Cho Oyu Mountain lies 19 miles east of Mount Everest on the border between Tibet and Nepal. To the elite mountaineering community, it's known as the sixth highest mountain in the world. To Tibetans, Cho Oyu represents a gateway to freedom through a secret glacial path: the Nangpa La.
On September 30, 2006, gunfire echoed through the thin air near Advance Base Camp on Cho Oyu and climbers preparing to summit watched in horror as Chinese border guards fired at a group of Tibetans fleeing to India, via Nepal.
Murder in the High Himalaya is the unforgettable account of the brutal killing of Kelsang Namtso, a seventeen-year-old Tibetan nun fleeing with the group to Dharamsala to escape religious persecution. Kelsang's death is a painful example of Tibet's oppression by China, but this time a human rights atrocity was witnessed and documented by dozens of Western climbers. Their moral dilemma was plain-would they tell the world what they had seen? The center of the story is an American climber, struck with a crisis of conscience, who gambled with his career to speak out and a young, Tibetan girl who sacrificed her rights to ever return to Tibet by telling the Western media about the murder of her best friend. Both risked their futures to expose the abuses of China in Tibet and paid a terrible price. MURDER IN THE HIGH HIMILAYA-Jonathan Green