Stephen Alter was born and raised in the hill station of Mussoorie, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where he and his wife, Ameeta, now live.
Their idyllic existence was shattered when four armed intruders invaded their home and viciously attacked them, leaving them for dead.
The violent assault and the trauma of almost dying left them for dead author questioning assumptions he had lived by since childhood.
For the first time, he encountered the face of evil and the terror of the unknown. He felt like a foreigner in the land of his birth.
This book is an account of a series of treks he took in the high Himalayas following his convalescence. Alter give us a moving meditation on the solace of high places and on the hidden meanings and enduring mystery of mountains.