Iwas an under-employed Scottish poet hillwalker when I met a Himalayan mountaineer in a pub. Due to alcohol and a misunderstanding about the metaphorical nature of Poetry, Mal Duff asked me to join an attempt to climb the legendary 24,000ft Mustagh Tower in the Karakoram. By the time I admitted I had no climbing experience whatsoever and was scared of heights, it was too late. Those Scottish winters’ apprenticeships and following Himalayan expeditions re-shaped my writing life, outlook, and friendships. My books have been shortlisted three times for the Boardman-Tasker Award for outstanding mountaineering literature, for Summit Fever; Kingdoms of Experience (Everest the Unclimbed Ridge); Electric Brae.
Betty Stark was the aunt of a friend of mine, and she was part of the first all women Himalayan expedition in 1955. It is an antidote to the very all-male outlook and structures of many climbs of that time. It had no leader, no ‘lead climbers’. Instead, they were a small team of friends, all experienced and capable, who wished only to explore, encounter, and climb as high and hard as they could. It is anti-heroic, recording the pains, sufferings, and losses and highs, quietly downplaying and yet the efforts and dangers come through. They were outliers and trailblazers. They made their point. They were the point.
I first volunteered overseas as a teenager. Driven by an insatiable desire to change the world, I helped to found a rural development organisation, PHASE, but found myself confronted with and paralysed by the complexities of the aid world. So as not to become jaded, I since shifted my focus to tackle what I believe to be the root causes of injustice in the world through global education, including researching and writing Learning Service: The Essential Guide to Volunteering Abroad. I now mainly work as a consultant to improve the ethical practices of volunteer organisations.
A poignantly written memoir about a couple’s decision to volunteer in remote Nepal with their three young sons, one with a severe disability. Jane is a doctor and her husband is an engineer, and while they attempt to make a difference in the lives of the people they live and work amongst, they also strive to provide the best possible lives for their children. This includes baby David, whose alternative life is to be stocked up with medication and given daily blood tests in UK hospitals, as an ‘interesting medical case’.
A zoologist by training, Wilson-Howarth’s prose is wonderfully observant of the natural environment, and little David is bound to capture every reader’s heart.
Set against the backdrop of one of the most colourful countries in the world, A Glimpse of Eternal Snows is an inspiring story of courage, love and a family's determination to give their child the best life possible. In pulsating, polluted Kathmandu and an idyllic village at the foot of the Himalayas, 'Doctor Jane' and her engineer husband Simon hope to make a difference: Jane to fulfil her vision to heal and advocate for the poor, Simon to avert the floods that threaten to devastate the country every monsoon season. The Nepali people are accepting of whatever fate flings at…
I fell in love with the Himalayas in the 8th grade and vowed to go there one day. Eighteen years later I fell in love again, with a woman this time, who was living in Nepal. While living there I trekked extensively and read everything I could about the mountains, especially Everest. I thought it was odd that all the Everest books started in 1921, but the mountain was discovered in 1853. What took them so long? Hence my bookThe Hunt for Mount Everest.
If you’re a Himalayan enthusiast, this book is a must. Heck, even if you’re not yet an enthusiast, you will be after you start reading Fallen Giants. Its sweep is magnificent, its story-telling superb. You’d think this book would get repetitive, so many mountains and so many climbs, but you’d be wrong.
The story of the world's highest peaks and the remarkable people who have sought to climb them
The first successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa teammate Tenzing Norgay is a familiar saga, but less well known are the tales of many other adventurers who also came to test their skills and courage against the world's highest and most dangerous mountains. In this lively and generously illustrated book, historians Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver present the first comprehensive history of Himalayan mountaineering in fifty years. They offer detailed, original accounts of the most…
I embarked as a teenager on an overland journey from Europe to Nepal, and have made a career out of returning to the Himalaya as often as possible. My research and photographic expeditions to the mountains over the many decades have led me into some of the most exquisite landscapes and cultures on the planet. In all cases, I seek to combine the physical experiences with aesthetic and spiritual ones, and the books I tend to read about the region also move me in those directions.
