wealth resides. Another ridge is revered as the abode of Vishnu. ... "

" ... irrepressible emotions well up inside of me at several points along the trail. My vision blurs with tears and my throat constricts, not from altitude, but from a sense of having arrived. Several pilgrims, coming down the path, greet me with repeated cries of ‘Om Namah Shivaya!’ but I am speechless, unable to respond. It could be awe or reverence that evokes these emotions, or a sense of release at having accomplished the simple goal of being in the presence of Kailash."

" ... Sitting here in front of the mountain, leaning against this rock, I realize that nothing exists outside of this experience. ... "

" ... For an hour, I simply sit alone beside the lichen-covered rock, emptying my mind of rational and irrational thoughts, experiencing only the transcendent vision of Kailash."

................................................................................................


"CIRCLING THE SUMMIT 

" ... The only effective treatment for altitude sickness is to quickly take a person down several thousand feet. But the problem in Tibet is that there is no place to escape, for the entire country lies at high altitudes. The closest airports where a person could be evacuated are either Lhasa or Kathmandu, five days’ journey from Darchen, by which time it is too late.

"After breakfast, the Land Cruisers drop us at Tarboche, 5 kilometres west of Darchen, where the Kora route begins. During the Saga Dawa festival in late spring, Tarboche is inundated with thousands of pilgrims. Each year, a huge flagstaff is erected, from which strings of prayer flags radiate like the fluttering spokes on a giant wheel. Tarboche is located at the mouth of a broad gorge that wraps around Kailash on its western side. ... "

" ... A ring of dark clouds hides the summit of Kailash, but we can see the mountain’s lower slopes encrusted with bands of snow and ice. At Tarboche stands a small chorten with a passage through the middle. This is called Hemdwar by Hindu pilgrims, which means ‘gateway to the snows’. ... "

No, Hema (with a short a), or Hem, is gold in Sanskrit, so it's Golden Gate, meaning to a world above paradise, where highers Gods dwell. 

"From this point onwards, until we complete the Kora, most of our party will be riding horses, with yaks and porters carrying tents and supplies. Only two of us have chosen to complete the Kora on foot, myself and a man named Chandrashekhar, from Mumbai. Bhim and the Chinese tour guide must organize the caravan of men and animals that will travel up the valley. We have been told that nobody is allowed to share a horse and you cannot carry your pack while riding, requiring a porter to shoulder this extra load for an additional fee. Happily leaving behind the bickering and chaos of pairing horses with riders and yaks with loads, I set off up the valley. Chandrashekhar and I walk together for a ways, then agree to each continue at our own pace, glad for the solitude of the Lha Chu Valley, known as the gorge of the river gods.

................................................................................................

"A good-sized stream, 10 metres wide and milky with snowmelt, flows through a broad expanse of valley, almost a kilometre across at its mouth. On either side spectacular cliffs of red rock ascend above me, framing the sky with weird formations. ... Reining in their horses, they ask if I want a ride. I shake my head and they carry on, the embroidered saddle cloths and strings of brass bells around the horses’ necks reminding me that I am in Tibet, not Colorado. A few minutes later, two motorcyclists overtake me, heading up the valley. Their bikes are loaded with supplies. The trail is nothing but a rough footpath. They manoeuvre between the rocks, until one of them takes a corner too sharply and topples over. By the time I catch up with him, he has righted his bike and kicked the engine back to life. Within minutes, the roar of the motorcycles is consumed by the silence of the valley.

"Waterfalls cascade down the cliffs, their fluid strands bending in the wind like frayed ropes dangling from the rocks. Between the jagged spires and layered towers of stone, I catch glimpses of snowfields and glaciers. The sun is straight above me and I am sweating as I walk. After seven days of sedentary travel, it feels good to be carrying my pack. Though the air is thin, our ascent is gradual and my breathing is not strained. I feel the exhilaration of being alone, moving of my own accord. Nobody is responsible for my progress except myself. Clouds keep passing overhead, their shadows sweeping across the canyon walls, casting transient pools of shade that disappear as quickly as they form.

"At almost every turn of the path stand cairns of stones, reminding me that millions of pilgrims have gone before us. Some of the cairns are not man-made but natural mounds of conglomerate rock with stones of different sizes, from tiny pebbles to massive boulders that have been fused together. The variety of rocks seem infinite, every shade from crystal clarity to creamy white, burnt umber and tawny gold, salmon with streaks of yellow, orange, pink and rose. Each of them looks like hardened fragments of light. From a distance the ridges around us appear a uniform colour of reddish brown. Kailash itself is stark black granite, but the stones in the valley are variegated hues of every shade and texture."

" ... Guru Rinpoche, Padmasambhava, the sixth-century Indian saint and teacher who was a great reformer of Buddhism and set the faithful on the true path of righteousness. The concept of terma also takes on a special significance in more recent history, when many relics and texts were hidden to protect them during the Cultural Revolution, which destroyed and desecrated most of the monasteries and religious sites in Tibet.

"Padmasambhava is said to have rescued Buddhism from occult and profane influences, including the so-called sorcery and shamanism of Bon tradition that permitted animal sacrifices. He preached nonviolence and compassion as the key tenets of Buddhist doctrine, though the religion continued to promote Tantric rituals, which are rooted in the older shamanistic practices. ... For Buddhists from other traditions, the Tantric practices in Tibet are often disturbing. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... As I walk around Kailash, following timeless paths that wheel about its axis, I become conscious of the hidden taproot of this mountain. Even as it rises more than 6,000 metres above sea level, Kailash extends deep into the earth. ... "

"The landscape in this treeless valley has a hypnotic quality. Rocks and boulders take on weird and magical shapes like an optical illusion. Lama Govinda, the Bolivian-German mystic who helped introduce Tibet to the West, writes about lung-gom. While on an extended pilgrimage to Kailash and the abandoned kingdom of Guge in far-western Tibet, Govinda claims to have experienced trance walking himself, after getting lost in the mountains:

""…to my amazement I jumped from boulder to boulder without ever slipping or missing a foothold, in spite of wearing only a pair of flimsy sandals on my bare feet. And then, I realized that a strange force had taken over, a consciousness that was no more guided by my eyes or my brain. My limbs moved as in a trance, with an uncanny knowledge of their own, though their movement seemed almost mechanical. I noticed things only like in a dream, somewhat detached. Even my own body had become distant, quasi-detached from my will-power. I was like an arrow that unfailingly pursued its course by the force of its initial impetus, and the only thing I knew was that on no condition must I break the spell that had seized me.""

................................................................................................

"By noon, I reach a cluster of tea shops, where Bhim has instructed us to wait for lunch. The western face of Kailash is clearly visible now, another facet of the pyramid with the same horizontal bands of rock and snow. But from this angle, the mountain seems to have a different character, sombre and almost menacing. The base is guarded by gargoyles of red rock, fearsome sentinels chiselled by the wind. Gazing up at the mountain, the sun is in my eyes. While Kailash itself remains imposing and serene, here in this valley there seems to be a surrounding chaos of eroded precipices that suggest wild and threatening forces, as if fierce storms and mountain demons have petrified into solid shapes."

" ... These tea shops are set up during the pilgrimage season, from the end of May through October, and will be dismantled during winter when the Kora route is closed. Tables and benches are arranged along one side with displays of Coke and Red Bull cans out front, as well as bottled beer. Entering a tea shop, I ask the proprietor for tea. She serves it to me in a thimble-sized glass, a murky pink infusion with a mildly salty flavour. ... Her daughter, a toddler, wears a whimsical plastic hat with propellers and spring-loaded baubles that nod as she walks, proud as a princess modelling her first crown."

" ... We are served a simple lunch of rice and lentils. I quickly eat and hurry on ... "

"It would be impossible to get lost in this valley, though there are dozens of trails that separate and re-converge along the eastern bank of the Lha Chu River. These paths seem to have been laid out over centuries by the wandering footsteps of pilgrims, each taking their own circuit around Kailash. Coming from the opposite direction, I pass a group of Bon pilgrims ... After an hour’s walk, I come to a bridge that leads to Drira Phuk Gompa, on the opposite side of the valley. Though After an hour’s walk, I come to a bridge that leads to Drira Phuk Gompa, on the opposite side of the valley. Though tempted to explore, I don’t know where our camp is pitched and whether I can cross the river farther up."

