Reinhold Messner has marketed the concept of the Himalaya as a "dream factory" only too well. He is better-known throughout Europe than any Asian politician. Whether or not he is a good ambassador of the people of the Himalaya is for the people of the Himalaya to decide.
If you ask school children in Austria or Germany about the Himalayan region, the first world that they will eagerly mention is "Messner", and follow it up with a cliche from the late 1980s: "He´s there looking for the Yeti." On the subject of Nepal, they know that it is "the country of Everest", the highest mountain in the world, and that there is a lot of garbage lying around there. With regard to the people of Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bhutan and Tibet, they have very little idea. Ask any adult, and you do not get much more satisfaction. How did discovering the Yeti and the rubbish dumps on Chomolongma Base Camp come to be regarded by Europeans as among South Asia´s most urgent problems? Part of the answer, perhaps a major part of it, is Reinhold Messner, a story teller with a mass audience.
The Himalaya had existed for 120 million years …then along came Reinhold Messner. He did manage to be the first person to make it to the top of all the world´s 14 peaks that are above 8000m. But, even more significantly, he has managed to implant his ideas of the Himalaya on the minds of hundreds of thousands of people in a way that few other adventurers have. His books were read like the Holy Scriptures. Many Europeans gain their secondhand knowledge of the Himalaya through them.
Reinhold´s Ascent
Messner is now 48. He was born in the South Tyrol mountains of northern Italy bordering Austria in 1944, when the star of the Axis powers was on the wane and this region, like the rest of Europe, was about to undergo massive reorganisation.