Most of the books written about the Himalaya region are nonfiction. The author of this volume, a writer of Nepalese origin living in the USA, holds the gold-standard for fiction. His book is a collection of short stories set in contemporary Kathmandu that explores the tensions of modern life in a caste-bound traditional society. These are intimate, carefully-wrought, explorations into family, relationships, and the messy business of being an ordinary person in an extraordinary kind of place.
From “a major new talent” come short stories set in modern Nepal, about arranged marriages, forbidden desires, and the universal yearning for human connection (Amitav Ghosh).
Set in a city where gods are omnipresent, privacy is elusive, and family defines identity, these are stories of men and women caught between their own needs and the demands of their society and culture. Psychologically rich and astonishingly acute, with “a masterful narrative style” (Ian MacMillan), Arresting God in Kathmandu introduces a potent new voice in contemporary fiction.
“Upadhyay brings to readers the flavor of Nepal and its culture in this impressive collection…
I’ve always loved fairytales, whimsical stories, and mysteries. Plus, I’m passionate about mind-expanding, heart-opening books that offer me new ways to understand myself and the Universe we live in. And I particularly like books that show me ways to have more of what brings me joy and pleasure. When I can get all of this in a novel I’m in heaven.
I’m a crazy cat lover and a lover of all things mystical so this book makes my heart purr.
It’s about His Holiness the Dalia Lama rescuing a starving and pitiful kitten he finds on a street in New Delhi and takes to his home in the Himalayas. This is a very sweet and warmhearted story told from the cat's bird eye view as she spies on his meetings with Hollywood celebrities, VIPs, and philanthropists.
It’s a through-the-back-door crash course in Buddhism.
'In the months that followed I watched His Holiness working on a new book... I began to think that perhaps the time had come for me to turn my paws to a book of my own . . . one that tells my own tale . . . How I was rescued from a fate too grisly to contemplate, to become constant companion to a man who is not only one of the world's greatest spiritual leaders and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, but who is also a dab hand with the can opener.'
I started writing fiction and writing aboutfiction at about the same time. My novels and stories tend to be about solitary characters pulled into the maelstrom that is contemporary Indian urban life and trying to make sense of it. I’ve always believed that to be an effective observer of your society you need to stay in tune with what your peers are doing and the last two decades in which I’ve been writing and publishing have been some of the most exciting for Indian fiction in general.
This is a marvellous novel about an area in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas that is not far from where I grew up. It’s a story about people and nature, how the relationship is at once very elemental for those who live off the land, as well as very convoluted and destructive because it’s driven by greed, politics, and fear. The narrator is a visitor to the region, looking to solve a mystery from his past, and this device of the curious outsider looking in works really well to make the whole place come to life.
Description Shaken by the news of his mother’s death, a man leaves his job in Delhi and returns to Assam. Twenty-five years ago, his father, a forest officer here, was found shot dead in his jeep. With the passing of his mother, the man learns new and startling details of his father’s life, and trying to reclaim an entire life suddenly made unfamiliar, he starts digging into events from far back in time, visiting places where his father had served, in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas. But the forests he had once roamed as a boy with his father…
I always want to be where I am not. This was why I read sci-fi and fantasy as a child. This was why I left the country of my birth and became a professional nomad. This is why I am spellbound by mountains I will never climb and oceans I will never dive into. Imagination can take you everywhere. It took me to the academy, where speculative literature became my scholarly field, and to the publishing world, where I am now getting ready for the launch of my eighth novel. When you are at home nowhere, you are at home everywhere–including on the summits of impossible mountains.
I love ghost stories. But I am rather tired of old houses with creaky furniture. The strangest and most dangerous monsters lurk in the wilderness, in the remote and inaccessible corners of the natural world. And what is more remote and inaccessible than Kanchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world, located on the border between Nepal and India?
I have always admired those mountain climbers of the past who, with inadequate equipment and minimal knowledge, braved the unknown dangers of the heights. Paver’s beautifully written novel is a historical mystery and a ghost story at one, whose final twist is as vertiginous as the pinnacle of the sacred mountain.