"Exploring above our camp, I reach a pile of mani stones. Ahead of me is a gorge that leads to the foot of Kailash, which looks deceptively close. I decide not to go any further, for the wind has picked up and I have left my jacket behind. ... "

"I am just about to give up on the sunset and retreat to my tent when I notice a faint amber glow on one of the lower snowfields. To the west, banks of clouds begin to part, as the sun slips behind the western crags of the La Chu Valley. ... a golden light ascends the mountain. Within a few seconds, Kailash is completely gilded and the cobra’s hood shines like a cornice of gold. The black striations stand out in contrast to the burnished snow and it feels as if the mountain has changed from two dimensions into three and then, perhaps a fourth—each crevice and cliff line standing out in bold relief. Holding my breath, I take a few pictures, then lower my camera, wanting only to experience this spectacle with my eyes, rather than viewing it through a lens. Already, the light is fading. Within three minutes the sunset is over and shadows enfold us in a frigid embrace."

................................................................................................

"CAVE OF MYSTERIES 

" ... To cross the 5,636-metre Dolma La pass today and reach our next campsite, we have been told that we must start by 4 a.m. The stars are brilliant and Kailash glows like a pale slab of marble leaning against a sequined sky. The yaks arrive in silence, matted shadows lumbering in the dark. The only sounds are the shrill whistles of their handlers. Just as we are about to leave, a new moon comes up over the ridge. For a couple of minutes, the entire circumference is visible as it rises, fading quickly into a thin crescent."

" ... The climb takes me diagonally up a rocky slope, with a few switchbacks at the steepest points. An hour from camp, I find myself at the top of a rise, where a Tibetan family has stopped to drink tea from a thermos flask—a father and mother with their teenage daughter and son. ... "

"Across the valley from us, Kailash is visible again after being hidden for most of the route from camp. While we remain in shadow, the peak is lit by the first rays of sunlight. Though not as dramatic as the evening glow, the morning light has a startling brilliance, its intensity increasing until I cannot look at the mountain without dark glasses. From this angle, the main profile of the peak is identical to what I saw last evening, but the eastern ridge is now in view. Below this lies the main glacier that skirts the north face."

................................................................................................

"Stepping over plastic bags and empty juice packets, I find myself getting angry and frustrated. Like everything else on this journey, it seems symbolic of something greater, a paradox that defines the contradictions of human nature. ... "

He forgets, plumbing is only a couple of centuries old even in West, and it was far more filthy then than India; but as to the garbage litter, a large part of the problem is industrial era and its packaging. Even in the cleanest of societies West, garbage collected has the disposal problem not quite solved, merely pushed away out of sight. US has a mountain of it in Eastern coastal states, and Pacific ocean has an island of it due to US litter disposed, but that's without counting the scrap US sends to Asia for disposal at a cost - paid by US in currency and by Asia in environmental erosion. 

................................................................................................

"One of the landmarks I have been searching for is a small pond called the ‘Mirror of Yama’, the looking glass of death. There is only one pool of water on this side of the pass, hardly 15 metres in circumference and a short distance from the trail. ... The valley around it lies in shadow but the water captures the bright blue of the sky. To the southwest, Kailash stands out. This will be the last clear view I have of the mountain during my Kora. Though I will see its eastern face after descending the pass, only sections of the mountain are visible beyond this point.

"7 a.m. Three hours have passed since I left camp and now the horses are beginning to catch up. I can hear the sound of their hooves on the rocks and the clucking of the horsemen urging them on. As I step aside to let a group go by, some of the pilgrims greet me, while others sit slumped in their saddles with expressions of misery. Heads throb under woollen hats and nausea makes every turn on the trail a stomach-churning ordeal. Last night, one of the yatris from Maharashtra became violently ill and was taken back to Darchen. Nobody knows if he has survived and his companions are anxious. The sure-footed ponies pick their way through patches of snow that are covered with dung and dirt. Heading directly east, into the sunrise, it is impossible to see the crest of the pass because of the glare. A hundred metres from the top we cross from shadow into sunlight, the harsh rays blinding as they light up thousands of coloured prayer flags that cover Dolma La like a patchwork quilt."

" ... Having promised friends and family that I will bring them souvenirs from my journey, I collect a dozen pebbles from the pass, tiny fragments of the mountain, each of which is a miniature version of Kailash.

"Though I feel a sense of elation on reaching the pass, there isn’t the same experience of awe and reverence that I felt when we approached Kailash on the first day, or last evening when I saw the sunset lighting up its northern face. Dolma La is as dramatic a landscape as any we’ve crossed but, emotionally, it does not move me, beyond a feeling of relief and appreciation for the eroded features of the mountains. Kailash itself is hidden from view. ... "

"Just below Dolma La is another pond, slightly larger than the Mirror of Yama but no more than 9 metres across. Hindus call this Gauri Kund and Buddhists refer to it as the Lake of Compassion. For much of the year it remains frozen but in summer the water melts to a chalky green colour. The snow-capped ridge above is reflected in the surface. Being several hundred feet below the pass and surrounded by steep cliffs and rocky slopes, the lake is seldom visited by pilgrims, who follow a trail that circles above Gauri Kund. Some yatris brave the difficult descent to bathe in the water but most take darshan from a distance, allowing their prayers to reflect upon the jade-like surface of the pool."

Alter gives here story of birth and a bit more of Ganapati, presumably for purposes of entertainment of non-Indians, non-Hindus. 

" ... This myth is a familiar episode in Hindu mythology and I have visited more than one place that is said to be the setting for this story. Here in Tibet, well above the range of any elephants, ... "

Alter forgets that the legend belongs to before Himaalaya was quite so high, and that Kailash is far older,  geologically; that there's no reason to presume that at the time of the legend coming into being, everything was as is now, and elephants avoided the surroundings for some mysterious reason despite its being completely accessible! He doesn't say why that would have been so, even though elephants are natural from Assam to Kerala, and were natural to most of ancient Indian land. Tibet hadn't been lifted quite so high then. And if China hadn't finished off everything in sight by eating, elephants might have existed in Tibet, China, even Mongolia. But then, China finished off even cattle, something so vital and essential to an agricultural land in tropics. Chinese cuisine, unlike India or Europe, has no dairy product component. 

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"From the crest of the pass, we can see our trail cutting down a steep slope, traversing a field of rocks and boulders. Farther on, the Lham Chu Valley opens up and leads us back toward Manasarovar. Many of the pilgrims are taken by surprise when they realize that they must descend on foot. The path is too steep for horses to carry riders to the valley floor and the horsemen quickly vanish. As I start down, I see them hurrying ahead of me, abandoning their riders. While the trail is treacherous at points, not all of it is impassable on horseback and this seems more of an excuse for the horsemen to rush ahead and have tea at the foot of the hill.

"As it turns out, we still have 12 kilometres to walk, though most of this is level ground and easy trekking. Kailash remains hidden from view, except for brief glimpses of its eastern face. Unlike the other three sides of the mountain, there are no telltale bands of rock and snow. Instead, this side of the peak is a pure white cone wedged between clefts in the ridges.

"Early in the afternoon, I come in sight of Zutrul Phuk, a monastery and settlement where the poet-saint Milarepa took shelter in a cave and meditated for many years. The gompa, with its red walls, stands next to a whitewashed boulder shaped like a natural chorten. There are several guest houses and shelters, but we camp in an open field close to the river. By the time our tents are set up, the wind has gained force, a relentless torrent of air that tugs at the fabric, straining the guy ropes. The broad valley offers no protection from this fierce gale, which seems intent on blowing us back toward Dolma La."

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"Soon after departing Zutrul Phuk, I see a moving shape silhouetted against the sky between the yawning jaws of a canyon. For a moment it is there, then it vanishes. A few seconds later, it reappears, like the fleeting shadow of a crescent moon. Though far away, I recognize the outstretched wings of a large bird circling on the air currents. As it flies above me, I try to identify what it is but only when it turns can I see the distinctly wedge-shaped tail of a lammergeier or bearded vulture. These magnificent raptors have the largest wingspan in the Himalayas, nearly 3 metres from tip to tip. According to Hindu and Buddhist mythology, they are associated with Garuda, the vehicle of Vishnu. ... To see a lammergeier circling the slopes of Kailash seems an auspicious sign and confirms for me the significance of this place—a sanctuary open to the sky, a place where mountains rise above us ... "

"Elated by this vision, I carry on. An easy two-hour walk from Zutrul Phuk brings me to a small settlement called Tangsar, where the Lham Chu Valley narrows into a horseshoe gorge. By the time I reach the end of our circuit, the drivers and Land Cruisers are waiting for us. My fellow pilgrims are overjoyed to have undertaken the parikrama. They embrace their companions and touch one another’s feet in acknowledgement of having completed the most sacred pilgrimage of all. It is moving to see how happy they are despite the struggles and deprivation of the last ten days. The loudest and most abrasive of the Gujarati pilgrims puts his arms around me and bursts into tears of joy. We hold each other as brothers, though we have hardly spoken until now, and, after this journey, will never meet again."

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October 08, 2022 - October 09, 2022. 

