Nepal Books

Everest

Broughton Coburn

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Total reviews: 51 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

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Since the first successful ascent of Everest 50 years ago, many others have attempted the daunting summit, and many have succeeded. But, though Everest can be climbed, it cannot be conquered. Few know this as well as David Breashears. A filmmaker and veteran climber of the Himalaya, Breashears agreed to lead the May 1996 expedition that would capture Everest in a large-format IMAX© motion picture. Even in the best conditions, Breashears knew, Everest is a dangerous challenge—that May, an unexpected blizzard proved how deadly it could be. Shocking the world, the storm claimed the lives of eight climbers, including two of the world’s top expedition leaders.

Everest is the breathtaking chronicle of a filmmaking expedition turned rescue mission, and of the courage and cooperation of Breashears and his team as they rose to the life or death challenge. A companion to Breashears’s record-grossing large-format film, Everest features an introduction by Outside magazine editor-at-large Tim Cahill, an afterword by David Breashears, and 125 stunning, full-color images, including IMAX frames from the film.

Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives

Richard Grimmett, Carol Inskipp, Tim Inskipp

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

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From the snowcapped Himalayas and the Indus valley, to the Ganges delta and the Sri Lankan forests, the Indian subcontinent is home to 13% of the world's species of birds and thousands of birders and ecotourists flock to the area every year. This field guide will be indispensable to those who wish to find and identify the many species of avifauna of the Indian subcontinent and environs.

Featuring more than 150 color plates by eminent bird illustrators from Europe and India, it depicts all the known species in the region, ranging from the Himalayan Snowcock in the north to the Sri Lanka Spurfowl in the south. The plates include all relevant identifiable subspecies, as well as ages and sexes. It contains hundreds of range maps and the succinct text on the facing pages covers identification, voice, and distribution. Specially designed for use in the field, it is a compact version of the landmark A Guide to the Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, hailed on its publication as a "stunning book" that "advanced the cause of Indian birding by 20-30 years." With its modest price, small trim size, and sturdy, weather-resistant binding, this field guide is the one volume that every adventurous traveler to the Indian subcontinent must have.

The Rough Guide to Nepal

Rough Guides

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INTRODUCTION

Nepal forms the very watershed of Asia. Landlocked between India and Tibet, it spans terrain from subtropical jungle to the icy Himalaya, and contains or shares eight of the world’s ten highest mountains. Its cultural landscape is every bit as diverse: a dozen major ethnic groups, speaking as many as fifty languages and dialects, coexist in this narrow, jumbled buffer state, while two of the world’s great religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, overlap and mingle with older tribal practices.

Yet it’s a testimony to Nepali tolerance and good humour that there’s no tradition of ethnic or religious strife. Unlike India, Nepal was never colonized, a fact which comes through in fierce national pride and other, more idiosyncratic ways. Founded on trans-Himalayan trade, the dense, medieval cities display unique pagoda-style architecture, not to mention an astounding flair for festivals and pageantry. Above all, though, Nepal is a nation of unaffected villages and terraced countryside – more than eighty percent of the population lives off the land – and whether you’re trekking, biking or bouncing around in packed buses, sampling this simple lifestyle is perhaps the greatest pleasure of all.

But it would be misleading to portray Nepal as a fabled Shangri-la. One of the world’s poorest countries, it suffers from many of the pangs and uncertainties of the developing world; development is coming in fits and starts, and not all of it is being shared equitably. Heavily reliant on its big-brother neighbours, Nepal was, until 1990, run by one of the last remaining absolute monarchies, a regime that combined China’s repressiveness and India’s bureaucracy in equal measure. It’s now a democracy, but a very precarious one. Political freedom has done little to improve the lot of the average family, while corruption and frequent changes of government have led to widespread disillusion and spawned an intractable Maoist insurgency.

Travel within Nepal isn’t straightforward or predictable. Certain tourist areas are highly developed, even overdeveloped, but facilities elsewhere are rudimentary; getting around is time-consuming and often uncomfortable. Nepalis are well used to shrugging off such inconveniences with the all-purpose phrase, Ke garne? (What to do?). Nepal is also a more fragile country than most – culturally as well as environmentally – so it’s necessary to be especially sensitive as a traveller.

The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Everest: Marking the 50th Anniversary of the Ascent of Everest, 32 Firsthand Accounts of the Most Memorable Climbs (Mammoth Books)

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Well-chosen, well-edited collection for Everest junkies 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the first successful climb to the summit of Mount Everest, editor Lewis assembled thirty chapters written by literal Everest eyewitnesses. Not every writer whose account he includes climbed the mountain at all, let alone made it to the summit. The earliest chapter is set in 1913; the last, in 1999. The writers take us from early survey missions, during which Westerners ventured close enough to the then forbidden mountain to begin planning eventual assents, all the way to the intriguing moment when climbers on the verge of the 21st Century discovered and positively identified the remains of Everest pioneer George Leigh Mallory. In doing so, they solved one mystery - "What happened to Mallory?" - but didn't find answers to the greatest Everest riddle. Which continues to be: Did Mallory and his climbing partner, Sandy Irvine, actually reach the summit almost 20 years ahead of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay?

