New podcast! Talking with @peterhhansen.bsky.social about how #mountaineering & #modernity emerged together & how the idea of the 'summit position' came to encompass concepts of sovereignty and empire from the #Alps to #Everest. shorturl.at/oI5fh @waymarks.bsky.social @calmandfearless.bsky.social

BBC are currently replaying their 1981 adaptation of James Hilton's Lost Horizon. #Orientalism on steroids with some very questionable accents. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/serie... Recommend @waymarks.bsky.social #OtherEverests chapter on Western escapism in the #Himalaya for context shorturl.at/Pchxp

बाउ को धुरी छैन “Father Has No Roof over his head” An #OtherEverests #ConfluenceCollective exhibition in Kalimpong 21-27 February 2026 shorturl.at/YrbVv Lost archives & hidden histories of Indigenous high-altitude workers from the 1920s & 1930s. @waymarks.bsky.social @andrewwyatt.bsky.social

Forthcoming for historians of exploration & film studies: "Explorers on Screen: Adventure! Danger! Romance!" Sue Matheson, Cynthia J. Miller, eds. (Edinburgh University Press: June, 2026). Full Info: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-explore... #exploration #film #history #empire #place #gender 🗃️

New on advance access: "Tibetan Gift-Giving, British Indifference, and the Erasure of Provenance in Colonial India" by @tibetcurator.bsky.social (@uomsalc.bsky.social) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

Check out @waymarks.bsky.social's review of @sbilston.bsky.social's "The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder and Obsession," published in 2025 by @harvardpress.bsky.social; review now available @hnetreviews.bsky.social #envhist #envhum #plantstudies www.h-net.org/reviews/show...

'Mountain Man' - glaciologist, Phuntsho Tshering, the only man permitted in Bhutan’s sacred mountains chronicles humanity’s impact.

Check out @waymarks.bsky.social's review of @josephaseeley.bsky.social's "Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria," published in 2024 by @cornellupress.bsky.social; review now available @hnetreviews.bsky.social networks.h-net.org/group/review...

"Border of Water and Ice is a fascinating, richly researched, and accessibly recounted history that will appeal to a wide range of scholars variously interested in empires, environments, borderlands, and area studies" Thank you @waymarks.bsky.social for the close reading!

🌟 New blog post ✍️ There have been many books about Sherpa mountaineers over the years, but few have been written from the perspective of Sherpas themselves ⛏️🗻 One that comes close is Sherpa by Pradeep Bashyal and Ankit Babu Adhikari, which I read recently 📚 www.markhorrell.com/blog/2025/12...

Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Chomolungma 50 years ago this week. Jenny Hall recounts this milestone and considers why she isn't more celebrated: theconversation.com/fifty-years-...

I've just been alerted to @waymarks.bsky.social's PhD dissertation 'Empirical adventurers: Science and imperial exploration in East Tibet, 1900-1949', which is well worth a look here: eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/55.... Lots of interesting stuff happening in the mountain history space!

Great to see Exploration Map by Map out in print. I had a blast writing about some epic feats of exploration & migration in Latin America, from the Mexica to Magellan. Beautifully illustrated with specially commissioned maps, it’s on sale now: www.dk.com/uk/book/9780...

Today's news reminds me of the first visit of women to the South Pole in 1969

Major new publication for the #TravelWriting Studies folk - Twenty-First-Century Perspectives on British Travel Writing, edited by the dream-team of @afquaireau.bsky.social, Emanuelle Peraldo and Samia Ounoughi. Lots of excellent stuff in here and some interesting perspectives on contemporary work.

Book is happening – we've got a cover! 'Empire, Tourism, and Colonial Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka' coming later this year from Leiden University Press!

'Kumano: Journey of a Maverick Scholar' | Japanology Plus: "Scholar Minakata Kumagusu made contributions to biology, folklore and other fields. He laid the foundation for environmental conservation in Japan. We explore the environments that inspired his work." www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/...

Joseph Rock took stunning photographs of the Tibet-China borderlands between 1922 and 1935, funded in part by the National Geographic Society. During this span, Rock wrote nine article for National Geographic; some were illustrated with gorgeous hand-colored prints. 🧵 🗃️ 🀄️📚 #WyrdWednesday

Our followers may be aware of the recent passing of Richard Fortey, a great palaeontologist and user of the Museum’s Library and Archives. A brilliant science communicator with a penchant for fungi and fungus gnats, his Dry Store Room No.1 was a classic. To us and many others, Richard was too.

Naturalists' Notebooks exhibition at the lovely Linnean Society, London (11 March-20 September 2025, Tuesdays to Fridays). @linneansociety.bsky.social

For the first time, we've compiled a Spring #TibetReadingList with over 25 titles available now for people of all ages! Enjoy perusing the list and let us know what you're reading at the moment 📚 highpeakspureearth.com/high-peaks-p...

Very excited to have my first article published! It's about why British mountaineers travelled to Norway in the nineteenth century and the transnational networks they formed. Open access in Studies in Travel Writing here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 🏔️

It’s been a long time since I read ‘Voyage of the Narwhal’ and ‘Servants of the Map.’ Reading this makes me wonder if I should revisit them. lareviewofbooks.org/article/doub...

