Introduction The Himalayas are the mightiest mountains in the world. Their icy peaks are so cold that we humans must wear special clothing or freeze to death. They are so high up that we must breathe bottled oxygen or we could die. Sometimes called the “Roof of the World”, the Himalayas stretch about 2,500 kilometres across the top of India eastwards into China. All of the world’s 100 highest peaks are here, snow-capped giants seven kilometres high where conditions are as extreme as in the Antarctic.
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Mount Kailash
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But there’s more to this mountain range than rock and snow. There are deep jungle valleys where tigers prowl. There are hillsides where farmers grow rice and tend their herds of sheep and yaks. There are misty pine forests where the flowers look like the ones you might find in your own back garden. This book is about a whole Himalayan mountain from bottom to top – what happens to the climate, the vegetation and the wildlife, and how people live their lives at each level going up. Yaks are huge, shaggy mountain cattle, specially adapted to live in the thin, mountain air of the Himalayas.
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People have travelled these mountains for centuries – taking their cattle and sheep up to high grassy meadows when the winter snows melt, carrying goods to trade in the lower valleys and climbing high up to be closer to their gods. Many people today enjoy climbing the mountains for the challenges they pose. Many of the highest peaks were only climbed in the last 70 years. Since then, trekking in the Himalayas has become big business – but it’s risky. K2, the second highest peak in the world, is one of the hardest to climb. Only 300 people have made it to the top and 80 have died trying. To reach the summit of a mountain giant like K2 or Mount Everest, climbers need to be fit, well-equipped, skilled at mountaineering – and lucky! Kawa Karpo peak and Mingyong glacier
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The mountain we’ll focus on is Kawa Karpo, also known as the “Meili Snow Mountain”. At 6,000 metres, it’s not the tallest, but it’s still high enough to have wind-blasted rock faces permanently white with snow. The gleaming triangular peak of Kawa Karpo towers above the forests and valleys below. Though its lower slopes have been travelled by people for centuries, its summit has never been climbed.
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The mountains of the Eastern Himalayas have a wetter climate than those in the west. The valleys at the foot of Kawa Karpo are warm and almost tropical. The further up you climb, the colder it gets and the thinner the air gets – which means there’s less oxygen to breathe. Each level of the mountain has a different climate, each with its own special plants and animals suited to live there.
High Alpine Zone (4,700 metres): High, cold and blasted by the wind, it can be like the Arctic up here, though on the parts of the mountain which aren’t drenched by rain and smothered in snow, it can be desert dry. Animals and plants up here have to be hardy.
Low Alpine Zone (3,500 metres): grassy land in summer; snowy in winter
Temperate Zone (1,500 metres): higher and cooler with pine forests and many types of flowering plant that have been introduced to Britain and the rest of Europe because the climate is so similar
Subtropical Zone: warm and wet with flooded fields called paddy fields, where rice is grown, and patches of jungle on the steeper slopes
1000 m
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Above the snow line (5,500 metres): With cliffs of bare rock and slopes permanently covered with snow and ice, it rarely drops below freezing here. This is an extreme environment where little life can survive. 6000 m
5000 m
4000 m
3000 m
2000 m
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