The Two Year Mountain

With his life literally hanging from a slender rope over a crevasse near the top of a Himalayan mountain, a young man relives in his mind a relentless two-year physical and spiritual test as a Peace Corps volunteer in a remote mountain village of Nepal. Combining the elements of adventure story, travel log, and personal confession, this absorbing account describes a wrenching experience that belies the idealistic expectations of many Peace Corps volunteers. Following a two-year stint as a science and mathematics teacher in a Nepalese village, Phil Deutschle sets off alone on a three-month expedition to conquer Pharchamo, 20,580 feet high, which has claimed several lives and is his final goal in the Himalayas.

This trek forms the framework of the book, and into it Deutschle weaves the story of his experiences over the previous two years in a series of sharply etched, swiftly moving, often humorous anecdotes. Deutschle is not starry-eyed about Nepal and its people or, least of all, about the mission of the Peace Corps. He vividly describes events that are both horrible and poignant: being charged by a rhinoceros, the awful fascination of watching a corpse burn on a funeral pyre, the struggle to save a child's life, scaling a Himalayan peak higher than Mount McKinley (the highest mountain in North America).

Forfattere: Phil deutchle
Publisert år: 2012
Sider nr: 358