Mussoorie Writers: Bill Aitken reads from THE NANDA DEVI AFFAIR

The Chakkar will occasionally feature special videos made for Mussoorie Writers with permission on our website. Here is ‘Book Bytes’, featuring Bill Aitken reading from his 1994 book, The Nanda Devi Affair

"Contented, I sat back to breathe in the pleasure of the moment, and as I idly stretched on the warming air, the great moment happened: the top lair of cloud began to thin, and tantalisingly, the outlines of the main peak began to flicker into recognition.”

A Scot-turned-Indian and resident of Mussoorie, Bill Aitken is a travel writer and a journalist. His nonfiction book The Nanda Devi Affair, the story of chasing one of India’s highest peaks as his ‘great obsession’, was published in 1994. In this short ‘Book Bytes’ clip, Aitken reads a brief excerpt from the book, speaks about the enormous relief of surviving death’s door (“Bach Gya Sala!”) that led him to write this book, and about how living and traveling in the mountains influenced his writing process.

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Mussoorie Writers was founded in 2005 with the objective of celebrating Mussoorie’s literary heritage and encouraging an interest in books and natural history. In collaboration with the Hanifl Centre for Outdoor and Environmental Study at Woodstock School, Mussoorie Writers is committed to focusing attention on the Himalayas, as a source of inspiration and inquiry, for authors and readers from India and abroad. Check out MussoorieWriters.com.