India’s Nanda Devi, part one: encountering a mountain goddess (an introduction)

‍In the freezing night, a mountain makes fire

In winter, the holy city of Rishikesh is a dream. Perched on the banks of the Ganges, pilgrims, holymen and yoga-loving travellers jostle for serenity as the cool mountain air mingles with the beaming Indian sunshine, and the sounds, sights and smells of life among the ghats and temples that line the river.

Ten hours uphill, however, life is hard. Joshimath, the final town before India meets Chinese Tibet, is in effect the end of the road. With the border closed, and many neighbourhoods condemned by subsiding hillsides, the town was almost completely abandoned when I arrived in temperatures falling below minus twenty degrees centigrade.

In January 2026, I made a journey high into Garhwal-Kumaon Range of the world’s greatest system of mountains, the Himalayas. Arriving at nightfall, as our rickety bus pulled into town, I was bewildered to witness, at what is a barely survivable edge of civilisation, the sight of a mountainside on fire.

At first, I assumed this was the result of slash and burn, but it soon became clear the fire was on cliffs far too steep for farming. Asking the locals, I was told that rocks falling from the mountains sometimes set the dry vegetation ablaze. This was the driest winter since records began, and fires had been reported throughout a region sorely expecting snow.

I was perplexed. I had never heard of this. Yet it does exist. It’s called rockfall-induced ignition and on that first night, as I watched the bewitching wildfire from across the valley, I was reminded of two things. Firstly, mountains, however solid they appear, are always in motion. Secondly, when it comes to the landscapes we live among, this world never ceases to amaze.

This was my purpose in the Himalayas: to listen and to learn, and this series aims to continue that learning, both through my own experience, and by retelling some of the remarkable stories I heard along the way. From my time there, one extraordinary place stood out above all else. This place is Nanda Devi.

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Introducing the “bliss-giving goddess”

The world’s 23rd highest mountain, Nanda Devi is an astonishingly beautiful mountain set amid a spectacular, circular crown of other mountains. For mountain climbers, this place holds legends of almost unparalleled intrigue, and the mountain’s physicality, geography and geology are exceptional. However, there’s something else.

Nanda Devi is both a mountain and a god.

More specifically, she is a goddess. A feminine deity, Nanda Devi literally translates as the “bliss-giving goddess”. Believed by up to a hundred million people to be one of the world’s most sacred places, she is the “daughter of the Himalayas” and, however skeptical we might be, her powers are extraordinary and the depth of belief in them is very real.

To many Hindus, Nanda Devi is the seat of Shiva’s consort, Parvati. For the upland communities of the region, the mountain herself is their 'Kuldevi', the spirit that guides and protects local people, their lineage and the world around them. Embodied in physical form by the mountain, she is also omnipresent, and in many ways a mountain beyond mountains.

A protector and benefactor, she represents - and, from her waters, literally provides - birth-giving vitality. She is also, however, an arbiter of justice, wielding overwhelming forces of destruction and a primordial violence capable of wiping out entire communities in India’s most disaster-prone region.

According to some accounts, she is an "angry virgin" (or 'kanyā'). Pure, yet unattainable, she is the source of potentiality itself, with the power to take life as well as make it. Immensely beautiful and awesome, this is a place of extremes, inspiring in the minds of men the spellbinding power of the sublime, as well as the terrifying abyss of loss and insignificance.

Beyond myth, her importance is also physical because the mountain’s glaciers go on to nurture the land upon which over 650 million people depend. Together with Gangotri to the West, this is the source of the Ganges, or Mother Ganga, who is herself considered a goddess of immense sanctity. For this fact alone, it is little surprise that this mountain is held in such esteem.

For many of us, we forget how much we depend on “nature”, both universally and directly when it comes to the rivers, soils and air we depend on. How often do we remember how crucial these are to our survival? In this part of India, however, there is no doubt who should be thanked for the life-giving waters that stream out of these mountains.