The sheer variety of stories told in this book guarantees it a place in my library, instead of a trip to the local Good Will where books I read just once wind up. Some tales are tragic, some humorous, some enlightening (most notable in the latter category: Tenzing Norgay's account of his Everest summit in 1953, "The Dream Comes True"). I especially enjoyed the appendices at the book's end, which are anything else but dry.

A well-chosen, well-edited collection that's sure to have "something new" to offer even a dedicated reader of Everest tales.

Editorial Review:

The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Everest celebrates the spirit to mount the ultimate peak—"Because," as George Mallory famously summed up, "it is there." This new anthology encompasses the assaults on Everest from the beginnings in 1921, through Sir Edmund Hillary's achievement in 1953, to the notorious 1996 "extreme-tourism" disaster caught so memorably in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. There are the legendary climbs of Mallory, Irvine's tragic disappearance, Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's 1953 first ascent, and Reinhold Messner's solo ascent—without the use of oxygen tanks—in 1980. There are also such electrifying tales by Mallory on surviving an avalanche in 1922, and Jon Krakauer on the 1996 disasters, plus more stories from "the roof of the world" by such climber-writers as Eric Shipton, Tom Hornbein, Frank Smythe, Bill Tilman, Wilfred Noyce, Walt Unsworth, and many more.

View from the Summit: The Remarkable Memoir by the First Person to Conquer Everest

Sir Edmund Hillary

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

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THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE STORY OF
AN ORDINARY MAN WHO BECAME THE
CENTURY'S MOST IMPORTANT EXPLORER

Adventurers the world over have been inspired by the achievements of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man ever to set foot on the summit of Mount Everest. In this candid, wry, and vastly entertaining autobiography, Hillary looks back on that 1953 landmark expedition, as well as his remarkable explorations in other exotic locales, from the South Pole to the Ganges. View From The Summit is the compelling life story of a New Zealand country boy who daydreamed of wild adventures; the pioneering climber who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth after scaling the world's tallest peak; and the elder statesman and unlikely diplomat whose groundbreaking program of aid to Nepal continues to this day, paying his debt of worldwide fame to the Himalayan region.

More than four decades after Hillary looked down from Everest's 29,000 feet, his impact is still felt -- in our fascination with the perils and triumphs of mountain climbing, and in today's phenomenon of extreme sports. The call to adventure is alive and real on every page of this gripping memoir.

Ghosts of Everest: The Search for Mallory & Irvine

Jochen Hemmleb, Larry A. Johnson, Eric R. Simonson, William E. Nothdurft

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Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

INSPIRING STORY OF A MAN'S DREAM, MYSTERY OF HIS FATE 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

The book is focused on the search conducted to find out what happened to Mallory and Irvine, the two British climbers who disappeared on Everest in the 1930s. Mallory is basically a legend in mountaineering.

The authors tell the story of their own search expedition by making it parallel to Mallory's. For example, we see the logistics it took this expedition in 1999 to get everyhitng to Everest base camp. In contrast, we see the long trek the expedition in the 1930s had to face, with sickness and much more difficult terrain and logistics. It was amazing that they had the energy to climb once they got to base camp.

The book switches between a technical archeology mystery and the history known of the expedition. It is very interesting to see the 1999 expedition trace back the steps of the earlier one. We see the tremendous difficulties they went through in the 1930s, with clothing that was hardly appropriate and the best equipment at the time.

Ultimately, the authors find Mallory's body, but it is still not clear if he reached the summit before falling. He fell and broke a knee, which is a death sentence at that altitude. Irvine was not found. The book ends with the authors making their own summit bid, and only two of them making it.

This is one of the best mountaineering books, especially as it brings in the mystery of what happened. I highly recommend it for the armchair mountaineer.

Editorial Review:

GHOSTS OF EVEREST unravels one of the most puzzling and compelling adventure mysteries of all time. On June 6, 1924, George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Comyn Irvine were only a few hundred feet short of becoming the first men to reach the highest spot on earth when they simply walked into the mist, never to be seen again. Did they reach the summit of Mount Everest - nearly three decades before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay? This is the meticulous report of both the 1924 British Expedition and the 1999 Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition which found George Mallory's body and answers to the questions that have plagued historians and mountaineers alike: Did they make it? And, if they did, what happened to them?

