Notes from the Frontier

Maya Prabhu

Posted on: May 9, 2016

Subscribe To Alpinist
Email This Article

Mohnish Dhagat on the trek to base camp below CB 13 (6264m), during a light-style expedition in the Lahaul Himalaya, India. [Photo] Abhijeet Singh

I. Links (Or: A Broken Chain)

ON FINE DAYS, THE PEAKS of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary are a ridge of crackled rock and ice between thin-air blue and the rude green of the valley. At the center of the mountain amphitheater, the bliss-giving goddesses, Nanda and Sunanda, tower in quiet exaltation. This is country that you might confuse for a Romantic fantasy; a rendering of the Himalayan sublime. It prompted the British explorer Eric Shipton to remark that "a vision of such a beauty was worth a world of striving." It inspired in the Indian mountaineer Hari Dang "the most perfect peace" he'd ever known.

To read the full text of this article, buy the print issue in our ONLINE STORE or DOWNLOAD the digital issue in our app. Or even better, SUBSCRIBE to join our community and get this "coffee-table book masquerading as a magazine" (Lynn Hill) four times per year.