This guidebook describes 14 multi-day treks in Nepal's captivating Annapurna region, among the foothills of the mighty Himalaya. Routes range between 24km and 200km (15-124 miles) and between 4 and 23 days, with maximum altitudes from 1750m to 5416m. Areas covered include Machhapuchhre, Pokhara and Lamjung Himal. The varied treks showcase this inspiring landscape, offering stunning vistas of snow-clad peaks and verdant valleys. From the classic Annapurna Circuit and Annapurna Sanctuary to lesser-known routes, this is the definitive guide to exploring Nepal's most popular trekking region. With accommodation options including a mixture of homestay, camping and lodges, trekkers have the opportunity to immerse themselves in their surroundings and experience the warmth and richness of Nepalese hospitality and culture. As well as detailed route description and sketch mapping, the guide presents a wealth of information to help make the most of a trip, including practical advice on transport, visas and permits, when to go, what to take and health and safety. There are notes on different styles of trekking, tips on cultural etiquette and fascinating background information on the region's history, plants and wildlife, culture and religion.

The bestselling author of The Mountain and No Shortcuts to the Top chronicles his three attempts to climb the world’s tenth-highest and statistically deadliest peak while exploring the dramatic and tragic history of others who have made—or attempted—the ascent. “Viesturs and Roberts have written an exhaustively researched and wonderfully compelling history of the most fascinating and dangerous of the Himalayan giants.”—David Breashers, veteran mountaineer and documentary filmmaker, director of IMAX film Everest As a high school student, Ed Viesturs read and was captivated by the French climber Maurice Herzog’s famous and grisly account of the first ascent of Annapurna in 1950. When he began his own campaign to climb the world’s fourteen highest peaks in the late 1980s, Viesturs looked forward with trepidation to undertaking Annapurna himself. Two failures to summit in 2000 and 2002 made Annapurna his nemesis. His successful 2005 ascent was the triumphant capstone of his climbing quest. In The Will to Climb Viesturs and co-author David Roberts bring the extraordinary challenges of Annapurna to vivid life through edge-of-your-seat accounts of the greatest climbs in the mountain’s history, and of his own failed attempts and eventual success. In the process Viesturs ponders what Annapurna reveals about some of our most fundamental moral and spiritual questions—questions, he believes, that we need to answer to lead our lives well.

This fully revised and expanded fourth edition includes fifteen village plans and forty-five route maps covering classic treks in the Annapurna region.

“Annapurna Circuit Trek: Fairy Tale of Love with Nature” is a compilation of author's unforgettable memories of his unconsummated love affair with nature. You can call it a travelogue, but it’s more than that. A traveller visits a place and returns, but the author has not yet returned. Though his body has pulled his mind towards Delhi, but the memories well crystallized inside the mind are making it wander even now. The author has tried breaking this discordant by penning down his experiences of the trek and loading them on to the readers with a hope that they will carry forward the fairy tale in their love with nature. Motivation: Magnificent waterfalls, towering mountains, pleasurable pine forests, picturesque lakes, meandering rivers/streams, snow clad peaks, slithering pathways, wide valleys, beautiful villages, quivering suspension bridges, docile-yet-petulant yaks, shy blue sheep, cute kids, pretty ladies, smiling men, bright sunshine, dark clouds, cold nights, enthralling views, and everlasting unconditional love.

In the mountain valleys of Nepal, Tibetan communities have long been established through migrations from the North. Because of these migrations over the last few centuries, Tibetan lamaism, as one of the world's great ritual traditions, can be studied in the Himalayas as a process that emerges through dialogue with the more ancient shamanic tradition which it confronts and criticizes. Here for the first time is a thorough anthropological study of Tibetan lamaism combining textual analysis with richly contextualized ethnographic data. The rites studied are of the Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist tradition. In contrast to the textual analyses that have viewed the culture as a finished entity, here we see an unbounded ritual process with unfinished interpretations. Mumford's focus is on the "dialogue" taking place between the lamaist and the shamanic regimes, as a historic development occurring between different cultural layers. The study powerfully demonstrates that interrelationships between subsystems within a given cultural matrix over time are critical to an understanding of religion as a cultural process.

Shortlisted for the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Award for Adventure Travel Two decades of adventure writing are captured in this entertaining and inspiring collection of travel journalism by renowned adventurer, writer, filmmaker and environmentalist Frank Wolf. Lines on a Map is a compilation of Frank Wolf's best work from the past two decades. Some of the adventures include: two friends on a cycling and volcano-climbing odyssey across Java, the world's most populous island, in the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, in the wake of 9/11; a surreal private lunch with former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau during an 8000 km canoe journey across Canada; discovering the past and present on a 900 km hiking and kayaking journey from Skagway, Alaska, to Dawson City, Yukon; negotiating the cultural divide during a whitewater paddling expedition in Laos and Cambodia with Russian extreme kayakers; exploring the nature and politics of a multi-billion dollar pipeline in northern BC by hiking, biking and kayaking the GPS track of the proposed project route from the oil sands to the British Columbia coast; conducting a mammal tracking survey in the course of a 120 km ski traverse of Banff National Park; discovering the truth about the existence of Sasquatch in northern Ontario; retracing Viking history during a canoe trip across Scandinavia. Complete with dozens of colour photographs, Wolf weaves together humour, drama and local knowledge to transport readers to some of the outermost corners of the globe in an epic quest to celebrate the freedom to move, explore and be wild.