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BANDARPUNCH: Returning Home 

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"HEALING LIGHT 

"Himalayan landscapes reflect a luminosity that doesn’t exist on the plains. Partly, it is the clarity of the air but also the angle of the sun, slanting above the earth’s curvature to meet the sudden upheaval of these high ranges. Refraction in the atmosphere at extreme elevations contributes to a greater brightness, as well as subtle adumbrations that tease our perception, as if the light were emanating from the mountain itself."

" ... The sublime magnitude of the Himalayas leaves us with profound feelings of reverence as well as trepidation. ... "

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"ASCENT AND RETREAT 

"A goat path follows the blade of the ridge, less than 20 centimetres wide, with a drop of several hundred metres on either hand. We are climbing the crumbling remnants of an extinct glacier that carved this valley into a scalloped bowl centuries ago. A steep rib of moraine rises out of a boulder field and leads to the peaks above. Its surface is loose scree with sparse ground cover, dwarf rhododendrons and juniper that grow close to the soil. From a distance it looks as if the ridge is bare. Yesterday, I watched a herd of bharal cross these slopes, moving with the agility of mountain creatures for whom the cliffs and fissured rocks offer countless hoofholds. Commonly known as blue sheep, their natural habitat lies above the treeline, making them one of the highest-ranging mammals in the world."

" ... To the east, amidst the clouds, I can see the summits of Srikantha and a dozen other mountains above Gangotri, the flared crest of the Garhwal Himalayas rising to almost twice our elevation."

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"THE MONKEY'S TALE

" ... Fraser’s description of Bandarpunch is probably the first account in English of this mountain, which he observed on his way to Yamunotri. Both the mountain itself and the sacred lore of this peak caught Fraser’s imagination ... "

" ... The high peaks of Garhwal and Kumaon are some of the most regulated ranges in the world, with all kinds of restrictions, especially for foreigners like me. The Person of Indian Origin (PIO) card, which allows me to stay in India without a visa, states clearly that it isn’t valid for ‘missionary activities, mountaineering and research’. Somehow, I feel as if they’ve singled me out but after making inquires, Rimo tell me that Bandarpunch is an ‘open peak’ for which special permission can be granted on payment of exorbitant climbing fees."

"The Bhagirathi tributary, full of silt washed down from the mountains, is the same colour as the strong, thick tea brewed at roadside stalls. Just above Uttarkashi, we pass Gangori, where the traditional route to Bandarpunch cuts off and climbs to Dodital. A year ago, flash floods on the Assi Ganga washed away the bridge and a dozen buildings. The military Border Roads Organization has replaced the bridge but Gangori still looks like a disaster zone. Hundreds of people died in last year’s floods, many of them undocumented labourers working on a hydro-electric project along the Assi Ganga, trying to harness the power of the river, which turns lethal in the monsoon. Five weeks ago, training for my climb to Bandarpunch, I trekked up this route to Dodital and the Darwa Pass."

" ... Many of the newer buildings stand well below the high-water mark of earlier floods, inviting disaster. The Ganga View Hotel on the outskirts of Uttarkashi has its foundation in the riverbed. The town of Bhatwari is sliding into the Bhagirathi and may disappear within a couple of years. ... "

Alter speaks of "religious chauvinism" of Hindus, without mentioning the word Hindu. He gets downright abusive. It's easy and cheap, when mouthing off is only against India and against Hindus. 

"The Himalayas are often depicted as the pristine seat of spiritual enlightenment, the fountainhead of Hindu tradition, the reclusive retreat of sages and sadhus. But along these valleys, where an increasing number of pilgrims travel in a continuous caravan of zealous fundamentalism, the politicized face of Hinduism has evolved into a grotesque visage spouting dogma, prejudice and venal theologies. The mountains themselves rise above the Ganga, which flows resolutely on, washing away the filth of millions who pollute its waters, even as they chant her praises and call her ‘mother’. Natural phenomena are turned into religious metaphors and then debased by the tawdry embellishments of faith. Even ancient myths lose resonance here."

Inquisition, anyone remember, wasn't an institution of India, or of Hinduism. Nor is the concept of 'convert or kill', used for ethnic cleansing in Kashmir in January 1990. 

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"When we finally arrive at Sukhi late in the afternoon, I find the team from Rimo Expeditions camped in a village house at the side of the road. Kunzang, the trip leader, whom I have met before in Delhi, introduces me to the others, including our Liaison Officer. He is Nandan Jaiswal, a young mountaineer in his late twenties from West Bengal. The others in the group are Phurbu and Tenzing, both Sherpas from Darjeeling. Our cook, Gokul, is Nepali, and our three high-altitude porters are from Kumaon—Soop Singh, Kamal Singh and Dhan Singh. Kunzang explains that another fifteen porters are arriving tomorrow to help ferry loads up to base camp.

"Suddenly, my fantasy of a small, compact team has expanded into the equivalent of a minor military campaign. It seems absurd that so many people have to be marshalled together to accompany me up the mountain. Documents from the IMF identify me as ‘Team Leader’ but I feel immediately self-conscious and ambivalent about being the instigator of this elaborate operation. I’m not sure what I had imagined but certainly not marching out of Sukhi at the head of a band of twenty-five men. Of course, mountaineering is very different to trekking, and my outfitters are experts in this field, so I quietly retreat to a room at the Sunshine Hotel, Sukhi’s finest, awaiting word that the Chief Wildlife Warden has signed our papers. His approval is essential, since our party will be passing through reserve forests, the protected habitat of rare species like musk deer, panthers and bear. Obviously, he is a busy man: attending a Railway Board meeting in Delhi to discuss recent collisions between wild elephants and express trains, and then rushing on to Ramnagar, where a tigress has been found dead in Corbett National Park. Compared to these crises, our expedition to Bandarpunch is hardly worthy of the ink in his pen. So, we wait at Sukhi another twenty-four hours until we are finally told that permission has been given and we can move forward."

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"SETTING OFF

"Nandan is built to be a rock climber, slight and compact, with an economy of movement in his limbs. His restless but attentive eyes look as if they could decipher the most cryptic rocks. This year, he applied to the IMF to be a liaison officer, as the post would give him a chance to climb more peaks. He plans to add Bandarpunch to his résumé, though it is much lower than Kamet. Next year he hopes to tackle Everest, if his club can raise the funds. Their motto quotes Vivekananda: ‘Take a handful of soil from your home and carry it to the top of a mountain.’ In 1900, Vivekananda attended the world conference on religion in Chicago, becoming one of the first interpreters of his faith to export Hindu teaching to the West. He founded the Ramakrishna Mission, which promotes Vedanta theology, perceived by many to be a ‘pure’ strain of Hindu philosophy distilled from Sanskrit texts like the Bhagavad Gita."

" ... Gokul tells me that he grew up in the forests of western Nepal, where he learned to identify all kinds of wild vegetables and herbs. He claims he can even make a dish with dock weed, picking only the smallest leaves and cooking them with potatoes. He plucks another plant near our tents and tastes it, then spits it out, saying he mistook it for something else. Gokul has a boyish, infectious laugh. Though we speak in Hindi most of the time, his English is good and occasionally he interjects comments that take me by surprise, saying, ‘Life is a struggle,’ or nodding seriously, ‘I understand the situation.’ For dinner, he cooks a robust pasta with tomato sauce and lingra stewed in garlic. Watching him in the kitchen tent, I can see that he is a master chef of the outdoors, juggling pots and pressure cookers over kerosene stoves."

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"DAWN IN THE VALLEY

"We break camp after breakfast and set off up the right bank of the valley, through fir forest, pine and yew, then into stands of birches. A species of white lilac is blooming and I can smell its fragrance as my pack brushes the blossoms, scattering them on the ground. Farther on, Nandan discovers his first wild strawberries in an open glen. ... "

" ... Instead of crossing here, we keep to the right bank and continue climbing through groves of birches, where wild irises and rhubarb are blooming. At the head of the valley, we descend along a steep escarpment to a snow bridge. Above us is a waterfall that crashes down the cliffs before disappearing under a sheath of ice. This snow bridge is all that remains of a massive glacier that must have dominated this valley years ago. Atop the cliffs we can see the maw of the upper glacier, hanging there like fractured battlements of a frozen fortress.

"Clouds have gathered as we cross the snow bridge, which creaks underfoot. As I clamber up the opposite slope, rain begins to fall. Gokul and I take shelter in a narrow cave under a giant boulder. Below us, we can see the porters crossing the snow, like a line of beetles moving over bauchy ice. When Kamal Singh joins us, he shows me a shard of mica he has found, peeling it apart and passing me a slice. Through its crystal lens, I can just make out the shapes of the mountains. And when I cup my hand around it, I stare into the reflective surface, and see a faint mirage of myself. The mica reminds me of old glass negatives, scratched and faded but preserving fossilized images inside translucent leaves, tectonic chapters overwritten from the Carboniferous or Eocene age, a palimpsest of geological history. 

