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What possessed three 1950s housewives to defy convention and set off together for the forbidden reaches of the Himalayas? And what did they find when they got there? Sally Williams talks to the women today Fifty years ago three English housewives set off on a remarkable adventure. Anne Davies, 35, Eve Sims, 25, and Antonia Deacock, 26, who had no previous experience of overland expeditions, embarked on a journey everyone said could not be done by women: a 16,000-mile drive to India and back, and a 300-mile trek on foot into Zanskar, the remote Tibetan Buddhist kingdom. They were the...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The United States will search for remains of several World War Two aircraft and airmen lost over the forested mountains of India's northeast, a U.S. commander said on Wednesday. The U.S. military says it lost some 430 Americans in 90 planes in India while they were on missions to resupply China's besieged army in the city of Kunming, desperately trying to hold out against the invading Japanese during World War Two. The wreckage of six U.S. planes have been found in the jungles of India's Arunachal Pradesh state, giving the U.S. Joint Prisoners of War/Missing in...

Regional World War plane wreckages found in ArunachalItanagar (PTI): Arunachal Pradesh is gradually becoming the missing link of hundreds of war heroes who disappeared while flying fighter planes during the Second World War in the eastern front. And no else but the state Governor Gen (Retd) J J Singh, former chief of Army staff, took notes on Monday evening from Oken Tayeng who had already spotted wreckages of aircraft of the Allied Forces in eight locations in Lohit, Dibang valley, Upper Siang and Papum Pare districts. It all started when Tayeng, a local tour operator, joined an American investigator...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - In honour of the crouching, naked blonde painted on its nose, its pilot had named his bomber the "Hot as Hell". But it was a freezing and stormy day as the American B-24 Liberator made its way across the Himalayas on Jan 25, 1944, flying what was known as "the Hump", perhaps the most dangerous route in air transport history. It was one of nine American planes that went down that day as they tried to resupply China's besieged army in the city of Kunming, desperately trying to hold out against the invading Japanese during World...

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — The families of eight U.S. military men who died in a 1944 plane crash in the Himalayas want the Pentagon to step up efforts to recover their remains from the crash site discovered last year by a mountaineer. Exactly what happened to the B-24 bomber dubbed "Hot as Hell," was a mystery for more than 60 years. It disappeared while on a flight from Kunming, China, to Chabua, India, to pick up weapons and other supplies and return to base in China. Clayton Kuhles of Prescott, Ariz., a mountaineer who has made it his mission to...

DEFENCE: INDIA-CHINA The China Doctrine-II India has woken up to China's new army capabilities. A major overhaul is needed. Saikat Datta On a visit on December 2 to the Sino-Indian border, Union defence minister A.K. Antony gave voice to a concern that has been getting reiterated for long by his country's military. "It's an eye-opener," said a shocked Antony, as he toured forward posts in Nathu La. "There is no comparison between the two sides. Infrastructure on the Chinese side is far superior. They have gone far in developing their infrastructure," he told journalists who had flown in with him...

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan said on Monday it had lodged protests with Britain and India over a joint military exercise in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir. Britain's Royal Marines last week kicked off 25 days of joint high-altitude exercises with the Indian army in the northern Ladakh region, which is part of Indian-administered Kashmir. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan each hold part of Kashmir but lay claim to all of it. Kashmir has sparked two of their three wars since independence 60 years ago. "We have sent demarches to both the British government and the Indian government," foreign ministry spokeswoman...

India opens up strategic glacier in Himalayas to tourists NEW DELHI, September 14 (RIA Novosti) - India has opened up a strategic glacier in the Himalayas to tourists, the Defense Ministry said. At 5,000 to 7,000 meters above sea level, the Siachen glacier is the highest battlefield in the world. It has been contested by India and Pakistan since 1984, when the Indian Army occupied it. The ministry said the glacier was being opened up because a recent thaw in Indian-Pakistani relations had made it possible, and because the area represented "an ideal venue for tourism." The glacier, which is...

Three months after the RCMP began arresting 18 suspects accused of plotting terror attacks in Canada, an investigation by the National Post has uncovered a web of links to Pakistan. Today, in the first of four parts, the role of a Pakistani training camp is revealed.- - - BALAKOT, Pakistan - A worn footpath climbs from the Kaghan Valley highway into the lush mountains above the River Kunar, on Kashmir's western frontier. The locals all know where it leads. An hour's walk up the steep trail there is a training camp built by Islamic militants called Madrassa Syed Ahmed Shaheed...

