Nanda Devi- A Journey to the Last Sanctuary

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Until 1934 the hidden valley of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, on the border between India and Tibet, had never been entered by human beings. Surrounded by 20,000-foot peaks, which effectively seal off Mt Nanda Devi at their centre, it remains virtually impenetrable even today.

Many early explorers, drawn there by the idea of a ‘lost Eden’ in the Himalaya, could only gaze with longing at the Sanctuary - until the ‘terrible-twins’ of pre-Second World War mountaineering, Eric Shipton and Bill Tillman, solved the problem by forcing an entrance up a precipitous river gorge. Subsequent expeditions were beset by tragedy and concern that the fragile ecology of the Sanctuary might be damaged; until, for curious reasons involving the CIA- - which the first edition of this book revealed - the Indian government finally decided to ban all visitors. The Sanctuary was briefly reopened in 2000 for a special millennium expedition, of which Hugh Thomson was a part.

Thomson weaves the story of this last journey to the Sanctuary together with those who have gone before him, and gives a tantalizing account of a place described by explorers as ‘more inaccessible than the North Pole’.

Ever since the first publication of this book in Britain, it has been a great frustration of mine that it was not available in India.

Over the years, the increasing interest in the CIA conspiracy which tried to plant a nuclear-powered spying device on the summit of the mountain has made publication in India even more urgent. The fact that, as this book reveals, there is a ticking time bomb of nuclear contamination now lost somewhere near the headquarters of the Ganges is one of those political issues that has stayed hidden for far too long.

One of India's most iconic mountains, Nanda Devi has become tantalisingly out of reach for the people who live there. This story of the last expedition allowed to go to the Sanctuary - an expedition which was co-led by one of India's great mountaineering heroes, Narinder 'Bull' Kumar has gained added resonance in the years since 2000 when it took place.

The mountain remains a spiritual symbol as well as a beacon for mountaineers, even if no one can actually get there.

So it is with great pleasure that with this new edition, I can at least offer readers in India the chance to do so through these pages.

This is not a book about climbing, nor do I claim to be a climber. It is a book about mountains - and one mountain in particular, Nanda Devi, which lies in the Himalaya, on the border between India and Tibet.

More than perhaps any other of the great Himalayan peaks (as Everest only became famous comparatively late, for reasons of geographical suprematism), a powerful blend of myth and politics has always swirled around Nanda Devi. A rare opportunity to travel there gave me the chance to explore that myth.

Following the recent books marking the fiftieth anniversary of the 1953 ascent of Everest, this is also a chance to hark back to an earlier and gentler mountaineering world, that of Eric Shipton and H.W. 'Bill' Tilman in the pre-war period. Shipton and Tilman roamed happily through the Garhwal in a spirit of innocent adventuring that has now been lost; Nanda Devi was their greatest achievement.

If Everest is a mountain that has become littered with the corpses and detritus of previous expeditions, then Nanda Devi remains the epitome of the inviolate mountain - which is perhaps what mountains should be about.

**Contents and Sample Pages**