A Winter in India

These three images were taken looking due north from the front lawn of our guest house, aptly named Snowview Resort, in Almora, Uttaranchal. In the upper two images taken at slightly different times near sunrise it is easy to see Trishul on the left and Maiktoli on the right. Now Trishul is about 23,140 feet above sea level, which is about one and one half miles higher than Mt. Whitney in California. The tippy-top point of Maiktoli is 22,110 feet in elevation. In the bottom image one can just see on the right edge a mountain named Nanda Devi, which is the tallest mountain in India at 25,400 feet or 4.8 miles above sea level!!!!! These mountains are pushed upwards about 1 inch per year. Think of them as the crinkle in the earth’s covering fabric caused by the entire subcontinent of India moving north against the continent of Asia.

Images of mountains like these look so beautiful, but the crazy mountaineers who venture above the snow line experience the true ferocity of survival on such pretty pieces of landscape. Nanda Devi is only 7816 meters high so does not qualify as one of the 8000 meter mountains that all world class mountaineering athletes covet to conquer, but from what I have read it is a very, very dangerous climb.

Gee I love to be near these beautiful mountains, it’s good for the soul to feel insignificant, a real perspective-on-life experience. It’s no wonder that the people of this area formed their creation myths around these peaks. All the main rivers including the Ganges start as the melting of snow from these peaks. The Mother Ganga and her sister rivers are the life givers to all of northern India. There are Hindu temples here that have been part of the pilgrimage destination routes for more than three millennia. Deeply religious Hindus make difficult pilgrimages to these sacred shrines the year round. Much of the oldest Sanskrit writings of the Rig Veda were composed by mystics meditating in these mountains.