Why telling stories from the Himalaya is ‘an argument against extinction’

A view of the snow covered Himalayas mountain range, as seen from Shimla, in 2022. | Photo Credit: PTI Writer and naturalist Stephen Alter has been honoured with the inaugural Radisson Himalayan Echoes Nature Prize 2025 for his contribution to Himalayan literature and conservation. Alter has often put the Himalaya at the centre of his books, and it’s the perfect time to read up on the world’s tallest mountain range on earth, and why as Alter contends, the focus must not be on altitude alone.In his Wild Himalaya: A Natural History of the Greatest Mountain Range (Aleph), he says that at times, “these mountains seem almost alive for they are always changing.” The Himalaya, he notes, contains places of terrifying beauty, vertiginous terrain and extremes of weather that inspire both awe and fear. Alter maps the Himalaya, which spans a distance of roughly 2,500 kilometres in length and between 350 and 150 kilometres in breadth and stretches across five nations — China, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Published - November 27, 2025 08:30 am IST