"Half an hour later, when the rain stops, we arrive at base camp—a sloping field of grass and rubble next to a stream—from where we can look back down the valley. Porters straggle in. One of them had to be sent back because he was suffering from altitude sickness. The rest shrug off their loads and leave as soon as they’ve been paid, almost running down the trail."

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"EXPLORERS AND FOREBEARERS

"A few months before setting off on our expedition, I met Gurdial in Dehradun, at the home of Nalni Jayal, an alumnus of The Doon School and former Environment Secretary of the Government of India. Both men have climbed together on several expeditions and Nalni now runs the Himalayan Trust, advocating ecological awareness. Gurdial, whose friends and students call him ‘Guru’, tells me that he will turn ninety on 1 January 2014. Despite his years, he is a tall, imposing man, with a camouflage cap on his head. His memory remains sharp as an ice axe, recalling early attempts on Bandarpunch.

"Their team approached the mountain from the southeast, walking from Mussoorie to Dodital, then climbing on to the high bugyal meadows and working their way up through the watershed of the Hanuman Ganga. Through his connections in the Himalayan Club, Martyn recruited three Sherpas from Darjeeling for their expedition, one of whom was Tenzing. Gurdial shows me a photograph of the summit ridge taken by another Doon School master, R. L. Holdsworth. His Leica captured the stark dawn shadows, outlining snow and rocks against an overexposed sky, which is almost black, the kind of image that digital photography cannot replicate. Gurdial’s finger traces the route. ‘Martyn and the rest of our party got up this far and then turned back because it was too difficult, but Tenzing carried on to the summit.’

"He shakes his head in disbelief. 

"‘We had very little equipment. When I think of what we wore…’ Gurdial was inspired by mountaineering books in Martyn’s and Gibson’s libraries, classic accounts of Himalayan exploration by Shipton, Tilman and Smythe. I ask if he had any training as a mountaineer and he laughs. ‘We learned as we went along. After all, climbing is little more than putting on crampons and tying a few knots. In those days we didn’t know what pulmonary edema was. We didn’t know anything about acclimatization. We just kept going.’

"Though Gurdial didn’t make it to the top in 1950, he returned to Bandarpunch twenty-five years later, in 1975. With an expedition from the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, he successfully climbed the mountain by the route we are attempting. 

"‘May I ask how old you are?’ He fixes his eyes on me. When I tell him fifty-six, he nods. ‘Still young,’ he says. ‘You must tell me about the climb when you get back.’

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"Several writers have identified Gurdial Singh, Roy Greenwood and Dawa Thondup’s climb of Trisul in 1951 as the advent of Indian mountaineering. Nalni Jayal was also a member of this expedition, though he did not reach the summit. Gurdial, Greenwood and Thondup were the second team to reach the top of Trisul, which was first climbed by Tom Longstaff in 1907. They approached the mountain through a section of the Rishi Ganga Gorge, now part of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. 

"‘It was perfectly still and clear on the summit,’ Gurdial tells me, ‘with a layer of clouds below us at twenty thousand feet. I remember kneeling in the snow and changing a reel of film. I had an Agfa camera.’

"A famous photograph published in The Himalayan Journal shows him doing a headstand on the summit of Trisul. When I ask if he had planned it ahead of time, Gurdial shakes his head and smiles. ‘No, it was a spontaneous decision. Roy Greenwood had done a handstand, so I decided to do a headstand.’ The picture, taken by Greenwood, shows a carefree exuberance for the adventure of climbing and reminds us of an innocent age of mountaineering. Instead of planting flags or posing triumphantly on vanquished summits, Gurdial and Greenwood literally turned the heroics of the climb on its head."

"Willi Unsoeld was also a friend of Gurdial’s. They met when the young American first came to India in 1949 and attempted Nilkanth. The two of them spent almost a month together, including a week in the Bhyundar Valley, climbing nearby ridges and photographing wildflowers. When Unsoeld returned to India in 1976 to climb Nanda Devi with his daughter, they had planned to get together in Dehradun. But after Devi died on the mountain, Unsoeld went straight back to America and they didn’t have a chance to meet."

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"BLUE SHEEP

"It is still early in the year for wildflowers but we find plenty of herbs, including thyme and a species of allium with white, star-like blossoms. Known as wild garlic, its leaves have a pungent, oniony smell and taste. Yesterday, Gokul collected enough to make a vegetable dish, mixed with potatoes. Armed with my camera, I wander about the rocks and meadows, crossing snow fields above our camp to reach the outer margins of the valley. Pikas, or mouse hares, populate the glacial debris, darting from one rock to the next. They are skittish animals and I’ve never been able to get good pictures. But this time, with some patience, I am able to sit still, until their curiosity gets the better of them."

" ... These caterpillar mushrooms contain a potent steroid and are used in Chinese medicine. According to some accounts it is an undetectable ingredient in performance enhancing drugs for Olympic athletes. A single piece of keeda ghaas can fetch Rs 400 and a kilo makes a man rich. Kamal Singh told me that he had recently been up at the Kuari Pass and whole families were camped out there, searching for the desiccated remains. Though the conditions in the Son Gad Valley were ideal for finding keeda ghaas, our searches went unrewarded."

" ... These huge blocks of granite are as big as pilgrim buses parked amidst natural plantings of juniper, primulas, gentians and marsh marigolds. From a distance the giant rocks look as if they have recently broken off the mountain, but once I reach the spot, it is obvious that they were dragged here by an extinct glacier that melted long ago after exerting its natural engineering on the landscape.

"The boulders are of different colours: beige and grey, dull green and red, flecked with silver and yellow. Veins of gneiss running through the rock look like seams of crystalized treacle. One of the boulders has a crack down the middle through which I can see the waterfall beyond our camp framed within the fissure. Everywhere is evidence of erosion, water’s corrosive touch—its freezing and melting, its constant flow. Even the gentle moisture on the breeze, over centuries, can mould the hardest surfaces as if they were malleable clay.

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"Only a few birds appear, a dark blue whistling thrush like those that frequent our garden at Oakville, a white-capped redstart, flaring his tail to show off the russet rump that gives him his name. A couple of monal pheasant sail out of the rhododendrons higher up, while a flock of snow pigeons keep their distance from me. Whenever they take to the air, their wings are like grey and white prayer flags.

"I am looking for bharal and finally spot them on a snowfield higher up along the western rim of the valley. In early summer, before the goatherds and their flocks arrive, these wild sheep have the new grass to themselves. For an hour I watch them graze above me, more than thirty animals altogether, both ewes and rams. Eventually they drift toward a south-facing pasture 400 metres from our tents. The wind carries my scent in the direction of the herd and they seem wary but allow me to stalk them."

"By our third day at base camp, the bharal had grown so used to us that they wandered in amongst our tents just like the peaceable herds that Shipton and Tilman described in the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, back in the 1930s."

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"REFLECTIONS ON A LAKE 

"Preparing for our expedition to Bandarpunch, I took several shorter treks, including a four-day hike to Dodital and Darwa Pass. ... "

"Instead of walking all the way from Mussoorie, as others did in earlier days, I was able to drive to Uttarkashi and on to Sangam Chatti, where two branches of the Assi Ganga flow together. The year before, catastrophic floods had ravaged the valley, and it was barely recognizable from earlier visits. Buildings and bridges were washed away, as well as most of a hydro-electric project being built below Sangam Chatti. Accompanying me on this trek was my nephew, Aaron, his friend Maura, and Suman, whose home is the village of Agora, below Dodital. Over the past few seasons, Aaron and Suman have been taking anglers trout fishing on the Assi Ganga, until last year’s flood washed most of the fish away. This year, they had been given permission by the forest department to begin restocking the Assi Ganga with trout from Dodital.

"Though the lake has become a popular tourist destination, we went up ahead of the crowds, in mid-April, before the route opened for mules and trekkers. It remains one of the most beautiful walks in Garhwal, a steady climb through forests of oak and rhododendron, with showy red flowers covering their branches and littering the path. ... "

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"Brown trout are not a native species of the Himalayas. Salmo trutta were brought to Garhwal from Scotland a century ago. Aaron has researched their genealogy and DNA testing traces the fish back to Loch Leven, one of the primary sources of trout for stocking throughout the British Empire. Though forest department records confirm brown trout have been swimming in these waters for a century or more, the exact process by which they arrived is still unclear. Whether eggs or fingerlings were carried by ship to India, a journey of several months, including the slow riverboat passage up the Ganga, and then transported by mules or porters into these mountains, it is hard to imagine how the translocation of this species was accomplished. One theory is that brown trout were brought here by the Himalayan entrepreneur and adventurer, Frederick ‘Pahari’ Wilson. After deserting the East India Company army, he supported himself by hunting musk deer in Garhwal and later cut a deal with the Maharaja of Tehri to fell timber in these mountains and float it down the Ganga. He is also credited with building the first bridge across the Bhairon Ghatti Gorge so that pilgrims could reach Gangotri (after paying him toll). Wilson spent part of the year in Mussoorie, where he acquired several properties by extending mortgages to British officers and then foreclosing on their loans. Kipling modelled his title character in ‘The Man Who Would be King’, on Pahari Wilson. It seems likely that the trout in Dodital and rivers downstream may have been brought here from Scotland by this imperial renegade, considered ‘beyond the pale’ of colonial society, because he married not just one, but two Garhwali women."

