SHIPTON, Eric. Nanda Devi … With a Foreword by Hugh Ruttledge. London, Hodder & Stoughton, [1936.]
8vo. Original cloth, map endpapers; pp. xvi, 310; 27 plates after photographs, each with captioned tissue-guard, line drawings by Bip Pares; cloth a little bit marked and rubbed, edges a trifle spotted, a very good copy with bookplate on fly-leaf verso.
First edition.Both Eric Shipton and H.W. Tilman were members of British expeditions to the Himalayas in the 1930's. During the Ruttledge-led Everest 1933 expedition, Shipton conceived a plan for a small-scale expedition that would not attack "lofty summits of the earth" but would, instead, "wander...through the labyrinth of unexplored valleys". In 1934, with Tilman and 3 Nepalese porters, Shipton pursued this plan by penetrating the Rishi Gorge in the Western Himalayas to reach the Nanda Devi 'Inner Sanctuary'. They thus became the first to reach the foot of Nanda Devi itself, "the greatest mountain in the British Empire" (Ruttledge in his Foreword to the book). Tilman returned in 1936 to make the first successful ascent of the mountain (related in his Ascent of Nanda Devi, 1937).
Neate S63; Yakushi S209a; Perret 4042.
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