Into Thin Air

12 Feb 2020

I have always liked going to the Himalayas(haven’t hiked there yet). Though I never seriously aspired to climb Mount Everest, I was always intrigued by it. So I picked this up with the expectations of getting to know what it is like to climb to the roof of the world and learn about what happened during the 1996 season. The book didn’t disappoint.

Krakauer is a very good storyteller. He has managed to blend his and several other people’s accounts into a coherent and gripping story. It is also an eye-opener. I imagined Everest to be extremely challenging to climb, with very few skilled mountaineers reaching the top, but the reality is far from it.

This book is a very good account of the 1996 disaster, albeit from point of view of Krakauer. If you are intrigued by Mount Everest and would like to know about what it is like to climb it, this one is for you. There are multiple books written by climbers who were part of the 1996 crowd. But based on what I have read online, this is by far the most interesting one.

This was my second book on mountaineering, having read Touching the void about a year ago. Compared to that, I found this better written.

I listened to the audio version on audible, narrated well by Phillip Franklin.

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