The deadly allure of Mount Nanda Devi

After one of the most difficult missions ever undertaken in the Himalayas, Indian mountaineers have now finally been able to reach a team of climbers on Mt Nanda Devi who went missing last month. As of writing, they have recovered the bodies of almost all of the eight climbers, four of them British, who were caught in an avalanche on its slopes, bringing to a close another tragic chapter in the mountain’s history. To most people, Nanda Devi is just another peak in the Himalayas and might as well be anonymous. But once it was a name to conjure with. At 25,640 feet, it was the highest mountain in the British Empire, and the Alpine Club, the first mountaineering society, were determined to make a first ascent. Yet no one could even get to its base. Its twin summits are ringed by a sheer curtain-wall of inaccessible peaks. Before you even begin the climb, you have to penetrate these very considerable outer defences to reach the isolated valley, evocatively christened ‘the Nanda Devi Sanctuary’, which surrounds the mountain.