Author's travel impressions of Uttar Khand Region and Hindu shrines in the region.

In 1976, John Roskelley joined an expedition to climb Nanda Devi, a 26,645-foot peak in India's remote northwest frontier. What unfolded during this climb was a story of strong emotion, conflicting ambitions, death and victory, desire and regret. This is the story of Willi Unsoeld, the expedition leader who supported the participation of his young daughter, who was named after the mountain they were climbing.

For Aitken, Travel In The Himalaya Is As Much About The Spirit As About Landscapes, Leeches, And Aching Knees. His Intimate Knowledge Of The Himalaya, Absorbed Through A Lifetime Makes This Volume More A Native`S Account Than A Traveller`S.

'When a man is conscious of the urge to explore, not all the arduous journeyings, the troubles that will beset him and the lack of material gains from his investigations will stop him.' Nanda Devi is one of the most inaccessible mountains in the Himalaya. It is surrounded by a huge ring of peaks, among them some of the highest mountains in the Indian Himalaya. For fifty years the finest mountaineers of the early twentieth century had repeatedly tried and failed to reach the foot of the mountain. Then, in 1934, Eric Shipton and H. W. Tilman found a way in. Their 1934 expedition is regarded as the epitome of adventurous mountain exploration. With their three tough and enthusiastic Sherpa companions Angtharkay, Kusang and Pasang, they solved the problem of access to the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. They crossed difficult cols, made first ascents and explored remote, uninhabited valleys, all of which is recounted in Shipton's wonderfully vivid Nanda Devi - a true evocation of Shipton's enduring spirit of adventure and one of the most inspirational travel books ever written.

The story of an amazing journey to one of the remotest, most mysterious places on earth Until 1934 the Nanda Devi Sanctuary had never been visited by human beings. Surrounded by 20,000 foot peaks which effectively seal off the mountain at their centre it is virtually impenetrable. But in 1934 Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman solved the problem in the first of their great Himalayan expeditions by forcing a way up the river gorge. The onset of war meant that the Sanctuary remained un-visited for many years and it was then closed to travellers for political reasons. After a brief period in the seventies when it was opened for expeditions the Indian Government again closed the Sanctuary. In 2000 the Sanctuary was entered for one single visit. Hugh Thomson was offered a place on this unique expedition led by Eric Shipton's son, John Shipton and the great Indian mountaineer, Colonel Kumar. This journey forms the basis of the book. Woven through it are all the amazing stories that surround the mountain - a powerful blend of myths and politics.

Acclaimed travel writer and self-described 'spiritual nomad', Bill Aitken tells us why so many - royalty, wealthy industrialists, influential politicians, as well as the poor - flock to Puttaparthi. Sai Baba's message, he reveals, can be summed up in one word: love. It is as simple as it is profound, not unlike how his devotees see the Sai himself - the embodiment of deep spirituality wedded to simplicity, elegance and grace. Yet, the Sai phenomenon is less about producing vibhuti from thin air and more about modern-day miracles - miracles like free schools and universities, super-speciality hospitals which provide free treatment to all and revolutionary projects like the one which has brought drinking water to a million villagers in drought-prone Rayalseema. Aitken's study is neither a hagiographic exercise in myth-making nor a dry, objective account of the Sai's life. While never shy of expressing his deep love and reverence for Sai Baba, he squarely confronts the controversies and criticisms which inevitably dog those who claim acquaintance with the holy.

There is a kind of brotherhood between man and mountains.... The inescapable logic of desire leaves the mountain traveller no choice but to plan his next expedition to the very peak that may have just rejected vociferously the most singleminded of advances.' In his thirty-year sojourn in India, Bill Aitken has had two serious affairs"one, essentially spiritual in nature, with the country's rivers, the other more earthy and passionate, with her mountains. In this sequel to his first book for Penguin, Seven Sacred Rivers, he talks of his second great obsession"Nanda Devi, patron Goddess of Kumaon and Garhwal. Spanning more than a decade, from the Seventies to the Eighties, Aitken's attempts to explore the sanctuary of this most beautiful of Himalayan peaks were not, he admits, those of a professional mountaineer, but of a romantic. Accordingly, what he gives us is, in his own words, -neither a book about Himalayan climbing nor a treatise on hill theology but a diary of mountain relish.' Aitken's deep-seated study of the cult of the Goddess and the folklore and customs of the Kumaon Himalayas is chequered with deliciously acerbic asides on bumptious bureaucrats, the bane of Indian mountaineering, while the true nature lover's concern for the environment is manifest in his anger over the destruction wrought by political motivations and the ambitions of so-called professional mountaineers.