"...a work of historic importance that reads like a detective thriller..." (Publishers Weekly)

A History of Nepal

John Whelpton

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While John Whelpton's history of Nepal focuses on the period since the overthrow of the Rana family autocracy in 1950-51, the early chapters are devoted to the origins of the kingdom and the evolving relations of its diverse peoples. Whelpton portrays a country of extraordinary contrasts, whose history has been buffeted constantly by its neighbors, China and India. Economic and political turmoil over the last fifty years came to a climax with the massacre of the royal family in 2001, when the country erupted into civil war. This book is the most comprehensive and accessible English-language one-volume history of Nepal. John Whelpton, who works as a teacher in Hong Kong, is an historian and linguist. He has worked and traveled extensively in Nepal, and has written numerous articles and books on the subject. These include Nationalism & Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom: The Politics and Culture of Contemporary Nepal (Routledge, 1997), and Kings, Soldiers and Priests: Nepalese Politics and the Rise of Jang Bahadur Rana, 1830-1857 (South Asia Books, 1992).

The Boys of Everest: Chris Bonington and the Tragedy of Climbing's Greatest Generation

Clint Willis

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Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

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This book tells the story of a band of climbers who reinvented mountaineering during the three decades after Everest's first ascent. It is a story of tremendous courage, astonishing achievement and heart-breaking loss. Their leader was the boyish, fanatically driven Chris Bonington. His inner circle — which came to be know as Bonington's Boys — included a dozen who became climbing's greatest generation. Bonington's Boys gave birth to a new brand of climbing. They took increasingly terrible risks on now-legendary expeditions to the world's most fearsome peaks. And they paid an enormous price for their achievements. Most of Bonington's Boys died in the mountains, leaving behind the hardest question of all: Was it worth it? The Boys of Everest, based on interviews with surviving climbers and other individuals, as well as five decades of journals, expedition accounts, and letters, provides the closest thing to an answer that we'll ever have. It offers riveting descriptions of what Bonington's Boys found in the mountains, as well as an understanding of what they lost there.

Himalayan People's War: Nepal's Maoist Rebellion

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The eruption of a violent Maoist insurgency in Nepal in the late 1990s was met with bewilderment even among many who claimed to know the country well. The so-called "people’s war" was launched in 1996 by the Communist Party of Nepal to overthrow the political establishment, including the monarchy. Tactics have included killing members of rival parties as well as attacks on police stations, banks, and power installations. The indiscriminate nature of the government’s military response has been widely criticized. In 2001, Nepal’s political situation came to the attention of Western news media with the murders of members of the royal family. This book provides historical, social, and political background on the movement and related events in this ongoing struggle. The contributors examine the war’s origins and antecedents, provide ethnographic accounts from rural and urban perspectives, and draw comparisons with other Maoist movements elsewhere in the world. Includes full text of key documents by the rebels and government.

Tantra in Practice

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As David White explains in the Introduction to Tantra in Practice, Tantra is an Asian body of beliefs and practices that seeks to channel the divine energy that grounds the universe, in creative and liberating ways. The subsequent chapters reflect the wide geographical and temporal scope of Tantra by examining thirty-six texts from China, India, Japan, Nepal, and Tibet, ranging from the seventh century to the present day, and representing the full range of Tantric experience--Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and even Islamic. Each text has been chosen and translated, often for the first time, by an international expert in the field who also provides detailed background material. Students of Asian religions and general readers alike will find the book rich and informative.

The book includes plays, transcribed interviews, poetry, parodies, inscriptions, instructional texts, scriptures, philosophical conjectures, dreams, and astronomical speculations, each text illustrating one of the diverse traditions and practices of Tantra. Thus, the nineteenth-century Indian Buddhist Garland of Gems, a series of songs, warns against the illusion of appearance by referring to bees, yogurt, and the fire of Malaya Mountain; while fourteenth-century Chinese Buddhist manuscripts detail how to prosper through the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper by burning incense, making offerings to scriptures, and chanting incantations. In a transcribed conversation, a modern Hindu priest in Bengal candidly explains how he serves the black Goddess Kali and feeds temple skulls lentils, wine, or rice; a seventeenth-century Nepalese Hindu praise-poem hammered into the golden doors to the temple of the Goddess Taleju lists a king's faults and begs her forgiveness and grace. An introduction accompanies each text, identifying its period and genre, discussing the history and influence of the work, and identifying points of particular interest or difficulty.

The first book to bring together texts from the entire range of Tantric phenomena, Tantra in Practice continues the Princeton Readings in Religions series. The breadth of work included, geographic areas spanned, and expert scholarship highlighting each piece serve to expand our understanding of what it means to practice Tantra.