There are books that you dive into. Much like Forrest Gump’s Instagram-worthy quote: “Life is a box of chocolates. You never know what you will get.” ‘The Living Himalaya: Rock, Sky, Spirit’, edited by Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal, is one such chocolate-box kind of book. The anthology is as vast as the Himalaya and as diverse. It is daunting, and is epic in terms of scale and vision. But Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal, veterans of this range, have chosen to negotiate the terrain as sure-footed travellers in their scholarship.