1. Sarat Chandra Das (1849-1917) was a civil engineer, adventurer, spy,
linguist and Buddhist scholar. His book Journey to Lhasa remains a popular
classic over a hundred years after it was first published.
2. Abdul Wahid Radhu (1918-2011) was born into a prominent Muslim
merchant family of Ladakh, and joined the family trading business. He spent
several years in Lhasa, Kalimpong and Kashmir.
3. Dervla Murphy (1931-2022) has been described as a ‘travel legend’.
In the 1960s and ’70s she undertook astounding expeditions on foot and
bicycle from her native Ireland to Pakistan and India.
4. Jono Lineen grew up in Ireland and Canada before settling in Australia.
He spent twenty years travelling the world working as a forester, mountain
guide, relief worker and writer. He is now a curator at the National
Museum of Australia.
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Writing about the Himalaya mountains is an entire genre by itself in literature about travel and adventure, and these four books are acknowledged as classics of the genre. Together, they take readers across the entire Himalayan range, through the highest mountain passes. Sarat Chandra Das trekked from Darjeeling to Lhasa—the forbidden, secret city—in the 1870s as a spy for the British government. Abdul Wahid Radhu, described as ‘the last caravaneer of Tibet and Central Asia’, led caravans from Ladakh to Tibet twice every year through the mid-1900s, carrying the Ladakhi king’s tribute to the Dalai Lama. In the 1970s, the intrepid adventurer Dervla Murphy walked over treacherous mountain paths to spend a winter in Baltistan—the frozen heart of the Western Himalayas. And over eight years, in the 1990s and early 2000s, Jono Lineen undertook solo treks across the Himalayas—from Pakistan to Nepal, through India—to come to terms with grief and find peace.
This is classic Himalayan travel writing, brought together in a priceless set for the first time.