What other evidence does anyone need of the British and European caste system, far more rigid than anything of India? 

This man who caused major environmental damage that only snowballed as time went by, and robbed not only India but British too, was branded only for adapting to the land they colonised, in marrying locally - instead of ordering a British bride, or picking one from the shiploads that arrived on each boat, tells quite enough about British caste system!

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" ... The north side of the Darwa Pass was covered in snow and, there above me stood the two summits of Bandarpunch. Though only a few kilometres away as the crow flies, they looked higher and more distant than I had imagined. Still breathing hard from the climb, I dropped my pack in the snow and stood near the spot where my father rested in 1948, two years before Tenzing put his footprints on the summit. 

"Already, the clouds were closing in leaving the peak visible just long enough for me to take a couple of photographs. Within a quarter of an hour, the mountain was gone. Staring into the white vacuum, I wondered if I would ever reach the top."

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"FEAR OF FALLING

"My optimism quickly wanes as we begin the second load ferry to advance base camp. I find myself struggling up grass slopes that the bharal climbed with such obvious ease. In the end, I reach ABC, though the last 50 metres are even worse than the near vertical ascent below. Titu has warned me that this final section requires a fixed rope and, when I see it, I understand what he means. A snow chute rises from an angle of 60 degrees to almost 80, where it passes through a chimney in the rocks. For experienced mountaineers, this minor hurdle wouldn’t appear particularly difficult, but for someone like me, who has never clipped on a karabiner or crampons, it seems absurdly steep and treacherous, particularly since there is a drop of several hundred metres below.

"The others have a higher opinion of my climbing skills than I do. Phurbu has fixed a rope, which trickles down the ice, looking more like a fragile spider’s thread than something I would entrust with my weight. Nevertheless, up I go without a harness or jumar, grabbing the lifeline with my left hand and kicking into the frozen slope. Even in the polarized vision of my glacier glasses, the snow is blindingly white. At points it feels as if I am climbing a blank wall without any handholds, a vacant surface as empty as the air behind my back.

"At the top, I flounder over a crumbling lip of icy shale, like an exhausted trout flopping on to land, every ounce of resistance spent in a desperate struggle to survive. Only after ten minutes of gasping for air and lying still, can I appreciate where I am. Advance base camp lies a thousand metres above base camp, at roughly 4,500 metres above sea level. It is a broad balcony of rock and snow pitching down to a precipice that falls away to the southeast. Through the middle runs a stream of melt-water edged with mud. The only splashes of colour are purple primulas growing out of the frost-singed grass. I can see where tent platforms were excavated for earlier expeditions. Rusty tin cans and other refuse lie about, as well as the remains of fires where garbage has been burned. Unlike base camp, ABC is a precarious perch without any protection from the wind, though Phurbu assures me it is safe from rockfalls and avalanches. We stay for an hour and stow our gear under a blue tarpaulin, held in place with heavy stones.

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"The descent is worrying me, for I know that going down will be as much of an ordeal as coming up. Suddenly, mountaineering has lost its appeal—the physical risks involved and the cumbersome choreography of hauling equipment and supplies, the tedious process of moving from one camp to the next—taking two steps forward and one step back. While popular imagination, including my own, has always celebrated the heroics of solo alpinists and summit parties locked in an eternal battle of man versus mountain, the truth is that most major ascents, even alpine style, involve a complex system of logistics and support. Far from being a primitive, ascetic pursuit, mountaineering is a thoroughly modern enterprise that owes more to the industrial age than any primal passion."

" ... Overcoming the obvious limitations of our bodies isn’t easy, whether it be extreme temperatures that freeze our fingers or a shifting centre of gravity that is constantly being adjusted according to the line of ascent. ... "

"All of these thoughts and anxieties pass through my mind as I dig my heels into the snow and lower myself down the chute. This time I face outward, staring at the consequences of a fall. While we pick our way to the bottom, I keep worrying about the others as well as myself. Titu comes down the snow chute without holding the rope. Kamal Singh seems unaware of the drop below his feet, as he leaps from one rock to the next. Phurbu and Tenzing shadow me at the steepest points, placing their bodies between me and the drop, though one misstep would send the three of us cartwheeling down the ridge. I am putting myself at risk, but also the other members of our team. While I keep telling myself to focus on not being a liability rather than achieving heroic stunts, there is also a nagging fear that I am responsible for the lives and limbs of those who accompany me. Climbing Bandarpunch, no matter how grand a goal it might seem, is a selfish objective, a personal indulgence that puts everyone at risk."

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"BURNT OFFERINGS 

"This morning, before breakfast, Phurbu begins building a cairn of ten large rocks placed one on top of the other. The uppermost stone is tapered like an arrow, pointing toward the mountains. In front of this, he constructs a small stone altar, where he stacks a pile of dry twigs collected from around our camp. The shape of the cairn is similar to a Tibetan chorten, a tiered spire that also serves as an emblem of the peak we hope to climb. 

"Once Phurbu is ready, he calls us together for a pooja. Soop Singh has brought a tray on which are placed a husked coconut, an apple and a pomegranate, along with cashew nuts and raisins. Each of the men has decorated the cairn with wildflowers—yellow buttercups, saffron potentilla and white anemones. The fire is lit with birch bark tinder and white smoke begins to billow up in loose strands, braiding itself around the cairn.

"Phurbu settles himself in front of the altar. He props up a pocketsized triptych of Buddhist deities, at the centre of which is a photograph of the Dalai Lama. Opening a well-thumbed prayer book, he begins chanting softly in a low voice, as steady and muffled as the stream that flows nearby. I sit beside him, listening and watching without comprehension and yet in complete awareness of the purpose of this ritual. We celebrate a simple harmony of elements—earth and fire, water and air—the stones, the flames, the burbling stream and the clean, white smoke that makes the wind visible. During the ceremony, each member of the team assumes an attitude of devotion, though there is no formality. Some sit, some stand, one or two fold their hands. From time to time, Phurbu gets up and adjusts the burning twigs without interrupting his throaty incantations. I can see that others are praying too, lips moving silently in several languages."

Again, one notices - Alter isn't abusive of Buddhist rituals, while he won't let an opportunity to abuse Hinduism go waste, but indulges in copious verbal stone-pelting, as if afraid he'd be burnt at stake by his ancestors too, if he held back. The only exception is the title, here. 

"Eventually, Phurbu gestures to Soop Singh and directs him to take out coals with a ladle and put them on a flat stone directly in front of the cairn. Then a sprig of juniper is placed on top and it begins to smoulder. Each of us is called forward and we place more juniper on the fire. The smoke has a sweet, resinous fragrance, the purest incense in the world. Closing my eyes, I feel its warmth caress my face. Phurbu sprinkles tsampa flour and kernels of rice on the flames. He gives us each a pinch of tsampa, which we throw together on to the burning altar. Some of the nuts and other offerings consigned to the fire are wrapped in birch bark. Finally, Phurbu takes a cup of water from the stream and uses a juniper sprig to sprinkle water on the altar. With the same sprig, he anoints each of us, after which we are given water in our palms to drink. Soop Singh distributes prasad, blessed fruit and nuts as well as halwa. The entire ritual takes twenty minutes, though the burnt offerings and juniper keep smouldering for most of the morning. At the end, in deference to Hanuman’s presence on Bandarpunch, everyone shouts ‘Jai Bajrang Bali!’"

Very like a routine Havan - or more properly pronounced, Havana (every a short, all equal) - of India, of far older than Vedic era onwards right upto current times, except for the materials used. 

One could say Yajna, but that's more serious; an Havan or a Havana is more of a routine ritual, comparatively. 

"The rituals are comforting, intended to give us confidence to face the mountain. Today, again, is a rest day, our final acclimatization before we move on up towards the summit. ... "

"The altitude hasn’t bothered me so far, but lying down and reading, I begin to feel breathless. As soon as I get up and walk around, the feeling passes and I wonder if it’s nothing more than anxiety. The snow chute still worries me, a recurring fear of falling that I can’t shake out of my head. ... "

Sounds more like altitude induced pulmonary edema. 

................................................................................................

