Dehradun, Sept. 6 -- An early hand-tinted composite picture. Pic courtesy Author

Seventy-two years ago, on April 22nd, 1944, the Austrian Heinrich Harrer (along with six others) escaped from a POW Camp in Premnagar. He got away through Clouds End in Mussoorie, walked along the watersheds of Bhatwari and Hursil, before arriving in Lhasa. He was part of the Third Reich's stormtroopers sent out in search for the famed kingdoms where monks were said to live forever.

How else could the Third Reich have hoped to last three thousand years?

Our magic mountain is a mere nineteen square miles - give or take. This is where I was born; this is where I grew up and this is where I have spent a lifetime.

In 1838, when Fanny Parks wrote about this hi...