Nice title, I thought. Walking the Himalayas. Except for the unnecessary pluralising. Seemed reminiscent of Running the Himalayas, an account of an astounding adventure by cousins Richard and Adrian Crane over 30 years ago. The kind of understatement you’d expect from a sporting adventurer.

I had already read accounts of three of the four other well-known treks traversing the Himalaya from as far back as 1980, and had been involved in supporting a women’s traverse of the Himalaya in 1997. I, therefore, cracked the book open eagerly. Wood doesn’t take us to the beginning of his walk till the sixth chapter, by when we are already about a third of the way through the book’s 18 chapters; the previous five being a near-stalling preamble. A touristy visit to Nepal, and two entire chapters in London, where Wood tells us, among other things, of his ‘tours’ with the British Parachute Regiment to war-ravaged Afghanistan. How he “…relished the experience of living life on the edge. The danger, the unknown and total immersion of being alert 24/7, constantly on the lookout for the enemy and roadside bombs…”, and how regrettably, he could not get enough of it. For him and his fellow infantry soldiers, he confides, “… it was the best time of their lives”.