Himalaya Quotes

“O dear Himalaya...why are you so amazing, can I kiss your peak or can I just let your silence speak...O dear Himalaya...”
― Santosh Kalwar

“Until humans came and made anthills out of these mountains, Diwan Sahib was saying, looking up at the langurs, the land had belonged to these monkeys, and to barking deer, nilgai, tiger, barasingha, leopards, jackals, the great horned owl, and even to cheetahs and lions. The archaeology of the wilderness consisted of these lost animals, not of ruined walls, terracotta amulets, and potsherds.”
― Anuradha Roy, The Folded Earth

“A sense of solemn aspiration comes upon us as we view the mountain. We are uplifted. The entire scale of being is raised. Our outlook on life seems all at once to have been heightened. And not only is there this sense of elevation: we seem purified also. Meanness, pettiness, paltriness seem to shrink away abashed at the sight of that radiant purity.”
― Francis Younghusband

“red-trunked rhododendron trees looked like so many writhing russet snakes. In some places the forest floor was carpeted crimson with fallen rhododendron petals.”
― Jane Wilson-Howarth, Chasing the Tiger

“After midday, the rain eased, and the Land Rover rode into Pokhara on a shaft of storm light. Next day there was humid sun and shifting southern skies, but to the north a deep tumult of swirling grays was all that could be seen of the Himalaya. At dusk, white egrets flapped across the sunken clouds, now black with rain; on earth, the dark had come. Then four miles above these mud streets of the lowlands, at a point so high as to seem overhead, a luminous whiteness shone- the light of snows. Glaciers loomed and vanished in the grays, and the sky parted, and the snow cone of Machhapuchare glistened like a spire of a higher kingdom. In the night, the stars convened, and the vast ghost of Machhapuchare radiated light, although there was no moon.”
― Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

“… everything was fresh, green and particularly beautiful. Afternoon light, filtering between remnants of monsoon clouds, picked out gullies and spot-lit patches of forest and scrub on the convoluted ridges of the rim of the Kathmandu Valley. Or, after a rainstorm, wisps of clouds clung to the trees as if scared to let go. Behind, himals peeked out shyly between the clouds.”
― Jane Wilson-Howarth, A Glimpse of Eternal Snows: A Journey of Love and Loss in the Himalayas

“Die Teesträucher fließen die Hügel hinab; es sind kleine Büsche von rundem Wuchs mit länglichen Blättern, die dicht nebeneinander gepflanzt werden: von oben betrachtet sehen die Felder aus wie ein grünes, eng gelegtes Mosaik aus Knöpfen, bemoosten Kugeln, die sich über die Hänge des Himalaya ziehen.”
― Mathias Énard, Compass

“We had left camp in early morning darkness and moved across the barren, high-altitude desert like ghosts. Mostly we travelled in silence, broken only by the sound of mountain winds and the cracking of glacial ice echoing up the valleys. We used the gorges to gain our ground, scampering over boulder fields and countless glacier run-offs as we ascended mountainsides of shale and snow. We passed crumbling stone chortens marking trails long forgotten, and the ruins of shelters whose inhabitants had long since vanished. We'd watched a large herd of bharal sweep down the hillside before us like a grey tidal wave, their hooves delicately brushing over the ground as though they were part of the earth. Everything moved to a different beat out here, and, like the remnants of the primordial structures we passed, it felt as though we, too, were suspended in time, with the rest of the world oblivious to our existence.”
― Michael Schauch, A Story of Karma: Finding Love and Truth in the Lost Valley of the Himalaya