NATGEOTRAVEL.COM
OBSESSIONS
MOUNTAINS
Do the
Height
Thing
Whether we’re climbers
or simply admirers,
summits lift our spirits
By Henry Wismayer
I
f you offered to transport me anywhere on Earth
for a day, I’d choose a meadow in India beneath the
mountain of my dreams. Picture it: A long crescent
ridge curls uphill, then sharpens into a pinnacle of ice
more than 25,000 feet high, the jet stream whipping
a ribbon of cloud from its summit. A citadel of lower
peaks rises up around it. And lurking within, at the
foot of the holy mountain known as Nanda Devi, lies
an inviolable Shangri-la of golden grassland, silent but
for the rumble of avalanches and the plaintive bleats
of wild sheep.Remote, awe-inspiring, transcendent, the Nanda
Devi Sanctuary, a glacial basin in India’s Garhwal
Himalaya, embodies everything that I love about
mountain country. I’ve been fortunate to glimpse it
from afar, and, since then, I’ve seen it daily in a pan-
orama hung in a frame on a wall at home. Chances are
I’ll never reach it—an all but impassable box canyon,
the Rishi Gorge, offers the only viable route in.
My interest in mountains, whether climbing them
or merely being in their vicinity, began with stories
of heroic mountaineers. There wasn’t much altitude