"CLOUDED DREAMS 

"During the early hours of the morning, well before dawn, I wake up suddenly out of a terrifying dream in which I am falling. Still half-asleep, I sit up in my sleeping bag, feeling as if the earth has dropped away beneath me. In this nightmare, which seems so real it leaves me breathless, I lose my footing on the ice and skid towards the drop below, picking up speed while dragging others with me on a rope. Before we hit the rocks, my eyes open abruptly in the darkness, a hollow, hopeless feeling in my chest. The rain has stopped and the night is black and silent. I know that I am in my tent yet the immediacy of the dream sharpens my anxieties. Wrapping both arms about my knees, I tremble with fear. 

"After several minutes I am also shivering from the cold. As dawn approaches, temperatures plunge. Rolling back into my sleeping bag, I know I am alive and secure, though a lingering uneasiness keeps me awake. Lying there, I wonder why I am doing this. There is nothing to prove. Already, this expedition has cost me more than my last ten treks combined but the money doesn’t matter, even if I can’t afford it. Bandarpunch has personal associations and a sentimental link with my father, but I never intended climbing this mountain as a tribute to his memory. Tucked in my journal is an old black-and-white photograph of Dad but I have already decided not to leave it on the mountain. The gesture seems contrived. It is better to leave nothing behind. Maybe it is better not to go at all. I remember my father’s voice during our last phone call, telling me to be careful. Don’t take any chances. His warning, broken up by static, echoes inside my inner ear.

................................................................................................

"By the time the meniscus of my tent has brightened to the point where I can see my hands, I have made up my mind to listen to my fears and head back home. Already I am calculating the journey back. ... I begin to gather together my things. By the time Kamal Singh brings me a mug of tea, I am packed and ready to leave. Despite the fact that twenty-five people have walked up here with me, I’m quitting; despite the fact that the Indian Mountaineering Foundation has gone through innumerable bureaucratic contortions to make this possible; despite the fact that the Chief Wildlife Warden of Uttarakhand has finally signed our papers. All of this means nothing at this moment. I am completely content in my cowardice, happy at the thought that never again will I have to climb that treacherous chute of snow, or the pathways of ice that lie beyond.

"Last time I had no choice but to leave our expedition early because my father was dying. Now it is my decision alone, my failure, my inadequacy. A while later, when I explain my fears to Kunzang, he tries to persuade me to change my mind. I assure him that I will cover the cost of the climb and honour the agreement I have made with his employers. But he seems less worried about that than other consequences. ‘I think we shouldn’t have taken a rest day yesterday,’ he says. Maybe he’s right. Twenty-four hours of sitting around, worrying about the dangers ahead, has made me lose my nerve.

"Phurbu joins us, solemn-faced, as if his prayers and rituals have been called into question. The cairn he built still points toward the mountain, though the fire has burned out. He tells me that he believes I can make it to the summit. ‘You are fit and healthy. We will help you get to the top. We have a strong team. It’s not so difficult as it seems and we will take no risks.’ His eyes are full of honesty and concern but I shake my head. By this time, I’m conscious of the absurdity of my fears and the confusion I am causing. I try to reassure Kunzang and Phurbu that it has nothing to do with the team.

................................................................................................

"The morning brightens, though heavy layers of cumulous surround the upper ridges. My nightmare has faded. Yet, a part of me is already on my way home, tracing a path down the opposite side of the valley, to avoid the snow bridge that has washed away. 

"Finally, after the others have talked among themselves, Nandan comes to my tent. He speaks with formality, assuming his role as Liaison Officer. If I am turning around, he says, then everyone must go back. He reminds me that I am the leader of this expedition and his duty is to stay with me. Nobody can climb the mountain once I retreat. 

"As he speaks, I realize that my fears and doubts will destroy any chance the others have of climbing Bandarpunch. Just as it was a selfish decision to undertake this expedition in the first place, so will it be an act of placing my own anxieties before the aspirations of the team, even if I am a client paying them to help me get to the top. My weakness threatens their success."

................................................................................................

"ABC

"With tents set up, advance base camp is more hospitable than my first impressions allowed, though the slopes across from us keep shedding rocks, which sound like firing squads. Volleys of boulders cannonade down the cliffs. ... Looking down from the ledge behind my tent, I can see base camp a thousand metres below, but soon the clouds come spilling into the valley and fill it up with a dense white tide. It is almost as if ancient glaciers have returned to cover the valleys, a broad expanse of white that looks perfectly solid, though I know beneath those clouds it must be raining steadily. Above the storm, we can see other mountains, like islands separated by estuaries of emptiness. Beyond the ragged summits of the Gangotri Group, I recognize the sharp profiles of the Bhagirathi peaks overlooking Gaumukh. Shivling isn’t visible but amidst layers of clouds, contours are precisely outlined, creating a depth of field that delineates distances. To the human eye, light shapes the mountains in an instant, just as water does over time.

"Compromising with my fears, I have told the team that I will come up to ABC with them and we will send a group ahead to explore the route, after which I will make up my mind to proceed or not. My second ascent up the grassy cliffs and snow chute was no easier than before but I am relieved to be here. After a lunch of khichdi, Phurbu and Titu set off with a load of equipment to investigate what lies ahead, while Tenzing stays back to give me a climbing lesson in using crampons, jumar and descender. He fixes a couple of ropes on an ice field above our camp, before showing me how to get into my harness. I wear Koflach climbing boots, a livid lime green colour, stiff and awkward. Though I was taught all this two years ago, I have forgotten the knots and the sequence of clipping and unclipping.

"The difference between trekking and mountaineering is like the difference between snorkelling and scuba diving. With my boots and crampons there is a secure attachment to the ice, though they feel as unnatural as walking with flippers on a beach. The harness grabs me around the thighs and is cinched at my waist. Tenzing knots a nylon strap that extends from my navel to my chin like an umbilical cord to which a jumar is attached. This simple mechanism allows me to move up a rope but stops me from sliding down.

................................................................................................

"Trying to reassure me, Tenzing says that this is how clients go up Everest on fixed ropes. His father has been to the summit five times ‘by five different routes,’ he tells me. Tenzing is the youngest in our group, though Nandan and Titu are about his age, all of them younger than my own children. This lesson in mountaineering is as much an effort to persuade me to keep going as it is a training exercise. Though I haven’t agreed to attempt the summit, the others have made it their mission to get me to the top. Tenzing’s solicitous lessons give me confidence. Soon I am going up and down 30 metres of ice, clipping on karabiners and using the jumar. This is certainly better, I tell myself, than grabbing at a loose rope with one hand, while kicking at a frozen slope. I feel brave enough to lean back against the descender and rappel down the incline. The only point at which I feel uneasy is when my crampons scrape the rocks beneath the ice, losing traction for a moment or two. I remember Gurdial’s comment about climbing being nothing more than learning how to tie a few knots and putting on crampons.

"All of the signs today have been auspicious. Soon after we reached ABC, shafts of light broke through the clouds and a circular rainbow appeared above us. This perfect ring of light seems ethereal, encircling the sun with a faint halo of colours like an omen from heaven. Each person in our party offers a different interpretation. Some say the rainbow signals fair weather for the next few days. Others believe it means that temperatures will drop tonight, but everyone agrees it signifies good luck.

................................................................................................

"When Phurbu and Titu return, they seem confident that tomorrow we can reach our summit camp. From what they’ve seen so far, the glacier has shifted but the ice cliffs appear passable. Phurbu sketches out a map on his palm, showing me how we will negotiate our way up the ice. His index finger traces a path along his lifeline, as if circling a crevasse. Aware of my uncertainties, he explains that most of the route is easy, without any serious obstacles. I won’t need crampons most of the way. Because of the clouds, they were unable to explore beyond the ice cliff, but I remember photographs of the summit camp taken on our previous expedition. These showed a broad expanse of level snow, as flat and wide as a dozen football fields. When I ask Titu, he confirms that the campsite is completely flat and from there it is more a matter of walking than climbing. Compared to the exposed ledge on which we are camped and the ascent from base camp, it seems easy going from here on up, though I remind myself to be realistic. We are above 4,500 metres, which means we still have more than 1,500 metres to ascend. From behind my tent, I can see the snout of the glacier to the right. It is broken up into huge slabs of blue and grey ice, like shattered glass, though I imagine farther on, where it winds its way around the summit cone of Bandarpunch, it is like a frozen river, easily navigable on foot.

"The pendulum of emotions on this trip has been extreme, taking me from hours of fear and depression to moments like this when our objective seems simple and well within my reach. Our plan is to set off in the morning tomorrow and camp by midday, after which we’ll rest for ten or twelve hours. The final push to the top of Bandarpunch will begin soon after midnight, so that we can get there by dawn. Within the next thirty-six hours it will all be over. Settling into my tent after dinner, I am relieved that the others persuaded me to keep going and happily embarrassed by my earlier misgivings. Their optimism has infected me with a sense of exhilaration and I fall asleep to images of myself walking across a placid moonscape of snow and ice, my headlamp casting a silvery glow, roped securely between two others, confidently advancing toward the summit.

