The hidden mountains of China

For: Eduardo Martinez de Pison (Alvaro Sebastian photos)
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The first time I toured the southern Tibetan landscapes, its high valleys, its highest platforms and extraordinarily high mountains, was in spring 1986, during a long expedition to the north side of Monte Everest. I returned in 1997 on a long journey on their western and northern regions, intensely lonely and remote in the already widespread loneliness and remoteness accentuated Interior Asia.

But since 2007, maintained through a partnership with people traveling from "China Land of Adventure", eg Ricard Tomás and Sebastián Álvaro among other good friends, I could make several trips every year in the mountains and deserts of Central Asia China.

I have seen a Tibet much longer true that the administrative, a Tibet that, although not on the maps labeled with the name, takes its indisputable characters

On these trips we continued on more than one occasion in the footsteps of the Silk Road, or crossed the Gobi and Taklamakan. There have been also the brightness of the peaks of Tien Shan I crossed the steppe and Altun Mountains, Glacier chain Kunlún and forested Qilian Mountains. But mostly I have lived a Tibet much longer true that the administrative, a Tibet that, although not on the maps labeled with the name, takes its indisputable geographical features, Historic, cultural, religious and ethnic seamless from the Himalayas to the north of the steep high Qinghai region.

Among these high moorlands of remote mountains rise icecaps that people living at his feet, goloks, khampas, worshiped as tutelary deities. I mention these landscapes in a book about the experience of a trip for those large or neighboring lands, taking, lost and rediscovered, thousand scattered crossroads and temptations, the old way of ideas between East and West from Taxila, Pakistan, the coast of China, symbolized by a silk thread lying along one side to another of Eurasia. But we decided to dig deeper in the mountains taking the necessary data in the field to make a new book just focused on those mountains hidden. A site dedicated to a selection of these formidable peaks located beyond the Himalayas, hidden in the remote interior of China, no media celebrity, almost no data even in books and articles, and virtually no maps as used to manage in our mountains.

We decided to dig deeper into ridges taking the necessary data in the field to make a new book just focused on those mountains hidden

This new book, spent more than a year of projects, Travel, readings, Drawings, scriptures, models, testing and printing, is already finished and the bookstores will shortly, after the lethargy of summer. In the back room there geographic headaches, calculations altitudes and distances, collection chronicles forgotten mountaineers, cartographic sketch drawn, especially, many notes taken in the field with amazing views, radiant experiences of days and a few blizzards. Experiences of places, people, Profiles, colors, monasteries, of temporary and mild days.

This decedent is here, as, news and advance still a work done in a spirit of yesteryear and the desire to always travel writer: enter the wheel to travel read, travel writing and rereading to travel again, passing the baton from one hand to another. Only sometimes, those who open a case, as in this time, initially there is very little to read to travel. Now, Instead, cycle has already started.

In the back of this book's geographic headaches, calculations of distances and altitudes and mountaineers forgotten collection chronicles

The title is symbolic of our work Beyond Everest, referring to the situation and the meaning of the mountains described, and the publisher is responsible for its realization Elevation, known to be particularly skilled and qualified carrying mountain, in association with China Land of Adventure, who organized trips. The whole book is an idea and a work of friends. General Authors Thomas and I are Ricard, but with a chapter by Joaquin Pallás and high quality photographs which could only leave the chamber Sebastián Álvaro. It is a book made for pure pleasure.

While the highest mountains in Asia were explored and then systematically promoted since the nineteenth century and especially in the twentieth, other, among the many mountain ranges of the continent, lower and more distant from the British Empire, left out of the initial expeditionary activities. The difficulties of location and access to the bases of these mountains and the consequent poor geographic information about them helped form and chimeric vague ideas about their very high altitudes that spread in the West in the early twentieth century to the amazement of many. This then led to recognition projects and attempts to climb. But the relative persistence of these traits marginal until today also results in those valleys and ridges still achievable, unlike other famous mountain ranges, impossible since the great stimulus in many places of exploration.

In the landscape of Meili, del Amne Machin, of Minya Konka Mountain and Jade Dragon Snow have also had to attend to their senses and intense religious symbols

The first phase of Western explorers internment in these mountains hidden by the edge of the Kunlun and the cordillera Hengduan corresponded to incursions of people isolated in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and early twentieth twenty, as Pear, Rock, David-Neel, Kingdon-Ward, among others. Starting 1930 they entered geographers experts in these mountains and ripped the ascents of summits with the conquest of Minya Konka in 1932 by an American team. However, retired places in the West had acquired a double fame: first, having been given to two of those peaks, el Minya Konka y el Amne Machin, an altitude of about 30.000 feet, Everest higher than the, and second, having located the novelist J. Hilton its fantastic Shangri-La hidden somewhere among these remote mountains. The wide dissemination of both legends was renowned startup, on a geographical basis and even invented literary imprecise, the mountains that we describe in our book.

We have at your disposal in the pages of a book and the blinding snow of a mountain hidden

Addition, as so often happens in the mountains of the world, local traditional cultures here also attributed to this group consisting of clumps of ice a sacred summits. In the landscape of Meili, del Amne Machin, Minya Konka del y de la Snow Mountain Jade Dragon we had to deal, therefore, senses and their intense religious symbols.

Dear reader travel, geographies, hiker with backpack ready, I hope there, both on top of conceptual confusions clear as the blue edge horse strolling the patron god of the plateau. We have at your disposal in the pages of a book and the blinding snow of a mountain hidden.

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Comments (8)

  • Pablo Madero

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    It is a list of past collaborators you do this magazine. Thanks for giving us so many stories to those who dream of leaving and traveling through you. Another book that point to read. !Congratulations!

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  • Ann

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    Great. Wordless… I just want the book

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  • Isabel

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    Martinez de Pison is a luxury for any travel magazine. Few hoard knowledge and know so well without fuss or disclose affected poses so typical of adventurers. I hope his new book with great interest. Hope to overtake something before it goes on sale

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  • For Francisco Egea

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    Sounds great and I envy your superinteresante.y tours of the area

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  • Antonio Ruiz

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    I deeply admire the Eduardo, years. Remote countries not only studies but nobody called Segovia, to which he devoted another beautiful book

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  • Juancho

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    Have a more humble reader. Thanks, as always, the container is possible dreams Travels to the Past

    Answer

  • The travel magazine with stories Martinez de Pison presents "Beyond Everest" » The travel magazine with History

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    […] The Geographer, writer and mountaineer Eduardo Martinez de Pison, Contributor VaP., presented tomorrow at seven thirty pm in the Convent of Mercy in Soria, seat of the Dukes of Soria Foundation, his book “Beyond Everest. The hidden mountains of Asia”, with photographs by Sebastian Alvaro, a work of which we had occasion to speak here: https://www.viajesalpasado.com/las-montanas-escondidas-de-china/. […]

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