The Indian Alps and How We Crossed Them: A Tour In the Interior of the Himalayas by a Lady Pioneer

Nina Elizabeth Mazuchelli, The Indian Alps and How We Crossed Them: A Tour In the Interior of the Himalayas by a Lady Pioneer, New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1875

612 pages, 10 colour chromolithographic plates, 1 black and white folded map and numerous black and white illustrations, brown cloth with attractive tooling on the upper cover, all edges gilt
10.25 x 7.75 in (26.3 x 20 cm)

This book is one of the early mountaineering classics of Himalayan travel, and one of the few early exploration books that was not primarily a hunting expedition. Elizabeth Sarah Mazuchelli, known as Nina (1832-1914), was living in Darjeeling, India, with her husband, a chaplain in the British army, when she became determined to make an extended tour of the glaciers of the eastern Himalayas.

Following the Nepal-Sikkim frontier along the Singailila Ridge & while at Darjeeling, they set off on a journey to explore the glaciers of the eastern Himalayas to the Singalila Ridgeand Pass with much baggage, taking with them many coolies to bear their supplies.

Accompanied by the District Officer and an army of bearers, they set forth with Nina ensconced in a sort of sedan chair and before long were hopelessly lost in the snowfields. Their survival was just fools' luck. As Jane Robinson concludes in Wayward Women, 'It was a farcical expedition and Nina was the first to admit it, making her account an affectionate burlesque. But Nina's account has become by default a classic of mountaineering literature she was, after all, the first Englishwoman to have travelled so far into the eastern Himalaya (they all but reached the Tibetan border before turning back) a real 'Lady Pioneer'.

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