 | |
| Author | Stephen Alter |
|---|---|
| Country | India |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Travel literature |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Published | 2 August 2019 |
| Publisher | Aleph Book Company |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 402 |
| ISBN | 978-9388292771 |
Wild Himalaya: A Natural History of the Greatest Mountain Range on Earth is a nonfiction book by Stephen Alter. [1]
This book details the author's journeys to all five countries traversed by the Himalayas: India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and China. [2]
Shyam Saran writes for the Business Standard, "Across nearly 400 densely packed pages, grouped in eight sections and 50 chapters, Alter turns biographer, narrating the incredible tale of the mountain range, almost in stream of consciousness style, mixing science with legend, history with myths, and personal affinity with how others have related to its varied landscape of intense fecundity and frozen desolation." [3]
In a review for The Hindu, the deputy editor of Frontline Anusua Mukherjee writes, "Wild Himalaya is about entities that are the antithesis of the wild, at least theoretically — the state and the military." [4]
Writing for The Indian Express, environmentalist and bird watcher Ranjit Lal in his review suggest that "Stephen Alter’s exhaustive biography of the Himalayas is an exceptional tribute to the world’s mightiest mountains." [5]
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 planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 peaks exceeding 7,200 m (23,600 ft) in elevation lie in the Himalayas. By contrast, the highest peak outside Asia is 6,961 m (22,838 ft) tall.
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 western 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 eastern end of the Hindu Kush in the north merges with the Karakoram Range. Towards its southern end, it connects with the Spin Ghar Range near the Kabul River. It divides the valley of the Amu Darya to the north from the Indus River valley to the south. The range has numerous high snow-capped peaks, with the highest point being Tirich Mir or Terichmir at 7,708 metres (25,289 ft) in the Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
The Karakoram is a mountain range in Kashmir spanning the borders of Pakistan, China, and India, with the northwest extremity of the range extending to Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Most of the Karakoram mountain range falls under the jurisdiction of Gilgit-Baltistan, which is controlled 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. It is the second highest mountain range in the world and part of the complex of ranges including the Pamir Mountains, the Hindu Kush and the Himalayan Mountains. The Karakoram has eighteen summits over 7,500 m (24,600 ft) in height, with four exceeding 8,000 m (26,000 ft): K2, the second highest peak in the world at 8,611 m (28,251 ft), Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum II.
Valley of Flowers National Park is an Indian national park which was established in 1982. It is located in Chamoli in the state of Uttarakhand and is known for its meadows of endemic alpine flowers and the variety of flora. This richly diverse area is also home to rare and endangered animals, including the Asiatic black bear, snow leopard, musk deer, brown bear, red fox and blue sheep. Birds found in the park include Himalayan monal pheasant and other high altitude birds.
Namcha Barwa or Namchabarwa is a mountain peak lying in Tibet in the region of Pemako. The traditional definition of the Himalaya extending from the Indus River to the Brahmaputra would make it the eastern anchor of the entire mountain chain, and it is the highest peak of its own section as well as Earth's easternmost peak over 7,600 metres (24,900 ft). It lies in the Nyingchi Prefecture of Tibet. It is the highest peak in the 180 km long Namcha Barwa Himal range, which is considered the easternmost syntaxis/section of the Himalaya in southeastern Tibet and northeastern India where the Himalaya are said to end, although high ranges actually continue another 300 km east.
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 geology of Nepal is dominated by the Himalaya, the highest, youngest and a very highly active mountain range. Himalaya is a type locality for the study of on-going continent-continent collision tectonics. The Himalayan arc extends about 2,400 km (1,500 mi) from Nanga Parbat by the Indus River in northern Pakistan eastward to Namche Barwa by the gorge of the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra in eastern Tibet. About 800 km (500 mi) of this extent is in Nepal; the remainder includes Bhutan and parts of Pakistan, India, and China.
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is a regional intergovernmental learning and knowledge sharing centre serving the eight regional member countries (RMCs) of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region - Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. The HKH region is a vast area, encompassing mountain ranges stretching from the Hindu Kush range in northern Afghanistan to the Arakan range in Myanmar, with the Himalayan range as its spine, and also includes the Tibetan Plateau. ICIMOD promotes and fosters partnerships amongst the RMCs in an effort to secure a better future for the people and environment of the HKH region.
Stephen Alter is an author of non-fiction and fiction, who was born and raised in India, where he grew up as the son of American missionaries. He lives in Littleton, Colorado and in Landour, India.
India is home to a large variety of wildlife. It is a biodiversity hotspot with its various ecosystems ranging from the Himalayas in the north to the evergreen rain forests in the south, the sands of the west to the marshy mangroves of the east. India lies within the Indomalayan realm and is the home to about 7.6% of mammal, 14.7% of amphibian, 6% of bird, 6.2% of reptilian, and 6.0% of flowering plant species. India's forest lands nurture about 500 species of mammals and more than 2000 bird species.
The Eastern Himalayas extend from eastern Nepal across Northeast India, Bhutan, the Tibet Autonomous Region to Yunnan in China and northern Myanmar. The climate of this region is influenced by the monsoon of South Asia from June to September. It is a biodiversity hotspot, with notable biocultural diversity.
The Transhimalaya, or "Gangdise – Nyenchen Tanglha range", is a 1,600-kilometre-long (990 mi) mountain range in China, India and Nepal, extending in a west–east direction parallel to the main Himalayan range. Located north of Yarlung Tsangpo river on the southern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, the Transhimalaya is composed of the Gangdise range to the west and the Nyenchen Tanglha range to the east.
Dunagiri is one of the high peaks of the Chamoli District Himalayas in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. It lies at the northwest corner of the Sanctuary Wall, A ring of peaks surrounding Nanda Devi and enclosing the Nanda Devi Sanctuary.
Biogeographic classification of India is the division of India according to biogeographic characteristics. Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species (biology), organisms, and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. India has a rich heritage of natural diversity. India ranks fourth in Asia and tenth in the world amongst the top 17 mega-diverse countries in the world. India harbours nearly 11% of the world's floral diversity comprising over 17500 documented flowering plants, 6200 endemic species, 7500 medicinal plants and 246 globally threatened species in only 2.4% of world's land area. India is also home to four biodiversity hotspots—Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Eastern Himalaya, Indo-Burma region, and the Western Ghats. Hence the importance of biogeographical study of India's natural heritage.
The role of The Doon School in Indian mountaineering describes the formative links between The Doon School, an all-boys boarding school in Dehradun, India and early post-Independence Indian mountaineering. From the 1940s onwards, Doon's masters and students like A.E. Foot, R.L. Holdsworth, J.A.K. Martyn, Gurdial Singh, Jack Gibson, Aamir Ali, Hari Dang, Nandu Jayal, were among the first to go on major Himalayan expeditions in a newly independent nation. These early expeditions contributed towards laying the foundation of mountaineering in an independent India.
Phunchok Stobdan is a former Indian civil servant and served as the Indian ambassador to Kyrgyzstan. He was also a senior fellow at Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, and was the founding president of the Ladakh International Centre.
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.
Draupadi ka Danda are two peaks in the Gangotri range of Garhwal Himalaya in Uttarakhand, India. The Dokriani glacier emerges from the northern slope of the mountain.
All Roads Lead North: Nepal's Turn to China is a non-fiction book by journalist Amish Raj Mulmi. It was published on March 15, 2021 by Context, and published by Hurst Publishers and Oxford University Press in the UK and US 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.
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.