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. Further south and over the Pense La Pass — where two metres of snow can fall in one night and can eventually accumulate to eight metres and then remain on the ground for six months — lies another valley called Zanskar. These meteorological conditions leave it cut off from the outside world for half of every year. It was this blend of place and splendid snowbound isolation that was Crowden’s heart’s desire at just 22 years of age and in the winter of 1976/7 he achieved his goal.

Crossing the Pense La with all his supplies, Crowden then watched it snow continuously for ten days while his universe shrank to the width of one valley. As he notes, it was as if the entire population of Zanskar — ‘men, women, children, artists, blacksmiths, weavers, musicians, soothsayers, monks and nuns were all in a closed order.