Currently a journalist, author, and adventure traveller, I am a former inner-city educator from Vancouver, BC, Canada with a Masters of Environmental Education degree, a Wilderness Leadership certificate, and a post-graduate certificate in Journalism. Solo and with my husband I have completed several major treks in Europe, Tibet, and Nepal including Mount Kailash kora, Everest Base Camp north (Tibet), The Annapurna Circuit and Base Camp, Everest Base Camp south (Nepal), Upper Mustang, the Manaslu Circuit and Tsum Valley for a total of about 800 km. I am currently training to complete Nepal’s Great Himalayan Trail (low route), 1,500 km from one end of Nepal to the other.
Bruce’s story tells of travelling with his wife and two young sons from their home in British Columbia to the Himalayas where they ultimately spend several months in a remote Buddhist monastery in the Zanskar Valley. Privileged to meet the family mid-journey in Lhasa, I devoured the book when it came out. Epic courage and resilience are an understatement when speaking about this family. Their family connection, devotion to their sons and each other, and spirit of adventure amazed me. I learned a great deal about immersion in an extremely different culture and the mutual respect developed between the family and the resident monks of all ages.
A warm and unforgettable portrait of a family letting go of the known world to encounter an unfamiliar one filled with rich possibilities and new understandings.
Bruce Kirkby had fallen into a pattern of looking mindlessly at his phone for hours, flipping between emails and social media, ignoring his children and wife and everything alive in his world, when a thought struck him. This wasn't living; this wasn't him. This moment of clarity started a chain reaction which ended with a grand plan: he was going to take his wife and two young sons, jump on a freighter and head…
I fell in love with the Himalayas in the 8th grade and vowed to go there one day. Eighteen years later I fell in love again, with a woman this time, who was living in Nepal. While living there I trekked extensively and read everything I could about the mountains, especially Everest. I thought it was odd that all the Everest books started in 1921, but the mountain was discovered in 1853. What took them so long? Hence my bookThe Hunt for Mount Everest.
Annapurna is a classic: a classic book about a classic climb. Annapurna is only the 10th highest mountain in the world, but it is the most dangerous of all 14 of the giants, those peaks over 8,000 meters. It should not even have been attempted under the circumstances described in this book. But never mind: the odds were utterly against success. No worries on that front; the French—they were the ones trying—were never going to be the first to summit a giant. Only no one told them. (Craig Storti’s forthcoming book retells this classic tale.)
Top 100 Sports Books of All Time, Sports Illustrated "Those who have never seen the Himalayas, those who never care to risk an assault, will know when they finish this book that they have been a companion of greatness."-New York Times Book Review In 1950, when no mountain taller than 8,000 meters had ever been climbed, Maurice Herzog led an expedition of French climbers to the summit of an 8,075-meter (26,493-foot) Himalayan peak called Annapurna. But unlike other climbs, the routes up Annapurna had never been charted. Herzog and his team had to locate the mountain using crude maps, pick…
I was ten. Every Sunday morning, I sat in front of the TV with a notepad to take notes while watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. As a teen, I devoured every of Kafka’s books. The wonder of science and the strangeness of our existence have co-habited within me since then. Today, I’m a professional physicist and theoretical chemist. But I’m also a fiction writer. My fiction allows me to spill my science background into topics that wouldn’t be welcome in technical writing. For instance, wondering how life could re-emerge in the far future after all stars burned.
Hard science fiction, firmly based on scientific concepts, is a constant source of wonder. This classic collection—one of my first contacts with the genre maybe thirty-five years ago—is still one of my favorites!
Since Clarke wrote these stories in the 1950s and 60s, science, technology, and the world have changed dramatically. But his writing aged well. The moral despair of the protagonist of The Star when he uncovers the relationship between a supernova's remains and humanity's history is timeless. The warning, “There is always a last time for everything,” at the closing of the tale The Nine Billion Names of God, still rings prophetic.
The invention of computers was a godsend to the obscure monks deep in the Himalayas. Their centuries-long project to write out all of God's names could be sped up by thousands of years. And only they had any clue what would come next!