Himalaya: A Literary Homage to Adventure, Meditation, and Life on the Roof of the World

Description

Intimate, exhilarating writings on adventure, meditation, and life in the captivating wildness of the Himalayan Mountains. Intimate, exhilarating writings on adventure, meditation, and life in the captivating wildness of the Himalayan Mountains-with contributions from Amitav Ghosh, Mark Twain, Rabindranath Tagore, Peter Matthiessen, and more. For some, the Himalaya is a frontier against which people test themselves. Others find refuge and tranquility in the mountains, a place where they can seek their true selves, perhaps even God. Over millennia, the mountains have cradled civilization itself and nurtured teeming, irrepressible life. With over thirty essays, this exhilarating anthology offers a dazzling range of voices that reveal accounts of great ascents and descents-from reflecting on a deadly avalanche to searching for a snow leopard and enjoying the simple pleasure of riding a handcar down a railway track. These diverse writings bring to life the spirit of the Himalaya in an unparalleled panorama. Contributors include- Amitav Ghosh Mark Twain Rabindranath Tagore Peter Matthiessen Edmund Hillary Aleister Crowley Andrew Harvey Vicki Mackenzie Sarat Chandra Das H. A. Giles (Trans.) Jahangir Sven Hedin Frank S. Smythe Anil Yadav Jinasena Arundhathi Subramaniam Dharamvir Bharati Swami Vivekananda Rahul Sankrityayan Francis Younghusband Ruskin Bond Jemima Diki Sherpa Kirin Narayan Jawaharlal Nehru Abdul Wahid Radhu Jim Corbett Bill Aitken Hridayesh Joshi Dom Moraes Manjushree Thapa

Ruskin Bond is the author of numerous books, several of them set in the villages and towns of the Himalayan region. Among his books are The Room on the Roof, A Flight of Pigeons, and The Night Train at Deoli. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999, and the Padma Bhushan in 2014. Namita Gokhale is a bestselling author whose books include Paro- Dreams of Passion, A Himalayan Love Story, and The Book of Shadows. Namita is also codirector of the Jaipur Literature Festival and the Bhutan literary festival Mountain Echoes.

"This . . . is the Himalaya, where life unfolds in all its grace and terror, revealing as much as it withholds. This anthology attempts to capture some of its complexity and vastness, traveling through time, place, and altitude. Beauty and melancholy, courage and defeat, philosophy and poetry surprise and illuminate us in these pages."-from the introduction by Namita Gokhale