Grief can make people do the strangest of things. In his book ‘Into the Heart of the Himalayas’, Jono Lineen talks about how the loss of his little brother, Gareth, made him embark on one of the most ambitious, nay “immersive” (as he puts it) solo treks across the highest mountain range in the world –the Himalayas. Right from its westernmost reaches, in Pakistan, to India’s Himachal and Uttarakhand. A total of 2,700 kilometres walked over the most craggy passes and mountaintops!

When I came across the cover of this book, I recalled Reinhold Messner’s book about his ascent of Everest without oxygen – the first such – and I thought to myself, if you’ve read that you don’t need to read anything else about the Himalayas. How wrong I was.

Jono Lineen’s book has taken 20 years to gestate. Eight years spent in the Himalayas, his time was split between forestry work in Northern Canada and autumns and winters in the mountains of South Asia. When not hiking alone he studied Buddhism and learned Hindi and Tibetan. All of which weaves its magical spell on the narrative. Making it something more than just a diary of his monumental trek.

In Jono’s words, “....after five years I saw that immersion was the only means by which I could integrate the decency I found in the mountains.” So, in one fell swoop he planned an uninterrupted solo walk from the Indus River in the west to the Mahakali River in the east, from Northern Pakistan through India to the western border of Nepal. It would take him through seasons, landscapes and religions – the ‘Muslim’, ‘Buddhist’ and ‘Hindu Himalayas’ as he fondly labels them one after another, as if like the changing seasons and geographies. His walk, as he likes to call it for its contemplative nature, takes him through jungle, desert and alpine areas, sometimes climbing 5000 metres to be followed by descents into dense rainforest canyons. Most importantly, his walk takes him to the hearts of people who, as he says “...make those mountains so magical.” This would include military men, lamas, sadhus and village women.

The book soars high – beyond the sum of its parts – to become a philosophical and spiritual essay laced with amusing little human stories of simple lives and the knowledge of a man who knows forests, rocks and streams on his path like the back of his hand. Whose ‘walk’ is like a form of mindful meditation. Above all, it teaches us how Mother Nature and simple, hardworking people who draw their succour from her can help us come to terms with our own selves, if we are only mindful and respectful of the diversity we observe.

I would go so far as to say that for those who have read and felt lifted by Peter Matthiessen’s ‘In Search of the Snow Leopard’, this book will be equally enriching.