"Tom Longstaff, one of the Himalayan pioneers, wrote in his memoir, This My Voyage: ‘To know a mountain, you must sleep upon it.’"

................................................................................................

"GATHERING STORM

"Several hours later, thunder rouses me from a dreamless slumber. I am confused at first because the sound comes from below us in the valleys and then above, beyond the reef of ice that we must cross tomorrow. Flashes of lightning illuminate the struts of my tent and heavy rain begins to fall before dawn.

"We have no access to weather reports and our group isn’t carrying a satellite phone, which the Government of India does not permit, fearing espionage or terrorist plots in the Himalayas. Our mobile phones stopped receiving signals after we crossed the pass above Sukhi. There is no way to tell if this rain is the beginning of the monsoon or just a passing squall. When I unzip the flap on my tent and peer outside, the clouds are as thick as matted wool and my headlamp barely penetrates the gloom. Whatever cheery predictions we made yesterday, based on a rainbow encompassing the sun, have been disproved. Just as I am about to zip shut the tent, something dashes through the mist, silent as a ghost, a sooty figure on four legs. The bharal are here to visit us, scavenging for salt and kitchen scraps. A young ram with stubby horns floats out of the mist, his wet fleece bedraggled, but shining eyes fixed on me, as if I am the interloper. Seconds later he flees the camp, followed by a dozen others. The bharal seem to leap away into nothingness, plummeting headlong down the cliffs.

................................................................................................

"Sheets of rain wash over my tent, which tugs at its ropes as the wind tries to uproot us. The lightning has ended but there is distant thunder from all sides, as if the mountains were shuddering at their foundations. I can hear rockfalls too, dislodged by the rain. Even if I were to try counting wild sheep, it wouldn’t send me back to sleep.

"Two hours later, Phurbu confirms what I already know. We will have to wait another day because of the storm. For some reason, it doesn’t worry me anymore and I am content to lie here within my dry cocoon. I could be anywhere on earth. The Himalayas have vanished in the clouds and this rocky patch of soil beneath my air mattress could just as easily be the prow of an ancient continent drifting toward another. Aeons tick away instead of seconds. It doesn’t matter how long we wait. The mountain will always be there.

"Hours later I sense that the wind has changed direction and the downpour eases. All of us emerge and gather for tea as clouds swirl about, taunting us with vaporous fingers. Gradually, it seems to be clearing and Phurbu decides that he will take more equipment up to the glacier and try to fix a rope on the ice cliff below our summit camp. This will save us time tomorrow, he explains. What he doesn’t say is that the monsoon has arrived and we will soon be locked into a cycle of storms that offer only brief windows in which to climb.

................................................................................................

"Kunzang and Tenzing decide to go with him, along with Titu and Nandan. They ask, half-heartedly, if I would like to join them, but I can tell that I will be an impediment from here on up. I’ll wait until the ropes are fixed. They set off slowly up the slope, a string of figures that grow smaller and are hidden for awhile amongst the rocks, then reappear on a snowfield higher up. Folds of mist converge around them. They look as if they are walking on the clouds, before they vanish altogether.

"Sitting with Soop Singh and Dhan Singh by a kerosene stove, we boil water to make tea and eventually prepare a simple lunch. Gokul is unusually silent and lets the others speak. Dhan Singh tells me that he comes from Loharkhet, the roadhead for the trek to Pindari Glacier, where I’ve been many years ago. He nods and smiles as I try to recall the stages of that trek—the forest rest houses at Dhakuri and Phurkiya, where we camped as a family in 1976. Dhan Singh corrects my memories of the trek and tells me there is a new route now, from a village called Khatti. ‘You can reach the glacier in just two days,’ he says. Soop Singh confirms this, telling me he’s done the Pindari Glacier trek with several groups. His village is located in the same district, Bageshwar, but on the other side of the valley, toward Almora and Ranikhet. I ask if there are any tea estates nearby but he shakes his head and says only apple orchards, though the crop is disappointing. Like their fathers and grandfathers before them, Dhan Singh and Soop Singh have no choice but to find work away from their families and villages in Kumaon. Even a hundred years ago, harsh conditions in this region forced men to leave their homes and join the army or seek employment in the plains. Being high-altitude porters and camp staff is an uncertain business but whenever there is work, it pays relatively well. I ask if they enjoy their work and both men smile and shrug, as if to say, It’s a job, nothing more or less.

................................................................................................

"When the others don’t return, I begin to worry, though Dhan Singh laughs when I suggest they might be in trouble. We wait until three o’clock to eat lunch, but still there is no sign of them. Whenever the clouds part, I study the snowfield where I saw them last, waiting for our team to reappear. Finally, around five, I spot a figure coming down alone. Minutes later, two more men appear and within half an hour everyone is back in camp. Tenzing is the first to arrive. Before I can ask him how it went, he makes a gesture of frustration, throwing up both hands and waving in the direction of base camp. 

"‘All of us will have to go back,’ he says. ‘There’s no way up!’

"Drinking hot lemon squash to revive themselves, they describe how they crossed the lower end of the glacier without any trouble, then fixed ropes on the ice cliff and started up. But instead of finding open fields of snow where Titu and the others set up camp two years ago, more ice cliffs and crevasses blocked their route, some of them 5 or 6 metres wide. What used to be a featureless plateau of ice is now a fractured snowscape, impossible to cross without the right equipment. The glacier has broken up. ‘We would need ladders and much more rope,’ Kunzang tells me. ‘And ten more days, even if the weather clears.’ Titu and Tenzing have taken photographs, which they show me, gnarled palisades of seracs and broad lesions in the ice, where bergschrunds have separated from the slope. ‘To climb down one side and up the other would take all day…very technical and dangerous,’ says Phurbu, in case I have any illusions of arguing with him. For a brief moment, I wonder if they are exaggerating the risk to give me some sense of consolation before we turn back, but their exhausted faces do not suggest anything other than the truth. We have no choice but to abandon our attempt on Bandarpunch."

................................................................................................

"CONSOLATION

" ... Fulfilment comes from knowing that correct decisions have been made and whatever we have attempted has been undertaken to the best of our abilities. ... "

" ... Kamal Singh and Dhan Singh decide to take a shortcut down a snow field, still hoping to find keeda ghaas. They plan to slide their heavy packs in front of them. But before they can accomplish this, both men slip and the rest of us watch them tumbling and sliding down the ice, along with duffle bags and empty jerry cans—a comical re-enactment of my nightmare. They slide a hundred metres or more but both men land safely in a heap at the edge of a stream."

................................................................................................

"DEPARTURE 

"On our last evening at base camp, we have a feast. Phurbu and Tenzing make momos and thukpa while Gokul bakes a cake, frosting it with the message, ‘See you again, Steve.’ Next morning, three of us leave—Titu, Soop Singh and myself. We will go ahead and contact the porters, who are expecting us to return next week. As we say farewell after breakfast, Phurbu presents me with a white scarf, placing it around my neck. Email addresses and mobile phone numbers are exchanged, though none of these have any relevance here. After two weeks together, we embrace and part, promising to meet again in Mussoorie or Delhi."

"Our journey is almost over, yet none of us could have predicted what happens next."

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"FLOODED MOUNTAINS 

"Within twenty-four hours the rain becomes a torrential monsoon storm that lasts for three days and three nights without cessation, dumping four times the normal rainfall, almost 400 mm of precipitation every twenty-four hours, setting records for the month of June. Rivers rise more than 15 metres, gouging out long sections of the road. A huge reservoir in the sky has burst its banks, inundating the Central Himalayas in a sudden onslaught of moisture. Homes collapse and fields are washed away. Villagers flee to higher ground, only to find the ridges above them sinking into the valleys. Hotels built along the banks of the Ganga are torn from their moorings and swallowed by the flood. Statues of Hindu gods made out of reinforced concrete are swept away in the relentless current. Billboards fall like playing cards and whole sections of riverside towns disappear into the Ganga. For some it must seem like the end of the world. Others never know what hit them, killed instantly beneath mud slides or drowned in their sleep. ... Roofs collapse, walls implode and foundations drop away into whirlpools. Ninety-three bridges, some of which have stood for more than a century, are consumed by the rivers they span. Water rises so high that pylons on either side are ripped free from the rocks. Buses and cars are carried away in the flood, tossed about as lightly as flotsam. Power lines and telephone cables snap and communication towers fall. Trees are torn from the earth and whole sections of the mountains slough off, avalanches of earth and forest."

