Himalayan Reveries: A Journey Through Myth and Reality
In a timeless dialogue, the Earth inquired of Vishnu, “Why do you embody mountains instead of manifesting in your divine form?” Vishnu, with serene wisdom, answered, “The joy found in mountains surpasses that of living beings; they neither feel heat nor cold, pain nor anger, fear nor pleasure. We three gods, as mountains, shall dwell on Earth for the welfare of mankind.”
The summer of 1995 marked my inaugural venture into the Himalayas. Upon arriving in India, I was greeted by the lingering monsoon rains. Delhi, a quarter-century ago, often succumbed to floods; its streets transformed into murky waterways. The rain followed us northward, our journey interrupted by an overnight stay in Rishikesh, along the swollen Ganges. Here, in 1968, The Beatles immersed themselves in transcendental meditation under the guidance of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, introducing countless Western youths to Eastern spirituality. George Harrison later reflected, “After LSD, a thought persisted in me: ‘the yogis of the Himalayas.’ This was a significant reason for my journey to India. Ravi [Shankar] and the sitar were significant, yet it was ultimately a quest for spiritual connection.” It wasn’t until years later that I realized I too had been swept into the mountains by the fading echoes of that cultural wave, inspired by Bob Dylan records and tales of climbing legends in the distant, mystical Himalayas.
The following day, we reached the mountains, partially veiled by relentless rain. Roads turned into rivers; mist clung to cliffs looming over our bus. Heavy clouds enveloped the peaks. Near Gangotri, then part of Uttar Pradesh, our bus came to an abrupt halt. Massive granite boulders, dislodged by the rain, blocked our path. Clearing the road required explosives and bulldozers. For now, our journey had reached a standstill. We gazed at the precarious slope, wary of the next rockfall, eager to proceed. A group of lean, enthusiastic men, dressed in thin cotton and plastic sheets, approached us. After negotiating a price, they carried our gear into the village. We followed, huddled under umbrellas, feeling as though we had stepped through a portal into adventure.
The sheer scale of the Himalayas was bewildering: not merely immense but almost surreal. On that first expedition, the mountains’ grandeur felt overwhelming, even intimidating. Everything dwarfed my previous experiences: the peaks, the rivers, the rockfalls, the avalanches, the glaciers, the myths. From India’s plains, the range appeared as a white fortress, an unscalable barrier between South and Central Asia, separating China from India. The geopolitical tensions between these nations often played out in the mountains, frequently to the detriment of the local inhabitants. In 1962, the world’s two most populous countries even waged war in these formidable heights.
Few places on Earth ignite the human imagination like the Himalayas. Though the Andes stretch longer at seven thousand kilometers, no range reaches higher. The Himalayas are part of a vast highland arc extending four thousand kilometers from Kyrgyzstan to Myanmar, encompassing the Pamir, Hindu Kush, and Karakoram ranges. Of the approximately four hundred mountains exceeding 7,000 meters, all reside here, including the fourteen ethereal peaks over 8,000 meters.
The Himalayas possess a vastness that can be both overwhelming and exhilarating. This majestic range, sprawling over 600,000 square kilometers from the Indus River in the west to the Brahmaputra in the east, mirrors the latitudes of the Middle East, North Africa, Texas, and northern Mexico. Bookending this awe-inspiring expanse are two mighty peaks: Nanga Parbat in Pakistan and Namche Barwa, where Tibet’s Yarlung Tsangpo River makes a dramatic turn southward, becoming India’s Brahmaputra. Within this region lies the Tibetan plateau, the planet’s highest and largest, stretching over five times the area of France and rising to an average altitude of 4,500 meters—earning its title, “the roof of the world.”
The diversity within the Himalayas is nothing short of astonishing. In the west, areas like Ladakh and Zanskar are arid, cold deserts for much of the year. Contrast this with the eastern extremities, where the Brahmaputra’s watershed sees some of the highest annual rainfall on earth, exceeding ten meters. The vertical relief of the Himalayas enhances this diversity; a climb of a mere kilometer drops the temperature by over six degrees Celsius. This phenomenon allows one to traverse climate zones equivalent to thousands of kilometers in latitude, moving from tropical climates to polar-like conditions in just a few kilometers of ascent. This abundance of ice, locked in glaciers and rapidly melting due to climate change, has led geographers to dub the area the “Third Pole.”
Yet altitude, climate, and scale are just the beginning. The intricate three-dimensional shapes of these mountains create diverse ecosystems and influence the lives of the people inhabiting them. Contrary to the common perception of the Himalayas as a remote wilderness, the range is home to approximately fifty million people, with human diversity as rich as the landscape. This region is a confluence of Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism, each valley’s human history closely tied to its geography. Sunny slopes and wind-sheltered areas are more hospitable than their harsh neighboring terrains, vividly demonstrating how geography molds human settlement and activity.
