INTRODUCTION TO THE HIMALAYA

My first view of the High Himalaya came in the 1980s, when I was invited to visit Professor K. S. Valdiya, head of the Geology Department at Naini Tal University, situated in a lovely alpine hill town in the Kumaun Himalaya of India. Professor Valdiya was one of the first geologists to recognize that some of the major faults of the Himalaya are active. Naini Tal is in the mountains, so I had to travel there by road. I took a bus from the Old Delhi bus terminal and was on my way.

I was met by two junior faculty members and taken to the university hostel to meet Professor Valdiya the following day. But when I went to the Department the following morning, I was told that Professor Valdiya was not available. He was with the vice chancellor, which is the Indian equivalent of the president of the University. Hmmm, I thought, that's strange. After inviting me here, he wasn't on hand to greet me at his office. Oh well, when the boss calls, what can you do?

Later in the morning, Professor Valdiya returned to the department, out of breath and highly embarrassed. The vice chancellor had indeed been in his office, but he was trapped there by a group of angry, protesting Kumauni students. The vice chancellor had the misfortune of being a Punjabi from the plains, and thus no more welcome to run a Kumauni university in the mountains than an Englishman would have been decades before. Professor Valdiya is a Kumauni and could communicate with the protesters in their own language. He successfully placated everybody, and the students left. Crisis resolved.

On one of the days I was there, Professor Valdiya took me up a road high above the town to a place called Snow View. We got out of the car and looked north to a wall of snow peaks, the High Himalaya, including a famous mountain, Nanda Devi. The mountain is sacred to many people, some of whom have named their daughters Nanda Devi, including Willi Unsoeld, one of the first Americans to climb Everest. I was in the presence of the greatest mountain range on Earth. The highest mountains of the Himalaya are in such a special class that many of them are rarely called Mount X. One would never say Mount Nanda Devi, just Nanda Devi.