jimmy roberts

Here’s a timely tip if you’re off trekking in Nepal this autumn and are looking for some books to read on the trail. My travel diary Islands in the Snow is now available for the first time ever in paperback form. I’m sure you will enjoy it immensely.

Gradually I’m working through my Footsteps in the Mountain Travel Diaries series, revising and expanding the text and getting them professionally edited. The latest book to undergo this treatment is Islands in the Snow, the story of my trek around the Solu-Khumbu region of Nepal in 2009.

I recently wrote about Colonel Jimmy Roberts, the grandfather of trekking. Now I would like to introduce another important figure in the development of tourism in Nepal, a ballet dancer called Boris, whose colourful life reads like a surreal fairy tale.

Sixty-two years ago to the day Colonel Jimmy Roberts made the first ascent of Mera Peak with the Sherpa Sen Tenzing. This little postscript to the first ascent of Everest in 1953 may have been the birth of commercial trekking.

The great mountain explorer Bill Tilman made three treks in Nepal in 1949 and 1950. His second to the Annapurna region made him one of the first to explore an area which now sees thousands of tourists completing one of the world’s best known treks.

Machapuchare, the celebrated 6,993m peak in Nepal’s Annapurna range, is often given the ludicrous spelling Machhapuchhare, with two sets of double aitches. This post is all about how to spell the mountain correctly.

As the Everest season approaches we will be hearing a lot about the successes of western climbers in the Himalayas over the next few months, but very little about the superstars of high altitude mountaineering. It’s time this was rectified, so here are ten of the greatest tigers of the snow.

There are some facts about Mera Peak, one of Nepal’s most popular trekking peaks, that not many people know. This is partly the fault of adventure travel companies offering it as a trip, whose literature can range from vague to

Islands in the Snow is now available as a paperback

Revised digital edition of Islands of the Snow is now available

The marvellous story of Boris of Kathmandu

Colonel Jimmy Roberts and the first ascent of Mera Peak

Tilman’s expedition to the Annapurnas

How many aitches in Machapuchare?

10 great Sherpa mountaineers

7 things to know about Mera Peak