But Nanda Devi’s status as a goddess goes beyond this. Partly, this is due to her enormous stature. At 7,816 metres, her mass is thought to be three times that of the entire Mont Blanc Massif in the European Alps or the vast conical Mount Rainier in the United States. It is foolhardy to compare, but even amongst other Himalayas greats, she is seriously huge.

With two high summits - each of which are believed to be the deity’s breasts - separated by a two-kilometre knife-edge ridge running from East to West, the ridge-lines, faces, cols and glaciers of this gigantic structure are themselves massive features looming over a vast region traditionally home to the nomadic tribes collectively known as the Bhotia.

The mountain’s lower reaches, however, are something else, something hidden. For beneath her towering peaks, as the high altitude world of rock and ice turns to forests, valleys and rivers full of life - including bugyals, Himalayan meadows famous for their riot of wild flowers - Nanda Devi is embraced by a landscape completely cut off from the outside world.

Surrounding this biosphere of 380 kilometres² (240 miles²) - including Nanda Devi herself - are twelve colossal protectors, each of which is a six or seven thousand metre mountain higher than anywhere in Europe, North America or Africa. Nanda Devi, although seen and revered over the hills, is beyond reach and untouchable to those who revere her.

The only breach in this Himalayan fortress is the devastatingly deep Rishiganga Gorge, where cliffs of thousands of feet descend into a violent thunder of rocky, glacial waterfalls. Legend claims this place is guarded by the Seven Rishas, demonic figures that take the lives of those foolish enough to set foot in this ferocious, freezing onslaught of water, ice and stone.

The area inside this mountain citadel, and upstream from the gorge, is now known as the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. A wonderland of biodiversity and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this is one of the most pristine landscapes found anywhere in the Himalayas.

While Nanda Devi was believed for many decades to be the world's highest peak, it was thought - until 1934 - that this paradise had never been entered by a human being. Taking explorers over fifty years of almost continuous attempts simply to gain entry, when the feat was finally achieved it was described as being "harder than reaching the North Pole".

Despite no mountain being climbed, the story of how the first men established a way into this place has become mountaineering legend and the basis of modern “alpine technique”. Although fascinating, the story of how she was accessed, and the myth surrounding this adventure, are a tiny slice of the bizarre and bewildering stories connected to this place.

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Meeting the more-than-human mountain

On the third day after my arrival, awaking from a brutally cold night, I made my way to the lookout point where I would first set eyes on the mountain. To the Westerner, I was there to visit a place, to see this mountain. In Hindi, however, I was there to 'give darshan': to see, and to be seen by, the divine. I was there to be in her presence.

As the sun began to rise, I first saw an illuminated outline of her shoulder-first pose. As my body came to terms with the deep freeze of dawn, I was stunned to see from across the horizon that it was over her peak alone that the sun was rising.

Casting her vast silhouette, I watched as jets of light broke across the sky. The sunshine hit my face, while the back of my head remained cold. There she was.

In many ways, this was simply a new dawn on a new day. However, I cannot explain how, but in that moment it was clear to me why this mountain is felt to be a divine feminine force.  

The region Nanda Devi inhabits is where some of the most ancient myths of the world's oldest region, Hinduism, first originated. The mountain itself has been revered for thousands of years, and although countless stories will have been lost - I hope that together with my brief experiences there, the stories of this series will demonstrate how unique this place is.

Because if mountains can spark fires in the deepest cold of the material world, perhaps they can also help us see and hear beyond ourselves, and in so doing help us realise their capacity for fecundity, life, intelligence and even love.

As we navigate this era of surreal crisis, as we humans commit our planet to its sixth mass extinction event - what geologists call the anthropocene - it seems to me we might do well to listen to these relations of ours. If we can understand them not as deadened resources but as other beings, perhaps we can recognise more fully how landscapes and mindscapes merge. Perhaps we can even discover ecological solidarity that is surely the only rational, ethical recourse we have left.

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