From The Latest Issue: Footnotes From The Himalaya

The first overnight trek I took was at the age of 12, in May 1969. Five of my classmates at Woodstock School and I decided to hike down to the Aglar River. It was a long weekend, so we headed off on Friday from the top of the hill in Landour. After a steep descent of about 7 km and 1,200 m in altitude, we pitched our tents in a fallow field next to a small footbridge. Saturday was spent swimming in the river, trying to catch rock lizards and eating peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate bars.

After two nights outdoors, we packed up early Sunday morning and dragged ourselves back up the hill. More than half a century later, I can still remember the sweat pouring down my sunburnt face and the ache in my legs as we climbed the steep trail home. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this adventure was that our parents and dorm staff allowed us to undertake the trek without any adult supervision.

For more than 50 years, I’ve been trekking in the Himalaya, and there have been considerable changes in both the landscape and the routes we follow. Population, pollution and politics have increased. In 1980, when I was in my early twenties and freshly married, a publisher commissioned me to write a book about walking from Kashmir to Kathmandu. With my wife, Ameeta, and our friend, photographer Gurmeet Thukral, I ventured out on the first stage of this odyssey, trekking from Ladakh to Kullu, by way of the Zanskar Valley. Three weeks later, footsore and exhausted, we staggered across the Shingo La pass and spent the last rupees in our pockets on bus tickets to Manali. In my naïve optimism, I had underestimated the vast scale of the Himalaya. Ameeta very nearly divorced me for putting her through this ordeal, and I reluctantly returned the publisher’s advance.

One of the greatest changes that has occurred in the Himalaya over the past 50 years is the spread of motor roads, which connect remote towns and villages throughout the mountains, and provide India’s military with access to border regions. In Uttarakhand, many of the highways follow traditional pilgrimage routes to the sources of the Ganga and its tributaries. In 1999, 30 years after my first trek to the Aglar, I decided to undertake the Char Dham Yatra on foot. Motor roads now linked the temples at Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, and Badrinath, so that most pilgrims completed this journey by bus. Determined to retrace as much of the old padyatra route as possible, I headed off from Rishikesh on my own. This was the most ambitious series of treks I’ve ever done, breaking the journey into four stages of two to three weeks each, and completing the pilgrimage over the course of a year. Not only was it a physical challenge, but also an opportunity to understand the many connections that exist between geography, ecology, spirituality, myth and folklore. My book, "Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimage to the Many Sources of the Ganga," is a chronicle of that memorable journey.

Being a writer has allowed me to explore the mountains in which I was born. As I’ve often said, I write with my feet. The Himalaya contain an inexhaustible reservoir of stories. Travelling at a pedestrian pace allows me to appreciate and collect unique narratives that flourish across valleys and ridges.

My most recent trek was only a few months ago, in March, 2026, when I climbed a hill called Lurntsu in the Nag Tibba Range, north of Landour. A modest peak, just under 3,000 m above sea level, it’s one of the few high points near Mussoorie that I hadn’t visited before. Accompanying me was a young friend Digamber “Titu” Lal, who runs a trekking company. Instead of walking down to the Aglar, we drove along a motor road to Thatyur, where we crossed the river. This used to be a long day’s hike from my home, but by jeep, we reached the roadhead in a couple of hours. The villages along this route had grown larger and more prosperous than before. What I remembered as isolated cowsheds were now roadside bazaars. After spending the night camped at the forest rest house of Deolsari, we departed soon after sunrise.

The path to Lurntsu ascends through deodar, oak and rhododendron forests. Once we’d left the nearby villages behind, our route passed through a landscape that hadn’t changed in the last 50 years. The only litter on the trail were red rhododendron blossoms scattered on the ground. After a steady climb of eight kilometres, we reached the grass-covered summit and enjoyed a clear panorama of the Garhwal Himalaya, from Nanda Devi in the East to Swargarohini in the west. Though my legs ached and perspiration trickled down my sunburned face, I knew exactly why I’ve been doing this all these years.