Mallory and Irvine's death near the summit of Mount Everest in 1924 has always been a mystery. Were they the first to reach the summit of Everest nearly 30 years before Hillary and Tenzing? A biography of mountaineer Irvine, the book presents the story of the fearless young adventurer, one of the greatest mountaineering legends.

The book narrates the story of the first-ever traverse on foot of the Himalayas - 5000 km from Sikkim to Pakistan. The authors visited places normally inaccessible to the outside world, where the way of life has remained unchanged for centuries.

The book takes us away from regular trekking routes to encounter colonial dak bungalows and ruined temples, wild glades above the treeline carpeted with wild flowers. It captures the author’s journeys in the mountains from Arunachal to Kashmir, from the freezing heights of Zanskar and the Nanda Devi to the small towns of Mussoorie and Ranikhet in the Himalayas.

Winner of the Banff Mountain Festival Mountain Literature Prize 2007, the book is an autobiography of Stephen Venables. The book explores how and why he became a mountaineer, and describes a series of never-recorded adventures across four continents. The author revisits his dramatic climb without oxygen on the Kangshung Face of Everest – ‘the ultimate endurance test’ as he puts it.

The book was written in the context of a landmark art exhibition of the finest artworks created between the sixth and 19th centuries in India, Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan Himalayas. Accompanied by rare images, the book brings out the spiritual thinking of those who braved the hardships of the arduous mountains to express their creative spirit.