Talk by Harish Kapadia

Harish is a distinguished Himalayan Mountaineer. He has been awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographic Society, UK and the Life Time Achievement Award for Adventure by the President of India and the King Albert Mountain Award presented by The King Albert I Memorial Foundation. He has written numerous books and articles on the Indian Himalaya.

He began climbing and trekking in the range around Bombay, the Western Ghats. His first visit to the Himalaya was almost 40 years ago. His main contribution to Himalayan climbing has been to explore unknown areas and, in number of cases, to open up climbing possibilities.

His son Lt. Nawang Kapadia, who was commissioned on September 2, 2000 in the Fourth Battalion the Third Gorkha Rifles, died while fighting Pakistan based terrorists in the jungles of Rajwar in Kupwara district of Srinagar on 11 November 2000. Since then Harish Kapadia has taken to lecturing about this conflict, particularly in the Siachen Glacier. He has been discussing a proposal for a peace park for Siachen and cleaning up the environmental damage there.