"Unaware of what is coming, Titu and I hire a jeep from Sukhi and drive downriver through heavy rain for most of the night, escaping only a few hours ahead of the flood. By the time we reach Mussoorie, much of the Bhagirathi Valley is cut off. If we had continued with our attempt on Bandarpunch, we would have been stuck on the mountain in the storm. Suddenly, our expedition and adventure becomes meaningless, set against the cataclysm of the flood. All of the four main sources of the Ganga and their temples, visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year, have become totally inaccessible. The worst damage is at Kedarnath, where a glacial lake bursts several kilometres above the temple, sending a deadly slurry of mud and rock streaming into the heart of the pilgrim complex, burying resthouses where yatris lay asleep, filling rooms to the ceiling with dirt and debris. The main temple, made of stone, remains undamaged, though all around it every other structure is flattened.

................................................................................................

"Four days go by before I am able to contact our team. When I finally get through to Nandan’s mobile phone, he reports that they have been able to reach Sukhi but are now stranded, along with thousands of pilgrims who have been visiting the Gangotri shrines. Every day the newspapers and television carry more and more disturbing stories of settlements vanishing and walls of water carrying away everything in their path. Rescue operations begin. The army and air force are called in to carry food and water to the region, while bringing out the elderly and injured. Helicopters fly back and forth but the huge number of people makes it an impossible task, especially with the rain still falling. Corpses are buried under mudslides or washed down into the rivers. Nobody knows for sure what the death toll might be but estimates rise quickly into the tens of thousands. 

"Finally, twelve days after abandoning our attempt on Bandarpunch, we get word that Kunzang and the rest of the team have reached Delhi. While stranded, they assisted with the rescue operations, using their ropes and mountaineering equipment to help yatris negotiate the hazardous route out. Eventually, after walking to Uttarkashi, they were able to get transport home. Gokul calls me the day after they escape. It is a relief to hear his voice and familiar laugh. When I ask if they are all okay, he says, ‘Of course! Why were you worried about us?’"

................................................................................................

"INVOKING TRAGEDY 

"The devastation in Uttarakhand was headlined as a ‘Himalayan Tsunami’ by journalists and politicians hard-pressed to describe the scale of destruction. The comparison is not far-fetched, for huge waves of water poured down the valleys. Narrow gorges added to the velocity and force of the current, which had nowhere else to go. Though the violent storms took everyone by surprise, there was nothing new about these floods. Only last year, the Assi Ganga overflowed and washed out sections of Uttarkashi. Similar catastrophes have occurred in the past. In 1978, a landslide near Gangnani blocked the river for a couple of days before it burst and swept away parts of the towns and settlements downstream. Hundreds died and survivors were said to be picking fish out of trees as if they were fruit. In 1880, Pahari Wilson, who built his palatial home in Harsil and floated deodar logs down the Ganga, was rumoured to have drowned in a similar flash flood on the Bhagirathi. Presumed dead, his obituaries appeared in the papers. A week later, however, Wilson came sauntering down the Mall Road in Mussoorie, just as his two wives had gone into mourning."

" ... In hindsight, a great deal might have been done to limit the damage and suffering, but the flood itself was as inevitable as earthquakes, a violent process of erosion that has, over countless epochs, created these valleys and sculpted the mountains.

"Of course, none of this mitigates the loss of life and property that occurred during the 2013 Uttarakhand floods, but as I read or listened to news reports and heard helicopters flying over our house in Mussoorie, I couldn’t help but think of the bones at Roopkund. Five hundred years ago, an anonymous party of pilgrims died in the Himalayas, seeking a path to god. Since then, many others have lost their lives, including victims of altitude sickness at Mount Kailash, their spiritual quest ending in physical anguish and mortal finality. ... "

Alter expounds on mistakes here, but doesn't compare the disaster with say, houses on California coastal areas being brought down due to landslides. 

................................................................................................

"REACHING FOR CLOSURE 

" ... It is late September once again. Bar-headed geese will soon begin crossing the Himalayas southward, retracing the flyways above Flag Hill, their soft honking like plaintive voices, almost human."

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October 09, 2022 - October 10, 2022. 

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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"Many people assisted me in completing the journeys I have described. In addition to those who are mentioned in the book, I would like to thank Rabi Thapa of Sacred Summits, Sunil Kainthola of Mountain Shepherds, Chewang Motup and Yangdu Goba of Rimo Expeditions and Krishnan Kutty, director of the Hanifl Centre for Outdoor Education and Environmental Study at Woodstock School. Winterline Foundation has generously supported the Mussoorie Writers’ Mountain Festival, which has allowed me to explore the Himalayas through the words and images of many remarkable writers, mountaineers and artists. Subhadra Sengupta sent me Indra’s advice to Rohita, for which I am grateful. Special thanks to Shibani Alter, our daughter, who is my technical advisor on all things digital and to Jayant Alter, our son, who helped outfit my expeditions with the latest and lightest gear. I am grateful to Jill Grinberg, my literary agent, who encouraged me on this project from the beginning. Many thanks to Cal Barksdale, executive editor at Arcade and David Davidar, publisher of Aleph.

"A condensed version of the chapter ‘Recovering Memory’ appeared in Outlook magazine in 2009. 

"Permission to quote from the following sources is gratefully acknowledged.

"• Blackberry Books for the poem by Nanao Sakaki from How to Live on Planet Earth: Collected Poems(2013). 

"• ‘View from a Train’ by Stephen Spender from New Collected Poems published by Faber & Faber, 2004. Reprinted by kind permission of the Estate of Stephen Spender.

"• Mamang Dai for her poem ‘Voice of the Mountain’ from The Balm of Time."

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October 16, 2022 - October 17, 2022. 

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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"Aitken, Bill. The Nanda Devi Affair. Delhi: Penguin Books. 1994. 

"Atkinson, E.T. The Himalayan Gazetteer. Delhi: Cosmo Publications. 1973 (First ed. 1886) 

"Avedon, John. In Exile from the Land of Snows. New York: Vintage. 1986. 

"Chatwin, Bruce. The Songlines. London: Vintage. 1998. 

"Dai, Mamang. ‘The Voice of the Mountain’. India International Centre Quarterly. Vol. No. 2/3. 2005. 

"Eck, Diana L. Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. New York: Columbia University Press. 1996. 

"Ehrlich, Gretel. Questions of Heaven. Boston: Beacon Press. 1997. 

"——.The Solace of Open Spaces. New York: Penguin Books. 1986. 

"Fleming, Robert L. Jr., Dorje Tsering and Liu Wulin. Across The Tibetan Plateau: Ecosystems, Wildlife, and Conservation. New York: W.W. Norton and Future Generations. 2007. 

"Govinda, Lama Anagarika. The Way of the White Clouds. New York: Overlook. 1966. 

"Hoagland, Edward. Walking the Dead Diamond River. New York: Lyons & Burford. 1993. 

"Kala, D.C. Frederick Wilson (‘Hulson Sahib’) of Garhwal. Delhi: Ravi Dayal Publisher. 2006. 

"Kalidasa. Kumarasambhava: The Birth of the War God. Trans. Ralph T.H. Griffith. London: W.H. Allen. 1853. 

"Keay, John. The Great Arc. London: Harper Collins. 2000. 

"Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Ballantine Books. 1987. (first published 1949)

"Lhalungpa, Lobsang P. The Life of Milarepa. Delhi: Book Faith India. 1997. 

"Lightman, Alan ‘Does God Exist?’ Salon. October 2011. ——.Mr g. New York: Pantheon Books. 2012. 

"Longstaff, Tom. This My Voyage. New York: Scribner’s. 1950. 

"Lopez, Barry. Arctic Dreams. New York: Bantam Books. 1996. 

"McDonald, Bernadette. Brotherhood of the Rope. Seattle: Mountaineers Books. 2007. 

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"——.‘Nilkanta, Garhwal Himalayas, 1949’, American Alpine Journal, 1956. pp. 75-80. 

"Von Essen, Carl. The Hunter’s Trance. Great Barrington: Lindisfarne Press. 2007. 

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"Whaley, Arthur. Trans. Edward Conze et al, Buddhist Texts Through the Ages. New York: Harper & Row. 1954."

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October 19, 2022 - October 19, 2022. 

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Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime 

by Stephen Alter (Author) 

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August 05, 2022 - August 05, 2022. 

October 05, 2022 - October 19, 2022. 

Purchased August 01, 2022. 

Publisher:- Aleph Book Company PVT Ltd 

(1 November 2014)

Language‏:- English

Format: Kindle Edition

Kindle Edition

ASIN:- B00SMDT4VI

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ALEPH BOOK COMPANY 

An independent publishing firm 

promoted by 

Rupa Publications India 

First published in India in 2014 

by Aleph Book Company 

7/16 Ansari Road, 

Daryaganj New Delhi 110 002 

Copyright © STEPHEN ALTER 2014

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4897469988

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