Himalaya

by Ruskin Bond

  ANDREW HARVEY is the founding director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective, and practical agents of institutional and systemic change, in order to create peace and sustainability. Some of his best-known works include The Way of Passion, The Celebration of Rumi, and Perfume of the Desert.

  SVEN HEDIN, geographer, explorer, photographer, and travel writer, was instrumental in making the Trans-Himalayan region known to the West. He also located the sources of the Indus, Sutlej, and Brahmaputra rivers.

  EDMUND HILLARY was born in New Zealand, and served in the New Zealand Air Force in the Second World War. He was a participant in the 1951 and 1952 Everest expeditions, and on May 29, 1953, he and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest. After being knighted following the ascent, he achieved many more adventuring firsts in surroundings as varied as the Antarctic and the Ganges. He established the Himalayan Trust, an organization devoted to improving the lives of the Himalayan people, which has built schools, hospitals, and infrastructure for the isolated mountain communities.

  JAHANGIR was the fourth emperor of the Mughal Empire who reigned from 1605 to 1627. His life and times are recorded in the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, known more popularly as the Jahangirnama.

  JINASENA was a Digambara Acharya in the eighth century. He is credited with writing several seminal texts of the Jain faith, including the Harivamsa Purana and the Mahapurana.

  HRIDAYESH JOSHI is Senior Editor, National Affairs, with NDTV India. He was one of the first journalists to report on the calamity in Uttarakhand. He reports often on natural disasters and environmental issues and has also extensively covered war-torn Bastar in Chhattisgarh.

  VICKI MACKENZIE is an author and journalist. After a long stint at various newspapers, in 1976, her focus shifted to Buddhist philosophy and to finding ways to make it accessible to the wider world. Her books include Reborn in the West: The Reincarnation Masters, Why Buddhism?: Westerners in Search of Wisdom, and Reincarnation: The Boy Lama.

  PETER MATTHIESSEN is the author of more than thirty books and the only writer to win the National Book Award for both non-fiction (The Snow Leopard, in two categories, in 1979 and 1980) and fiction (Shadow Country, in 2008). Matthiessen was also a co-founder of The Paris Review and a world-renowned naturalist, explorer, and activist.

  DOM MORAES was one of the foundational figures of modern Anglophone poetry in India. His first book of poems, A Beginning, was published when he was nineteen; it won him the prestigious Hawthornden Prize. He published ten more collections of poems over a period of nearly five decades, including the highly praised volumes John Nobody and Serendip, and culminating in the posthumous Collected Poems 1954-2004.

  KIRIN NARAYAN is a professor in the School of Culture, History, and Language at the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. Her books include Storytellers; Saints and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching; a novel, Love, Stars, and All That; My Family and Other Saints; and Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov. Since 2001, Narayan has served as an editor for the Contemporary Ethnography series published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. She currently serves on the Committee of Selection for the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

  JAWAHARLAL NEHRU was born in Allahabad and educated in England. He played a central role in India’s independence movement and was the first prime minister of the country, holding office for seventeen years. A world statesman and leader, Nehru was one of the most important visionaries of modern India. His best-known works are An Autobiography, Glimpses of World History, and The Discovery of India.

  ABDUL WAHID RADHU was born into a prominent Muslim merchant family in Ladakh that subscribed to the Sufi Chishti order. He studied in Srinagar and at the Aligarh Muslim University. He later joined the family business, traveling between Srinagar, Kalimpong, and Lhasa.

  RAHUL SANKRITYAYAN, a lifelong traveler and writer, visited many cities all over India and the world. A polymath and a polyglot, Sankrityayan is the author of multiple volumes, including Volga se Ganga Tak, Kinnar Desh Mein, Tibbat Mein Sava Varsha, and Asia Ke Durgam Bhukhandon Mein.

  JEMIMA DIKI SHERPA is a freelance writer and community organizer. She is originally from the Thame Valley in Solukhumbu, Nepal.

