“A distant view of a snowy range…has a strange power of moving all poets and persons of imagination,” wrote Douglas Freshfield in his 1903 memoir, Round Kangchenjunga. The British mountaineer was describing his vision of the 8586-meter Mt. Kangchenjunga from the hill-station of Darjeeling. Kangchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world and has the thickest layers of granite in the Himalaya. Straddling Nepal and India, its vast massif gives birth to the great riverways of Asia: the Brahmaputra flows from the eastern glaciers, the Ganges from the western. In Tibetan its name means “Snow Mountain of Five Treasuries,” referring to reserves of salt, gold, turquoise, religious teachings, weapons, fruits and medicines believed to be concealed inside its five peaks….”
2016. “Hidden Paradises of the Himalaya: Kangchenjunga & Beyul.” In Alpinist 54.