Caravans of the Himalaya

The photographs in Caravans of the Himalaya (Thames & Hudson $612) are awesome. Panoramas of mountains and plains, stomach-turning heights and plunging valleys, snow and ice. But look closer. In the desolate landscapes there is a thread, miniscule at times, of humanity. It gives us a reason to care about one of the highest plateaus in the world; and its people. French-born photographer Eric Valli and his Australian wife Diane Summers spent two years tracing the caravans of the Dolpo-Pa, nomads of Western Tibet, who survive a harsh life in order to acquire salt and grain, their form of riches. The caravans are documented by 100 photographs and a text, so lean yet caring that it frames the stunning photographs. Once you start reading, the book is impossible to put down. The couple, who met, married and raised two daughters in Nepal, have immersed themselves in the culture.

It is this sense of belonging and acceptance by Tibetans that distinguishes Caravans of the Himalaya from most grand photo books. And rewards the reader. The authors show a threatened culture of western Nepal through individuals whose life is difficult, yet rich in myth and legend. Profiles, details, events are woven in a narrative that refreshingly lacks first person singular. We meet the local medicine man who helped the authors' daughter, stricken with a mysterious illness, get rid of the evil spirits in her body; and one of Valli's hosts who offered his wife at the end of an evening in the traditional gesture of friendship. Valli's lens captures caravanners as they settle amid yaks and blankets for the evening's rest, a child cuddling up to salt sacks as his protection from the razor-sharp evening cold.

In one portrait, a young woman, one of Valli's friends, smiles. Then we learn later she had died, her corpse dismembered to nourish the caravanners. Against a herd of yaks, the bare-chested virility of Renzing Dorje, one of Valli's travelling companions, is paraded. Against a sunset there is a lone shepherd lumbering under the weight of a 27-kilogram salt sack, his sheep at his feet. Life's reward in Dolpo is survival. People's value is measured by the amount of grain and salt they are able to exchange and how many yaks they own. The authors raise their worth by recording a noble struggle with affection