Sir Joseph traversed the Central and Eastern Himalayas in 1848, a time when no traveller or naturalist, however bedazzled by its mystique, has ventured forth. Even today, more than a hundred years later, there is dearth of literature on the region. Mindful and adventursome, the author paid acute attention to detail. The journals are much more that exhaustive notes of botanical interest, they are packed with appealing anecdotes and significant sociological insights, all sprinkled with a pinch of humour. Beginning with a quaint palkeeride from Calcutta, Hooker escorts us through the jungles of Behar and Birhboom, across the river Teesta and up the lofty mountain peaks in Tibet. His journals tell stories of acorns, bikh poison and conch shells, of rhubarb, syenite and Tibetan toys. They tell of times and lives gone by, for us to relive them in our imagination and hand over in words to the generations after us.
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