A young British officer deserted during the First Afghan War (1839-42) and went to ground in the wilds of Tehri-Garhwal. Frederick 'Pahari'Wilson changed the face of the region forever and became a Himalayan legend. He played a daring role in the Great Game, was witness to the Anglo-Sikh War of 1845 - when the British nearly lost India - and became a pioneering force in the great Indian Railways adventure. Capturing the humour of the petty world of officers'clubs in Meerut, Mussoorie and Shimla, the chill of stiff winds on the high passes into Tibet, and the hardships of life in the remote valleys of Garhwal, The Raja of Harsil is a thrilling account of that tumultuous and exciting period. Driven by personal ambition, Frederick Wilson introduced commercial timbering to the Himalayas and became India's first timber magnate. An avid hunter, ornithologist and botanist, he settled at Harsil, near the source of the Ganges, and shared the lives and destinies of the Garhwali people. He acquired enormous wealth - becoming the richest man in northern India - and famous as the 'raja'of Harsil before falling into disfavour - termed a pariah for plundering Garhwal of its wildlife and natural resources.

Robert Hutchison's Their Kingdom Come is an explosive expose of one of the most powerful and secretive sects operating within the Roman Catholic Church-Opus Dei. This book reveals that Opus Dei: -Has become the Catholic Church's paramount financial power -Influences its members through a combination of secret rites and insistence on absolute obedience -Uses a strategy of discretion to cloud its real intentions -Aims to prepare Christendom for the next crusade against Islam

John Travers Mends (Jack) Gibson was born on March 3, 1908 and died on October 23, 1994 at the age of 86.In some ways, Jack was the last Indian Englishman. He came ten years before independence and stayed on 47 years after it, rendering dedicated service to the country of his adoption for 57 years. Jack's journey started as a school teacher at The Doon School. He was the last English Principal of Mayo College and the last English President of the Himalayan Club. He was the last, and for most of the time the only English resident of Ajmer. He must have been just about the last Englishman to have been honored by both the British and Indian Governments.Brij Sharma is a journalist based in Bahrain. He spent much of his childhood and youth in Dehra Dun, and while not a product of The Doon School, he has known its campus, the surroundings of the city and much of the mountainous terrain described in Gibson's letters.http://www.jtmgibson.com

Tibet’s Mount Kailas is one of the world’s great pilgrimage centres, renowned as an ancient sacred site that embodies a universal sacrality. But Kailas Histories: Renunciate Traditions and the Construction of Himalayan Sacred Geography demonstrates that this understanding is a recent construction by British colonial, Hindu modernist, and New Age interests. Using multiple sources, including fieldwork, Alex McKay describes how the early Indic vision of a heavenly mountain named Kailas became identified with actual mountains. He emphasises renunciate agency in demonstrating how local beliefs were subsumed as Kailas developed within Hindu, Buddhist, and Bön traditions, how five mountains in the Indian Himalayan are also named Kailas, and how Kailas sacred geography constructions and a sacred Ganges source region were related.