Express News Service
The Himalayas or the ‘Abode of Snow’ remain the most stupendous mountains on the face of the earth. Being the ultimate superlative, yet they seem to invite more superlatives.
Where else would you go looking for the highest peak, the highest pass, the highest surviving plant or the rarest of rare creatures? All else dwarfs in comparison to earth’s greatest physical feature. This and much more are included in John Keay’s Himalaya: Exploring the Roof of the World.
What begins with a sweeping arc curving like a swathe from the bend in river Indus in the West, tapers off all the way to the Brahmaputra river in eastern Assam. Look northwards and you are facing
a mountain range that extends 300 kilometres wide and rises eight kilometres into the sky above the sea level.
“In a hundred ages of the Gods, I could not tell you of the glories of the Himalaya,” sang the ancient poet of the Skanda Purana. In doing so, he came closer than anyone else to describing that which defies description.
While the sea has been celebrated by writers like Stevenson and Conrad, Melville and Hemingway, these mountains continue to challenge the written word. We may have managed to climb its peaks or cross its remote passes, but they have kept their secrecy and reserve, remaining aloof, mysterious and forbidding.
Historian John Keay’s book is not an easy read. It is only meant for those who are seriously interested in mountains. Given the author’s exactitude, the reader meets them all: explorers forging rivers, and botanists peering around for rare plant life.
The book talks about how botanist Joseph Hooker, a close friend and colleague of Charles Darwin, found fossils lodged in a bed of limestone in Sikkim in 1849. Of course, there’s politics too. Our usual suspects––both the British and the Chinese–– have always been experts in meddling with that which is best left alone.
Millions of years ago, the continental drift theory had us believe that it gave birth to these towering mountains. It began, we are told, when the earth was wrapped in the primordial mists. In this respect, the story of English topographer and geologist Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen stumbling upon snail and clam shells on the edge of Pangong Lake in 1862, leaving no doubt that the Himalayas had risen from the ocean floor, finds mention in the book.
Indeed, time was unborn as humankind waited on the tedious shores of Lethe when two immense land masses slammed into one another through a rapidly receding sea. From that epic collision were born the Himalayas.
“The mountains of the Great Himalaya are not just younger than the rivers but younger than most mountain ranges,” Keay writes, “Everest is so young; it’s still growing––by an estimated 2 to 4 centimetres a year… it is best defined by its average height of over 3,000 metres above sea level. Not surprisingly, it (the range)includes a lot of mountains––the high Hindu Kush, the treeless Pamirs, the once jade-rich Kun Lun, the peaks and glaciers of the Karakoram, the lake-spattered Trans-Himalayan ranges of Tibet and of course the 2,500-kilometre-long swag of the Himalaya themselves.”
No wonder then that we venerate, fear and worship the Himalayas in the East, believing that climbing the peaks would invite the wrath of the gods dwelling there. In the early days of mountaineering, the book points out, permission to climb these peaks was given to the rider so that the actual summit would not be defiled.
A British expedition to Kanchenjunga in 1955 kept its word by stopping 20 feet away from the main cone. Similarly, another to Machapuchare froze in its tracks a good 150 feet from the summit, in deference that the summit was only for the gods.
In Himalaya, Keay makes a case for this mysterious, fascinating and revered part of our planet. Unless we take a step back from the brink,this mightiest of the mountain ranges will soon be lost forever.
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