  FRANK S. SMYTHE was a British mountaineer, botanist, and adventurer. In 1936, Smythe led the expedition which successfully ascended Mount Kamet, then the highest peak ever to have been climbed. Subsequently, in the 1930s, Smythe was thrice part of teams which attempted to climb Mount Everest. An accomplished photographer and a prolific writer, Smythe wrote twenty-seven books in all, the best known among which are The Kangchenjunga Adventure, Kamet Conquered, and Adventures of a Mountaineer.

  ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM is a poet and a seeker—though not always in that order. She has worked over the years as critic, poetry editor and curator. She is the author of four books of poetry, most recently When God Is a Traveler. Her prose works include the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic and yogi, Sadhguru: More Than a Life, as well as The Book of Buddha. As editor, her books include Pilgrim’s India, a book on sacred journeys; Another Country, an anthology of contemporary Indian poetry in English; and Confronting Love, a co-edited volume of Indian love poems.

  RABINDRANATH TAGORE, Gurudev, was a polymath who changed the contours of Bengali literature, art, and music, and reshaped them all in a mold distinctly his own. Among his greatest works are the collections of poetry Gitanjali and Sonar Tari; Raktakaravi, a drama; the novels Ghare Baire and Gora; and his memoir, Jivansmriti.

  MANJUSHREE THAPA is the author of three novels, All of Us in Our Own Lives, Seasons of Flight, and The Tutor of History; a collection of short stories, Tilled Earth; and three books of non-fiction, A Boy from Siklis: The Life and Times of Chandra Gurung, Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy, and Mustang Bhot in Fragments. She has also compiled and translated The Country Is Yours, a collection of stories and poems by forty-nine Nepali writers.

  MARK TWAIN, hailed by William Faulkner as the “father of American literature,” is one of the most celebrated humorists of all time. His books include the timeless classics The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

  VIVEKANANDA was a monk, a mystic, and a disciple of Ramakrishna Paramhansa. Credited with introducing the philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world, Vivekananda was a key figure in raising interfaith awareness and in establishing Hinduism as a major world religion. Vivekananda also founded the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission.

  ANIL YADAV is a peripatetic author and journalist. His books include a collection of short stories—Nagar Vadhuyen Akhbar Nahi Padhtin—and the acclaimed travelogue Woh Bhi Koi Des Hai Maharaj!

  FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND was an officer of the British Army, an explorer, and a writer. In 1903–1904 he led the British invasion of Tibet. After experiencing an epiphany on the retreat from Tibet, Younghusband turned to spirituality. His works include The Heart of a Continent, The Gleam, The Epic of Mount Everest, and Life in the Stars.

  COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The publishers thank the following for permission to reprint copyright material:

  Peter Hillary and the Hillary family (www.edhillary.com) for “The Summit”; Anil Yadav for “To Namdapha and Tawang”; Arundhathi Subramaniam for “Just a Strand in Shiva’s Hair: Face-to-Face with the Axis of the World”; the Random House Group for “In Search of the Snow Leopard” from The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, published by Chatto & Windus; Andrew Harvey for “Ladakh Sojourn”; Bloomsbury Publishing Plc for “A Mountain Retreat” from Cave in the Snow: A Western Woman’s Quest for Enlightenment, © Vicki Mackenzie, 1998; Ruskin Bond for “Mountains in My Blood” and “A Night in a Gar
hwal Village”; Jemima Diki Sherpa for “Three Springs”; Kirin Narayan for “White Bearers: Views of the Dhauladhar”; Siddiq Wahid for “The Lopchak Caravan to Lhasa”; Permanent Black for “Dev Bhumi” from Footloose in the Himalaya, © Bill Aitken, 2003; Amitav Ghosh for “They Make a Desolation and Call It Peace”; Penguin Books India for “The Wrath of the Mandakini” from Rage of the River: The Untold Story of the Kedarnath Disaster, © Hridayesh Joshi, 2016; Sarayu Ahuja for “Tibetans from Peking” from Gone Away: An Indian Journal, © Dom Moraes; and Manjushree Thapa for “Gyaltsen Has a Video.”

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