Books

Reading The High Sierras

A deeply felt, personal story of travelling on many levels

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Reading The High Sierras
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From the moment I opened it, this book was the start of a journey that would take me outside myself, as my two treks to the Pindari Glacier has proved, as only the mountains can do. It’s a deeply felt, personal story of travelling on many levels and Alter weaves the threads of the spirtual, physical and emotional into a cohesive narrative whole. For one, the book is an account of his personal triumph against emotional and physical trauma, caused when still unidentified assailants forced themselves into his house in Mussoorie early one morning in August 2008, and left his wife and him knifed and seriously wounded.

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Seeking to get his equilibrium back, in October 2009, Alter undertakes a series of journeys into his beloved Himalayas, starting with a three-kilometre walk up Flag Hill, which has been his favourite retreat since his school days. When he reaches the top and sees Bandarpunch and, further away, the partially hidden peaks of Nanda Devi, he understands that this is the path he must take to complete his healing. Divided into three main journeys, Nanda Devi, Kailash Mansarovar and Bandarpunch, Alter punctuates the story of each journey with twists and turns that bring in the mythology of the region, his observations on the environment, and his comments on the man-­nature relationship. And it is in describing these encounters with the mountain’s spirit that Alter finds true eloquence. A case in point is his first ‘darshan’ of Nanda Devi’s peak “emerging from the ring of peaks that guard her sanctuary” and which, viewed from Chitrakanta, he describes in these words: “The steepled summit is like a vast cathedral that has taken millions of years to carve, buttressed by eroded ridges and corniced with ice”.

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There are long passages about the journeys of other writers and travellers. Eric Shipton, mountaineer and author of The Nanda Devi Affair, Gretel Elrich, whom Alter calls one of America’s most perceptive nature writers, and Thoreau and his essay on walking are among those invoked to confirm Alter’s own understanding of trekking in the mountains as being a mystical experience.

Particularly moving is the story of how when he lost the only watch he ever owned on a wooded walk in New England, he found in the process of his repeated treks to search for it the many wonders that lay unnoticed along his old path. Since then, he says, he imagines on every trip that his watch has fallen off, that he is searching for it, and in the process finding a form of meditation. Time and again the book echoed my own feelings about the mountains, as I relived my own moments of both wondrous joy and fear; for nature inspires both in the Himalayas. And when I read the following paragraph, I knew finally why it is that for me, and many others, the mountains will always be a home closer to the heart than any other: “And yet, these high places are linked to us with molecular affinity. The minerals in our bodies, the calcium in our bones...share the same substance as the mountains.” If only desecrators of mountains and those who aim to ‘conquer’ them would read this book!

(Sathya Saran is a journalist, writer and trekker)

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