A new weather station is expected to show the extent of warming in the Himalayas, one of the world's biggest deposits of ice and a key source of fresh water. It has been installed on the longest Himalayan glacier, in the Everest region of Nepal. There have been numerous reports of glacial retreats in the Himalayas over the years, but this weather station will be able to quantify changes to the local climate. One part of it has been set up on the Nguzumpa Glacier to record solar radiation, relative humidity, air and soil temperature, wind speed and direction, and...

Nawa Jigtar was working in the village of Ghat, in Nepal, when the sound of crashing sent him rushing out of his home. He emerged to see his herd of cattle being swept away by a wall of water.[snip] When Ghat was destroyed, in 1985, such incidents were rare - but not any more. Last week, scientists revealed that there has been a tenfold jump in such catastrophes in the past two decades, the result of global warming. Himalayan glacier lakes are filling up with more and more melted ice and 24 of them are now poised to burst their...

BANGKOK, Thailand, September 6, 2005 (ENS) - The mountains of Asia, including the towering Himalayas, are facing accelerating threats from a rapid rise in roads, settlements, overgrazing and deforestation, experts are warning in a new report. New calculations by experts with the Chinese Academy of Sciences indicate that China’s highland glaciers are shrinking by an amount equivalent to all the water in the giant Yellow River each year.There is concern that the region’s water supplies, fed by glaciers and the monsoons and vital for around half the world’s population, may be harmed alongside the area’s abundant and rich wildlife. "Mountain...

Conqueror of Everest Sir Edmund Hillary has urged world governments to protect the Himalayas from climate change. The World Heritage Committee, which supervises protection of sites of special interest, meets this week. Environmental campaigners, backed by Sir Edmund, want the committee to put the Sagarmatha National Park in the Himalayas on its danger list. This would mean governments are legally bound to protect it - which, they say, means cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In May 1953 Sir Edmund Hillary joined forces with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay on the first successful ascent of the world's highest mountain. 'Severe floods' Ever since, he...

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Did Russian explorers discover Khyunglung Nulkhar? Russian explorers announced this week to have discovered mid-September of the ruins of Khyunglung Nulkhar (Tibet), mythical capital of the State de Shangshung disappeared in VIIIe century, but the authenticity of this discovery is questioned by a travel agency which affirms y to have organized a trekking last June. "We are the first Europeans to have put the foot" at Khyunglung Nulkhar (money Palate of Garuda), declared Iouri Zakharov, the head of forwarding, at the time of the press conference in Moscow. This member of the Russian Academy of the natural science estimates...

NEW DELHI : The Army wants to go global now. No, it's not deploying troops overseas or setting up integrated theatre commands across different continents. Instead, the Army is keen to make its specialised unconventional warfare schools into "centres of international excellence". The Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School at Vairengte (Mizoram) is already attracting foreign armies - from the US , France , Russia , Kazakhstan , Tajikistan and Vietnam , among several others - in hordes to learn how to "fight the guerrilla like a guerrilla". The Army now plans something similar for another unique institution - the High-Altitude...

Link post, to allow interested readers access to the thread below in the FR "chat" section, where any commentary should be posted. Geology Picture of the Week, March 28-April 3, 2004: Himalayan Vista

OK, there are a couple of options here. If you click the picture below, you'll get a larger version of it. Two links are provided below the picture; one goes to the NASA Earth Observatory page, and the other goes to the "Find Mount Everest" site at Johnson Space Center that has an interactive view of the whole place (there is a separate page with the highest peaks indicated. Forget Everest -- try to find Xixabangma without looking at that page!) On Top of the World: Everest and Makalu Find Mount Everest

Shrouded in Ice Famed mountaineer Reinhold Messner's latest book raises more questions than it answers by Tom Vannah - December 11, 2003 COURTESY OF THE MOUNTAINEERS BOOKS Feature On the subject of Reinhold Messner's first really audacious climb, there are a few things we know for sure. We know, for example, that Messner's objective in June 1970 was to climb to the top of Nanga Parbat, the world's ninth highest mountain, one of the most isolated and dangerous places on earth. Though not as well known to the general public as other peaks in the Himalayas, Nanga Parbat in Pakistan...

Link Post: Geology Picture of the Week, July 14-20, 2002

These two images show exactly the same area, part of the Kunlun fault in northern Tibet. The image on the left was created using the best global topographic data set previously available, the U.S. Geological Survey’s GTOPO30. In contrast, the much more detailed image on the right was generated with data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), which collected enough measurements to map 80 percent of Earth’s landmass at this level of precision. In a new partnership with the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, data from the SRTM are now being shared with researchers around the world to improve...