Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to the journalist Thomas Bell about his new book, Human Nature: A Walking History of the Himalayan Landscape (Penguin India, September 2024).
In his new book, Human Nature, the journalist Thomas Bells turns to the hills and mountains of the Himalaya to tell the story of how people create nature, and how nature makes us back. It’s based on four walks he made in recent years across the central Himalayan region of Nepal.
On the first walk, Bell explores different forms of migrations – some of which are ongoing today – but especially about the arrival of the first people into the hills. On the second walk, he takes a close look at settlement and agriculture, as well as the first encounters with Europeans in the region. He then ventures into a high mountain enclave and writes about the taming of that landscape and the impact of national parks, conservation efforts and environmental degradation in the Himalaya to uncover the many ways in which people explain their history in their landscape.
This episode is now available on Spotify, Youtube and Apple Podcasts
Episode notes:
Human Nature: A Walking History of the Himalayan Landscape by Thomas Bell (Penguin India, September 2024)
Kathmandu by Thomas Bell (Haus Publishing, August 2017)
Diary of a disastrous campaign: A recently unearthed diary brings a fresh perspective to the lesser-known British foray into what we now call Nepal - Thomas Bell (Himal Southasian, December 2012)
The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya by Ramchandra Guha (University of California Press, 1989)
How one village forged its own recovery after Nepal’s 2015 earthquake - Eileen McDougall (Himal Southasian, April 2025)
The bones of Samdzong: How Mustang’s deep past is being lost just as it is being found - Amish Raj Mulmi (Himal Southasian, August 2024)
Trekking while Nepali: A writer reckons with mortality, nationality and a changing Nepal - Manjushree Thapa (Himal Southasian, July 2024)
Nepal’s unescapable trap of migration, farming and climate change - Jeff Joseph (Himal Southasian, March 2024)
Whose Himalaya is it? John Keay, Erika Fatland and Ed Douglas’ books on the Himalaya exhibit ways of seeing, or failing to see, the mountains and their people - Amish Raj Mulmi (Himal Southasian, March 2023)
In the presence of the gods: Shaligram pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalaya - Don Messerschmidt (Himal Southasian, July 2021)