Stephen Alter on his love, concern for magnificent but fragile Himalayas

He’s an award winning author, naturalist and conservationist who has spent his life reading, writing and travelling the length and breadth of the Himalayas. An atheist born to missionary parents, he has been on countless pilgrimages, treading the footsteps of ancient travellers moved by the sublime nature of the world’s youngest and most restless mountains. An American passport holder, he feels more at home in Mussoorie, where he’s lived most of his life (his father served as headmaster of Woodstock School there) than anywhere in the States.

As I ready to e-meet Stephen Alter for coffee, I envy him his beautiful