Seminar 1 Three Cups of Tea

“His images startle, but Rowell always felt they failed compared to the experience of simply standing there, dwarfed by the spectacle of what he considered the most beautiful place on earth, a place he dubbed the throne room of the mountain gods”(Mortenson 18). In this passage Rowell was referring to the images he had taken of Baltoro. This statement gives the reader a very strong sense of how awesome the scenery was and how nothing, not even his glamorous pictures, could compare to actually witnessing it first hand. It makes you want to travel to Pakistan and see it for yourself.

“Mouzafer was a Balti, the mountain people who populated the least hospitable high-altitude valleys in northern Pakistan”. “With their diminutive size, toughness, and supreme ability to thrive at altitudes where few humans choose even to visit, they have physically reminded many mountaineers climbing in Baltistan of their distant cousins to the east, the Sherpa of Nepal”(Mortenson 21). These statements were very important in describing the Balti people. They were small but strong and well adapted to this harsh environment. I believe it gives the reader an added sense of respect for these people and seemed to be a source of pride for the Balti.

“Fosco Maraini, a member of the 1958 Italian expedition that managed the first ascent of Gasherbrum IV, a rugged neighbor of K2, was so appalled and fascinated by the Balti, that his erudite book about the expedition, Karakoram: The Ascent of Gasherbrum IV, reads more like a scholarly treatise on the Balti way of life than a memoir of mountaineering triumph”(Mortenson 21). This show’s how meeting the people of Balti was such an important part of his adventure. Maraini seemed to be so amazed with them that he lost cite of the importance of their triumph over the Gasherbrum, a mountain that had never been climbed before.

“The autumn air down at eleven thousand feet had a weight and luxury he’d forgotten” (Mortenson 23). I chose this sentence because I thought it helped describe the harsh circumstances that Mortenson faced while he was at a higher elevation. It made me think about the difficulties of just breathing at such altitudes and how much of a relief it was to descend to a friendlier climate. Just the lack of sleep and food alone would make things hard, after traveling across such a rugged landscape, but by describing the lack of oxygen at those elevations it helps the reader understand another element that many people aren’t familiar with.