 | |
| Author | John Keay |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Anthropology, History |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Published | 2022 |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 432 |
| ISBN | 978-1526660527 |
Himalaya: Exploring the Roof of the World is a non-fiction book by John Keay, a British historian and journalist.
In this book, Keay provides a comprehensive overview of the Himalayan range, delving into its geological formation, cultural heritage, and the diverse communities that inhabit its slopes. [1]
Writing for the Washington Independent Review of Books , A.A. Bastion writes, "Keay goes out of his way to present the Asian perspective on Himālaya, including the religious beliefs that shape locals’ engagement with the area. He finds meaning in these stories and honors their role in the lives of those who live in the region, while nonetheless separating fact (connected to an observable reality) from fiction (created by perception and belief). This is hard to do, but he has taken care here." [2]
Mandira Nayar of The Week (Indian magazine) writes, "At 81, Keay chose to get to know the Himalayas, in his words “the bruised area’’ in the map of Asia, without leaving his chair. [The book] is a breathtaking journey into the history, culture, ecology, archaeology and environment of the region." [3]
Writing for the Asian Review of Books, Maximillian Morch writes, "This is a wonderfully digressive read, with rich portraits and stories of those who made their careers and fame from Himalaya. Keay has condensed an immense amount of data and information into the book alongside a deft selection of poetry, literature, period sources and a wide array of maps and photographs." [4]
C. P. W. Gammell wrote in Literary Review , "In his new book, Himalaya, in prose that feels as effortless as it is entertaining, Keay paints a quite fascinating picture of this magical region, covering everything from geology, glaciers, tectonic plates and botany to the spiritual and religious evolution of humans." [5]
Kangchenjunga, also spelled Kanchenjunga, Kanchanjanghā and Khangchendzonga, is the third-highest mountain in the world. Its summit lies at 8,586 m (28,169 ft) in a section of the Himalayas, the Kangchenjunga Himal, which is bounded in the west by the Tamur River, in the north by the Lhonak River and Jongsang La, and in the east by the Teesta River. It lies in the border region between Nepal and Mangan district, Sikkim state of India, with three of the five peaks, namely Main, Central and South, directly on the border, and the peaks West and Kangbachen in Nepal's Taplejung District.
The Himalayas, or Himalaya, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest; more than 100 peaks exceeding elevations of 7,200 m (23,600 ft) above sea level lie in the Himalayas.
The Hindu Kush is an 800-kilometre-long (500 mi) mountain range in Central and South Asia to the west of the Himalayas. It stretches from central and eastern Afghanistan into northwestern Pakistan and far southeastern Tajikistan. The range forms the western section of the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region (HKH); to the north, near its northeastern end, the Hindu Kush buttresses the Pamir Mountains near the point where the borders of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet, after which it runs southwest through Pakistan and into Afghanistan near their border.
The Karakoram is a mountain range in the Kashmir region spanning the borders of Pakistan, China, and India, with the northwestern extremity of the range extending to Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Most of the Karakoram mountain range falls under the jurisdiction of Gilgit-Baltistan, which is administered by Pakistan. Its highest peak, K2, is located in Gilgit-Baltistan. It begins in the Wakhan Corridor (Afghanistan) in the west, encompasses the majority of Gilgit-Baltistan, and extends into Ladakh and Aksai Chin.
The geography of Tibet consists of the high mountains, lakes and rivers lying between Central, East and South Asia. Traditionally, Western sources have regarded Tibet as being in Central Asia, though today's maps show a trend toward considering all of modern China, including Tibet, to be part of East Asia. Tibet is often called "the roof of the world," comprising tablelands averaging over 4,950 metres above the sea with peaks at 6,000 to 7,500 m, including Mount Everest, on the border with Nepal.
The Roof of the World or Top of the World is a metaphoric epithet or phrase used to describe the high region in the world, also known as High Asia. The term usually refers to the mountainous interior of Asia, including the Pamirs, the Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau, the Hindu Kush, the Tian Shan, and the Altai Mountains.
K12 is the second highest peak in the Saltoro Mountains, a subrange of the Karakoram range in the Siachen region of Ladakh. Its name comes from its designation given during the original survey of the Karakoram range. In 1984, an Indian army expedition under Colonel Prem Chand took hold of this peak, from the side of Siachen glacier by traversing from the west.
