In the high Himalayas

In my twenties I once visited a lonely spot among the western Himalayas called Zhuldok in the Suru valley. Politically it is part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, but geographically, ethnically and culturally the region is bound to the Tibetan plateau and its former Buddhist theocracy centred on Lhasa.

I remember one compelling moment, with the twin peaks of Nun Kun looming above us to 7,000 metres, when we watched two wolves on the far shore of a torrent of glacial meltwater. Those predators lolloped at easy pace through the autumn colour of that immense Himalayan landscape and for one of the few occasions in my life I felt at the edge of all that I had known.

To the author of this exceptional book, however, that spot was not the end-point for his travels, it was only the beginning.