Don Messerschmidt

Don Messerschmidt is an anthropologist and writer who has spent several decades studying local cultures, including pilgrimage, in the Nepal Himalaya.

In the presence of the gods

Shaligram pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalaya.

Jul 06, 2021

High Himalayan hype

Infatuation with Everest has inspired Everest-sized absurdities.

May 11, 2012

A Himalayan mystery – solved?

The Ascent of Rum Doodle is a widely appreciated mountaineering satire — but of what, exactly?

Dec 01, 2011

Latest Articles

How Southasia and Oman intertwined

In ‘Sovereigns of the Sea’, the histories of Omani sultans in the age of empire speak to the interconnectedness of Southasia, West Asia and East Africa

Crisis in India’s bread basket

How agriculture, capital and corporate investment have reshaped Indian Punjab, and brought about its current precarity

Images of the two Punjabs, partitioned yet forever alike

A photographer’s journey through the Punjab in India and Pakistan shows a land and a people still tied together, despite Partition and the militarised border in between