CFP Edited Collection: "Imagining Explorers: From National Narratives to Public History, Explorers and Exploration in the Public Realm" via H-HistGeog: networks.h-net.org/group/announ... 🗃️

"Everest through the lens" - another chance to see the exhibition marking the centenary of the first Everest expeditions in the 1920s @rgsibg.bsky.social (20 Jan 2025 - 15 Apr 2025, Monday-Friday: 10.00am-5.00pm, free entry) www.rgs.org/events/upcom... [1/2]

BBC News - Frozen in time: Rare early images of the Himalayas from Italian pioneer www.bbc.com/news/article...

Groundbreaking botanical discoveries on Captain Cook voyage were thanks to Indigenous people

Borderland imaginaries. The Western literary imagination in the Tibetan borderlands. CHAPTER 5 - Far-away frontiers and spiritual sanctuaries Occidental escapism in the high Himalaya. rb.gy/578vsf AUTHOR: @waymarks.bsky.social #Himalaya #Tibet #ShangriLa #HiddenLands

China seeks to replace the globally recognized name #Tibet with #Xizang, blogs.soas.ac.uk/china-instit... #China

Although the promos undersell its broad content, Other Everests covers many more Everest-adjacent issues, including climate change, industrialization, visitors to the region, and nationalism. I highly recommend it, even if you don't care about Everest. suburbanmountaineer.com/2025/01/31/c...

Today in the ARB: @maxmorch.bsky.social reviews “Other Everests: one mountain, many worlds” (Manchester University Press) "Everest's role in the world is far more complex and diverse than being a mere backdrop for Western climbers" asianreviewofbooks.com/content/othe...

Excited to see treasuryoflives.bsky.social on Bluesky! For anyone interested in Tibetan/Himalayan Studies, this is an indispensable resource. treasuryoflives.org

I was intrigued by the new insight on Wanda Rutkiewicz’s success in the Himalayas. A lot of the discussions in other books on gender and climbing have also been repetitive about women filling nontraditional roles. 'Other Everests' was not... suburbanmountaineer.com/2025/01/31/c...

Just back off holiday where this was one of my reads. Aims to broaden the scope of discussion around Everest and succeeds extremely well in this. So much of our conception of the world's highest mountain has become calcified by simple narratives to which this collection is a useful corrective.

She complained that life in Hangzhou was stressful and competitive. “But today I am Drolma,” she said, “a #Tibetan girl who is free and joyful and lives without care.” @jbher.bsky.social @foreignpolicy.com foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/24/c...

Come speak at our workshop! Curzon, Contacts & Contexts: Engaging with Imperial Histories at Kedleston Hall at the University of Derby from 19-20 June, Supported by the @paulmelloncentr.bsky.social Send us an abstract by 7 March - see the call for papers for more details. Please share widely!

"The curatorial staff are not made up of pith-helmeted imperialists, as outsiders might imagine, but internal conversations about, say, decolonisation are not heard publicly, and staffers sometimes fear speaking out."

When a mountain is a goddess. Ruth Gamble provides perhaps the definitive statement on the spiritual geography and ontological pluriverse of #Everest #Chomolungma #OtherEverests CHAPTER 1 - The immovable goddess: The long life of Miyo Lang Sangma. www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781...

"They present to his mind a succession of events, each so vast as to be beyond his finite comprehension; ages of tranquillity, with lands and seas teeming with life ..." - G.A. Mantell, 'The Medals of Creation' (1844). 🗃️ 19.bbk.ac.uk/article/id/1...

Our new book Other Everests: One Mountain, Many Worlds (Manchester University Press 2024) now Open Access/Free to Download #Chomolungma #Himalaya #Tibet #Nepal #India #IndigenousHistory #HighAltWork #Mountaineering www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781...

Next up: “Come to Java”: Colonial Tourism and the Fragile Illusion of an “Island Paradise”, by Arnout van der Meer, on Java's mountain resorts as colonial contact zones: doi.org/10.1017/S016...

The arrival of the first Tibetan monks in Europe was surrounded with controversy, deeply straining Anglo-Tibetan relations. One group of monks, arriving in 1924, performed Buddhist rituals before showings of the silent film Epic of Everest, sparking the “Dancing Lamas” affair. /🧵 🗃️ 📜

A review of Dawn Hollis's new book "Mountains Before Mountaineering." jeremybassetti.com/axis-mundi/2...

"Precisely because they are so fickle, opportunistic and superficial in their attitude to speculation, historians seem to change popular theories often, treating them not as foundations to be built on, but as seasonal outfits to clothe the facts they have so assiduously gathered."

Reading the excellent Other Everests by @jonwestaway.bsky.social & others. A fantastic & much-needed critical re-evaluation of Everest/Chomolungma, with gender and decolonisation at its core.

A handy guide to the contents of our 'Other Everests' book - my last blog post of 2024: eccentricparabola.blogspot.com/2024/12/expl...

'In Search of the Hidden Lands: The Hero’s Journey of Explorer Ian Baker,' by Rebecca Wong | Buddhistdoor Global BDG: www.buddhistdoor.net/features/in-...

Cantonese tea caddy painted with Europeans playing cards. 18th C, enamelled copper. In the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

CFP for Panel at RGS-IBG International Conference 2025 - Dead bodies on Everest: the post-mortal personhood of human remains in the cryosphere @jonwestaway.bsky.social | networks.h-net.org/group/announ...