Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer

I took this book along on our trip to Coonoor during the independence day weekend. We had three days there and we did not want to do the typical whirlwind tour of touristy places so i hoped to have a quite vacation with mein, meri pathni & yeh book.

P was sure i would not even get half way through it. I hadn't read a book since DaVinci code, which i read over 3 weeks (!!!!) so i had the track record to prove her right. Both she and i were in for a surprise. I practically did not put the book down through the trip and in fact finished it in 2 days (a personal best)!

The book is a very detailed account of Jon Krakauer's expedition to Mount Everest in 1996 which killed 8 people on May 11. Jon a veteran mountaineer is contracted by the Outside online magazine to go on an Everest expedition to write an account of the commercialization of Mount Everest, however Jon convinces the bosses at the magazine to have him climb to the summit.

Jon about his experiences and the deaths during the expedition for the Outside online magazine and that evokes a major backlash from fellow climbers of the expedition and surviving family members. Jon then writes this book after more extensive research and conversation with fellow climbers to clear the facts.

It is a fascinating book that is chilling, revealing and full of lessons that you can learn from the experiences and psyche of climbers that embark on Everest expeditions.

The book contains many revealing facts about Everest expeditions.

For instance, did you know that climbing Everest from the Nepali (South Eastern) side is considered easier than climbing from the Chinese (North Eastern) side though (at least until a while back) it cost a lot less (about 50% lesser) to climb from the Chinese side (that's right, Chinese is cheaper even for the Everest).

It was revealing to learn also that Everest is no exception to littering as a result of a very large number of commercial expeditions (read tourist expeditions). But at least they are doing something about the littering on Everest and every expedition is expected to bring back a certain quantity of garbage back when they return. Also they are attempting to limit the number of ascents in a year. Would be nice (though far fetched i guess) if we started doing something like this at the popular tourist destinations in India.

Few thoughts that stuck with me from the book were how it is sometimes not such a big deal (at least among the mountaineering community) to scale the summit (especially with modern tools & bottled Oxygen), what is more important is to make it back alive to tell the story.

I may never even come close to climbing even to Everest base camp, at approx 17000 feet (will conveniently blame it on my fear of heights) however the importance of sticking to the planned time of descent whether everyone in the team made it to the summit or not is something that i will never forget. A failure to do this fact probably led to some of the deaths on Rab Hall's team. Made me think about the importance of establishing threshold limits in every plan and ruthlessly & unemotionally taking a decision on hitting these thresholds.

It was stunning to read how tremendous personal drive (almost to the extent of selfishness) propels these climbers as they push themselves closer to the Summit and they don't have time to pause for fellow climbers that may be in trouble on the way up.

The images and experiences of Rob Hall, Scott Fischer, Beck Weathers, Andy Harris, Yasuko Namba, Doug Hansen, Ang Dorje, Lopsang Sherpa, Jon Krakauer & their fellow climbers will always stay with me.

The book is a must read if you are interested in adventure expeditions and what you can learn from them.

Now, I am looking for a movie version of the book that i could buy. If you do come across this please let me know.