Without Ever Reaching the Summit

International bestseller Paolo Cognetti, author of The Eight Mountains, explores the quiet joys of not racing straight to the snowy peak.

An awestruck love letter to one of the most spectacular places on earth, from the author of the international bestseller The Eight Mountains.

Paolo Cognetti marked his 40th birthday with a journey he had always wanted to make—to Dolpo, a remote Himalayan region where Nepal meets Tibet. He took with him two friends, a notebook, mules and guides, and a well-worn copy of The Snow Leopard. Written in 1978, Matthiessen's classic was also turning forty, and Cognetti set out to walk in the footsteps of the great adventurer.

Without Ever Reaching the Summit combines travel journal, secular pilgrimage, literary homage, and sublime mountain writing in a short book for readers of Macfarlane, Rebanks, and Cognetti's own bestseller, The Eight Mountains. An investigation into the author's physical limits, an ancient mountain culture, and the magnificence of nature, it is an awestruck love letter to one of the most spectacular places on earth.