Mussoorie-born-and-bred writer Stephen Alter has often been called a “pahadi American”. He laughs off the label. “If somebody asks where I’m from, I say Mussoorie, but then usually people don’t know where that is, so I explain it’s in the Himalaya,” says Alter, 62, on the phone from Denver, Colorado. “I try to avoid labels of nationality. I don’t think of myself necessarily as an American, though my passport says that. At the same time, I am an Overseas Citizen of India. These labels are largely meaningless. If someone pushes me, I say I’m from the Himalaya. That’s very much a part of my identity.”
The mountains have framed Alter’s life and works and his latest, Wild Himalaya, is a wide-ranging account of the mountains, told largely through the perspective of its birds and animal folklore intertwined with science and social history. The Himalaya have repeatedly drawn writers and Alter’s own favourites include Wade Davis’s Into the Silence and Frank Smythe’s Valley of Flowers.
“It was daunting because it’s like visiting territory that everyone has already visited, but, for me, it was about looking at the mountain range through the lens of natural history,” he says. “The idea was to try and take a fresh look at it in the 21st century, on stories of exploration, plant hunters, the mammals, the way in which people perceived each of these different parts of nature.”
Wild Himalaya follows the steps of explorers over the centuries-scientists, researchers, colonialists and glory-seekers. Alter tries to trek in the Himalaya at least twice a year and each outing, he says, brings a fresh perspective. “We think of it as an eternal, immutable, unchanging phenomenon but the truth is the mountains are constantly changing-the climate, biodiversity and culture change,” he says. “Migration is a huge part of the Himalaya story. People, plants, glaciers and even the rocks are migrating.”
Capturing this uncertainty and dynamism is what makes for good mountain travel writing, he feels. “The weather changes rapidly, you get lost more often and often find the best stories when lost. If you go from one valley to the next, language, dialects, customs and beliefs change and good mountain writing takes that into account.”
Alter has written 20 books till now, including fiction, travelogues, non-fiction and children’s books. “If I was only writing one kind of book, I would get bored and my readers would get bored,” he says. Having children as an audience is never boring and often trickier. “They read my books more closely than adults so they ask more difficult questions,” he says, laughing. “Adults will generally say ‘I loved your book, I thought it was terrific’ at which point you realise they read about 30 per cent, whereas the child will ask why in chapter six did you kill off Pradip? And then you have to answer because you know that they have read chapters six, seven and eight.”
Wild Himalaya took him three years to finish, though he normally takes about a year and a half on a project. “It was rewarding, but exhausting. When I finally finished, I was glad to move on to something shorter,” he says. “To go from that to a novel which is primarily coming from my imagination is a wonderful relief in a sense,” he says. “I can just sit at my desk and figure things out rather than go to Nepal or Arunachal Pradesh to try and collect information.”
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