Himalayas

Jerzy Kukuczka of Poland, one of the world's most prominent mountain climbers, died while attempting to climb Lhotse in the Himalayas a few days ago, according to a report from Nepal. Kukuczka, 40, was the only man besides Reinhold Messner of Italy to climb all 14 of the world's peaks higher than 8,000 meters (26,000 feet). Lhotse is next to Everest, the world's highest mountain, and has the highest mortality rate of any peak. Only nine climbers have reached the summit; eight have died trying.

Maurice Herzog, a French mountaineer who became a hero to his country in 1950 when he and a fellow climber became the first men to successfully scale a peak of more than 26,000 feet, has died. He was 93. Herzog, who wrote a best-selling account of his harrowing ascent of the Himalayan mountain known as Annapurna, died Friday in France of natural causes, said Pierre You, president of the French Federation of Mountaineering and Climbing. Herzog had lived near Paris. In a tribute, French President Francois Hollande said Herzog's historic climb was "engraved enduringly in our collective memory.

A transparent Himalayan dawn was just breaking when we paused to catch our breath. Rivulets of sweat trickled down our faces in spite of the cool breeze blowing from the snowfields above. The thin, pure air intoxicated us. For hours in the predawn darkness we had relied on faint starlight to illuminate the narrow valley trail as we weaved our way through shadows created by monstrous boulders. When the first peaks were struck by the rising sun we felt like dancing in exhilaration.

"High Ground" is a moving documentary that is both the film it presents itself to be and something more. And that something more turns out to have the biggest, most lasting impact. Nominally the story of healing and mental rehabilitation, of a mountaineering expedition in the Himalayas for 11 wounded and traumatized combat veterans, its most compelling segments deal with the pain, not the triumph. In its ability to let us hear firsthand what life-and-death combat does to the human body and spirit, this film has few peers.

Michael Palin may be best known for his roles in "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and the highly irreverent film "Life of Brian," but it is through his travels that many of us feel a common bond. In 1988, he undertook a globe-circling trip for the BBC that became the book "Around the World in 80 Days." "Highlights for me included the passage through the Corinth canal, the week on the dhow, my first visit to China and a stunningly beautiful rail crossing of America," he wrote.

A barefoot holy man stood imperiously in the middle of the road just as our four-wheel-drive reached the last ridge overlooking the Sutlej River. Dilarum Sharma, our driver, pulled over, and the holy man gave his blessing, pressed red paste (signifying awareness) to Sharma's forehead and offered him a few kernels of sweet, popcorn-like prasad, a blessed offering. "Siva insurance," Sharma explained, referring to the Hindu god of destruction and creation. "Don't be worrying," he continued.

An avalanche swept down Mt. Pumori in the Himalayas and killed four climbers.

A bus fell into a ditch Friday near the holy town of Badrinath in the Himalayas, killing at least 30 Hindu pilgrims and seriously injuring 12 others, the United News of India said. It said the driver lost control of the bus on a curve on the hilly road about 190 miles northeast of New Delhi.

An eight-member, American-led team trying to scale the 26,906-foot Cho Oyu peak in the Himalayas has pitched its second bivouac camp, the Ministry of Tourism said Monday. It said the camp was established at 20,800 feet on April 20, only three days after the party, which includes a British climber, set up its first camp at 19,420 feet. The climbers hope to reach the summit in May. Led by attorney James Frush, 34, of Trinidad, Colo., the team is preparing for a 1988 climb of Mt.

Re "You Call That Surviving?" (by John Rabe, Jan. 27): The most astounding story of man against the elements I have ever heard of is told in the book "The Long Walk," by Slavomir Rawicz. Rawicz and a small group of fellow prisoners escaped a Soviet labor camp in 1941, then walked out of Siberia, through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet and over the Himalayas to British India. They faced extremes of cold, heat, hunger and thirst, and several died along the way--all because they wanted to be free.

