The dark side of the Himalayas

How best to write a book about the Himalayas when Mount Everest has been reduced to just another tick-off on the bucket lists of the wealthy? We all remember the pictures of adventurous parka-clad westerners queuing up to scale the summit in 2019. The world’s most inaccessible and inhospitable areas have now become the target of an extreme form of charter tourism. Not even the outbreak of Covid stopped people forking out more than $10,000 to join the queue.

In High, the Norwegian writer and social anthropologist Erika Fatland traverses the mountain range, straying from the well-trodden path of privileged tourism onto the Silk Road less travelled. It is not, therefore, a book about climbing Everest, although Fatland makes it impressively far, suffering altitude sickness to prove it (‘My brain is mush’). There’s no glamour to her strenuous trek. Instead there are inconvenient stopovers and endless passport controls – she sleeps on floors and eats lunch in car parks.