Until recently, travel in this region was limited to footpaths or animal back, with daily journeys that could span entire valleys, involving grueling descents and ascents. Water, vital and life-shaping, dictates much of the human experience here, carving through the mountains as glaciers and torrents, creating landscapes and routes. Climbing, though revered, is a pursuit of few; rivers, however, are essential for all who dwell in these heights.
Our journey led us to the Garhwal Himalaya to ascend Shivling, a peak that rises like a celestial beacon above the Gangotri glacier. For climbers, Shivling’s allure is almost a physical ache, a pinnacle of beauty and challenge. The mountain’s faces and ridges, etched with the trails of climbers past, tell tales of endurance and ambition. Nearby peaks share similar histories, weaving a tapestry of mountaineering lore that draws new pilgrims to these sacred grounds.
But Gangotri’s significance extends beyond climbing. The glacier’s source, Gaumukh, or “the cow’s mouth,” feeds the sacred Ganges River. Shivling’s towering presence is central to a sacred geography, one chronicled in the Mahabharata, an epic that forms the cornerstone of Hindu culture. As the Ganges embarks on its journey to the Bay of Bengal, it carries with it the mythic and spiritual weight of the region. The river’s story, from the heavens to the earth, encapsulates the divine and earthly interplay that defines the Himalayas.
Every Himalayan valley’s history intertwines with its terrain. The Mahabharata’s tale of the Pandavas, spiritual explorers in Devbhumi, underscores this connection. The extreme landscapes, woven into Hinduism’s expanding narrative, highlight the region’s sacred status. The Himalayas, “abode of snow” in Sanskrit, also bear names like Shivalaya and Himachal, reflecting their spiritual significance. Pronunciation of “Himalaya” varies by region, a linguistic puzzle reflecting the range’s vast cultural tapestry.
In the 1920s, Geoffrey Corbett, a senior civil servant and climber, pondered this linguistic diversity. From his office in Simla, gazing at the Himalayas, he envisioned founding the Himalayan Club. Amid debates, Corbett sought clarity on the pronunciation, discovering regional variations that mirrored the range’s complexity. His efforts symbolized the bridging of cultural and geographical divides, much like the Himalayas themselves.
The adviser proposed placing a stress mark on the first “a” to guide English speakers: Himàlaya. Corbett also sought the input of his friend Brijlal Nehru, a relative of India’s first prime minister. Their consensus was that “Hi” should sound like “him,” “ma” like “father,” and “la” and “ya” as in the French “le.” He summarized these findings in a 1929 paper for the Himalayan Journal, noting that while the common Anglicized pronunciation was “Himalaya,” there was a growing trend among the educated to say “Himaiiya” or “Himaliya.” This modern shift, despite the English habit of pluralizing Hindi words already in plural form, such as “pyjamas” and “chapatis,” seemed misplaced to Corbett, who preferred sticking with “Himalaya.”
Mountains have always been a canvas for the lowlanders’ imaginations, filled with demons or symbols of the sublime and adventurous. The Mahabharata and Ramayana, the great Sanskrit epics known collectively as the Itihasa, meaning “history,” blend myth and reality. Scholars have long attempted to extract historical truths from these narratives, recognizing that while the Mahabharata is not strictly history, it isn’t entirely fiction either. For the five Pandava brothers, as for the British civil servant Sir Geoffrey Corbett, the Himalaya represented a paradox: a place of spiritual retreat and a melting pot of diverse cultures along ancient trade routes. The compilers of the Mahabharata, personified in the mythic figure of Vyasa, demonstrated remarkable geographical knowledge and awareness of the region’s ethnic diversity. Even two thousand years ago, the Himalaya symbolized nature’s wildness: dark forests, raging rivers, and untamed wildlife, inhabited by “wild men” who contrasted with the civilized plains dwellers.
Edwin Atkinson, in his Himalayan Gazetteer, described how Hindu settlers influenced the “rough indigenous population,” mirroring the British Empire’s civilizing mission. This notion of taming the wild drew imperial adventurers to the region’s forests and snowy expanses. Rudyard Kipling captured this sentiment in his poem “The Explorer”:
“Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges—
Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!”
Mountains have always been places for the lowlanders to exercise their imaginations: full of demons or else sublime and adventurous.
Mountains, in their majesty, have long served as a projection screen for the fantasies of exiled kings, imperialists, spiritual seekers, explorers, archaeologists, missionaries, spies, artists, hippies, and climbers. The Himalaya, cloaked in monsoon clouds and tales of secret knowledge, beckon to those in search of new horizons, places beyond the known world. These myths often overlook the rich, complex cultures that have thrived there for millennia, shaped by the mountains themselves. This tension between myth and reality continues to shape the Himalaya, pulling at the fabric of the region and its diverse inhabitants.
The Reference Article ヒマラヤの神秘と魅力
