Nanda Devi: A Journey to the Last Sanctuary

Until 1934 the hidden valley of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, on the border between India and Tibet, had never been entered by human beings. Surrounded by 20,000-foot peaks, which effectively seal off Mt Nanda Devi at their centre, it is virtually impenetrable. Many early explorers, drawn there by the idea of a ‘lost Eden’ in the Himalaya, could only gaze with longing at the Sanctuary – until the ‘terrible-twins’ of pre-Second World War mountaineering, Eric Shipton and Bill Tillman, solved the problem by forcing an entrance up a precipitous river gorge. Subsequent expeditions were beset by tragedy and concern that the fragile ecology of the Sanctuary might be damaged; until, for curious reasons involving the CIA, the Indian government finally decided to ban all visitors. The Sanctuary was only opened briefly again in 2000 for a special millennium expedition, of which Hugh Thomson was a part. Thomson weaves the story of this last journey to the Sanctuary together with those who have gone before him, giving a tantalizing account of a place one explorer described as ‘more inaccessible than the North Pole’.