John Stanley Melville Keay FRGS is a British historian, journalist, radio presenter and lecturer specialising in popular histories of India, the Far East and China, often with a particular focus on their colonisation and exploration by Europeans. In particular, he is widely seen as a pre-eminent historian of British India. He is known both for stylistic flair and meticulous research into archival primary sources, including centuries-old unpublished sources.
Harish Kapadia is a Himalayan mountaineer, author and long-time editor of the Himalayan Journal from India. He has been awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, the Life Time Achievement Award for Adventure by the President of India and the King Albert Mountain Award presented by The King Albert I Memorial Foundation. He has written numerous books and articles on the Indian Himalayas. Harish was awarded the Piolets d'Or Asia Life Time Achievement Award in 2017 for his mountaineering and exploratory endeavors.
The Digital Himalaya project was established in December 2000 by Mark Turin, Alan Macfarlane, Sara Shneiderman, and Sarah Harrison. The project's principal goal is to collect and preserve historical multimedia materials relating to the Himalaya, such as photographs, recordings, and journals, and make those resources available over the internet and offline, on external storage media. The project team have digitized older ethnographic collections and data sets that were deteriorating in their analogue formats, so as to protect them from deterioration and make them available and accessible to originating communities in the Himalayan region and a global community of scholars.
Fanny Bullock Workman was an American geographer, cartographer, explorer, travel writer, and mountaineer, notably in the Himalayas. She was one of the first female professional mountaineers; she not only explored but also wrote about her adventures. She set several women's altitude records, published eight travel books with her husband, and championed women's rights and women's suffrage.
Dr. Shekhar Pathak is a historian, editor, publisher, activist, and traveller from Uttarakhand, India. He is known for his extensive knowledge of the history of colonial and postcolonial social movements and contemporary environmental and social issues in Uttarakhand, and colonial exploration in the Himalayas and Tibet. He has also been engaged in activism for various social and environmental causes since the 1970s.
Namita Gokhale is an Indian writer, editor, festival director, and publisher. Her debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion was released in 1984, and she has since written fiction and nonfiction, and edited nonfiction collections. She conceptualized and hosted the Doordarshan show Kitaabnama: Books and Beyond and is a founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival. She won the 2021 Sahitya Akademi Award.
High-Mountain Asia (HMA) is a high-elevation geographic region in central-south Asia that includes numerous cordillera and highland systems around the Tibetan Plateau, encompassing regions of East, Southeast, Central and South Asia. The region was orogenically formed by the continental collision of the Indian Plate into the Eurasian Plate.
Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains: Architecture, Religion, and Nature in the Central Himalayas is a 2019 book by art historian Nachiket Chanchani, associate professor at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, that provides a complete historical survey of temple architecture in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, and explores how the Central Himalaya region, home to many pilgrimage sites, came to acquire immense religious significance for Hindus. It is the first complete art historical and architectural survey of the under-studied region.
All Roads Lead North: Nepal's Turn to China is a 2021 non-fiction book by journalist Amish Raj Mulmi. It was published on 15 March 2021 by Context, and published by Hurst Publishers and Oxford University Press in the UK and US respectively as All Roads Lead North: China, Nepal and the Contest for the Himalayas. It was chosen among The Guardian's 'Books that explain the world' in 2021.
Firefly is a novel written by Canadian author Philippa Dowding, and published in 2021 by DCB / Cormorant Books in Toronto, Ontario. It won the 2021 Governor General's Literary Award for Young People’s Literature - Text.
Himalaya: A Human History is a nonfiction book by Ed Douglas, a mountaineer, journalist, and author who has spent over twenty-five years reporting from the Himalayan region, published in 2020 by Random House.
Tobdan is a historian and linguist from Himachal Pradesh, India. He is noted for his work on the cultural traditions, histories, and languages of the Lahaul and Spiti district, and some neighboring regions.
The Struggle for India's Soul: Nationalism and the Fate of Democracy is a book by Shashi Tharoor which was published on 26 November 2021 by Hurst Publishers.