Jon Fitzgerald's documentary "The Highest Pass" ventures from Rishikesh in northern India up and up into the Himalayas to track six men and one woman - all Westerners - as they follow a 27-year-old yogi in a motorcycle caravan to the highest drivable road in the world. For the team, one of whom (narrator-writer Adam Schomer) has just learned how to ride a motorcycle in the weeks prior, the excursion seems a little more daring than usual since Anand Mehrotra, their handsome guide, has never made the pilgrimage himself.

Francois Driard enters a cave dug into the steep Himalayan hillside, scares off a mouse and, in a twice-weekly ritual, wipes mold from several plate-sized wheels of cheese sitting on crude shelves against the wall. Voila ! High-end French cheese has reached a new level, literally, with Driard's farm an hour from Katmandu, where the 32-year-old has become what he believes is the only French cheese maker in the Himalayas. He acknowledges that it's not the by-the-book operation you'd find under Europe's rigorous hygiene and certification requirements.

The Lakotas and the Black Hills The Struggle for Sacred Ground Jeffrey Ostler Viking: 228 pp., $22.95 Despite the presence of Mt. Rushmore, the Lakotas, who have lived in that region since the late 1700s and early 1800s, believe that at least a portion of the Black Hills is still rightfully theirs. In 1877, the Lakotas rejected the $102 million the government offered them for the land, saying "The Black Hills are not for sale." In 1985, New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley introduced a bill that would return 18% of the Black Hills to the Lakotas but it failed to pass.

My father had a good heart, but he had a bad heart, if you know what I mean. Musical and charming, he was something of a voluptuary. On sunny weekends he preferred to sit in our living room, listening to Chopin or Sarah Vaughan LPs instead of playing tennis or jogging. At 52, Dad began showing signs of heart disease. His doctor enrolled him in a modest exercise program and told him that, if he could manage it, he should try to walk around the block once a day. That was in 1983.

IF YOU sit at the table in the window at Tara's Himalayan Cuisine, a new cafe on Venice Boulevard in Palms, you can study a large panoramic photo under the tabletop glass. It's a scene of the mountain region from which the cafe takes its name, but rather than the more common sight of peaks with no sign of human habitation other than prayer flags, it pictures the city of Pokhara, Nepal.

High in the Himalayas, above this peaceful valley where farmers till a patchwork of emerald-green fields, an icy lake fed by melting glaciers waits to become a "tsunami from the sky." The lake is swollen dangerously past normal levels, thanks to the global warming that is causing the glaciers to retreat at record speed. But no one knows when the tipping point will come and the lake can take no more, bursting its banks and sending torrents of water crashing into the valley below.

IN one of the most deadly climbing incidents in the Himalayas in recent years, an avalanche last month killed 18 members of a French team attempting to scale Kang Guru in Nepal, a 22,903-foot peak near Annapurna. The slide swept a base camp off the mountain, burying all seven French climbers and 11 Sherpas in their tents. Four other Sherpas survived. The climbers had reached high base camp at 16,617 feet when a fierce snowstorm drove them back to low camp, at 13,779 feet.

When I asked Nepali trekking guide Padam Magar the name of a distant, towering mountain--the tallest I had ever seen--he stifled a smile. "It has no name," he said. "It is not a mountain. It's just a ridge." We soon rounded a bend in the trail that afforded a wider view. I froze in my tracks when the wall of white that had captivated me moments earlier was suddenly dwarfed by Dhaulagiri, the sixth-highest peak in the world.

High in the Himalayas, above this peaceful valley where farmers till a patchwork of emerald-green fields, an icy lake fed by melting glaciers waits to become a "tsunami from the sky. " The lake is swollen dangerously past normal levels, thanks to the global warming that is causing the glaciers to retreat at record speed. But no one knows when the tipping point will come and the lake can take no more, bursting its banks and sending torrents of water crashing into the valley below.

Last week's riots in Lhasa, the historic capital of Tibet, seemed to come out of nowhere -- Tibetan protesters marched through the streets, burning vehicles and attacking police and ordinary Chinese, leaving as many as 100 dead. Many American media outlets reported the demonstrations as if they were a complete surprise.