Here you will find stories of great ascents and descents; the madness of war on the `world's highest battlefield' and the personal costs soldiers must pay for it; tales of exploratory derring-do; and a mutiny up on a mountain. A seeker has an intense spiritual experience on Mount Kailas, another among shamans on a mountaintop in Nepal; and, looking for the snow leopard in Ladakh, an author finds himself. A resident of a Sherpa village writes a heartfelt account of the aftermath of an avalanche which killed porters and climbers on Everest; and residents of Langtang record an oral history of the earthquake which wiped out their village. A matriarch describes her life and family in Almora of a bygone time; a prisoner in Dehra Dun jail draws solace from visits by birds and small animals; and the fragrance of lime makes a traveller's night in a remote Garhwal village memorable for all time.

Ruskin Bond is the author of numerous novellas, short-story collections and non-fiction books, many of them classics and several of them set in the villages and towns of the Himalayan region. Among his books are A Time for All Things: Collected Essays and Sketches, Lone Fox Dancing: My Autobiography, I Was the Wind Last Night: New and Collected Poems, A Book of Simple Living: Brief Notes from the Hills, Friends in Wild Places: Birds, Beasts and Other Companions, as well as the popular classics The Room on the Roof A Flight of Pigeons, The Blue Umbrella, Time Stops at Shamli, Night Train at Deoli, Our Trees Still Grow in Debra and Rain in the Mountains. He was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014. He lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his extended family.