Contents
Author's Note xi
Prologue: Oakville 1
I: OROGENESIS
1. Uncertain Altitudes 13
2. Rock Art 21
3. A Scholar of Stones 25
4. Equilibrium and Upheaval 31
5. The Poetics of Rock 34
6. The Mountains of lnstead 37
7. Breaking Stones 41
II: The Third Pole
8. Himalayan Warming 47
9. River of Milk 55
10. Catchments and Watersheds 60
11. Sacred Hydrology 68
12. Currents of Life 73
13. Ram Ganga 82
14. A Lost River 87
Ill: Flora Himalensis
15. Exiled by Ice 93
16. The Curious Quests of Plant Hunters 98
17. Arboreal Communities 103
18. Seeing the Forest for the Trees 112
19. Stalking the Carnivorous Sundew 119
20. Place of the Sacred Thunderbolt 125
21. In Search of the Blue Poppy 133
IV: Winged Migrants
22. Painted Courtesans and Chestnut Tigers 139
23. The Birdman of Pali Hill 146
24. Blood Pheasants of Kanchenjunga 151
25. A Convocation of Eagles 158
26. Oriental Avifauna 166
V: Mountain Mammals
27. Fields on the Hoof 179
28. A Feral Naturalist 183
29. Rewilding Jabarkhet 189
30. In Sunlight and Shadow 194
31. Conflicted Edens 197
32. Across the Deosai Plateau 203
33. Bestiary of a Divine Madman 217
VI: Ancestral Journeys
34. Evidence of Arrival 237
35. Primate Hunters 241
36. The Storyteller of Bomphu 246
37. An Ocean of Drumming 254
38. Chomolungma's People 266
VII: At The Edge Of Beyond
39. The Pundit 289
40. Everest House 298
41. Demons of the Death Zone 304
42. An Alpinist's Discontent 326
43. Nanda's Daughter 337
VIII: In A Thousand Ages Of The Gods
44. Remembrance and Imagination 345
45. The House of Hours 348
46. Paradise Divided 352
47. Unspinning the Yarn 357
48. Blood Harvest 366
49. The Owlet's Curse 374
50. Lost in the Wild 382
Acknowledgements 387
Select Bibliography 388
Index 395