Imagine yourself climbing one of the highest mountains in the world, a steep jag of rock in a corner of the Karakoram, pinched between Pakistan and China. You are hanging on a rope, swinging against a rock face, a mile above the glacier below but not so far from the glacier to your side. A chunk breaks off the glacier hanging just over there… it resounds: “Gasherbrum!” You swing on the rope, thrash for room, bump on the rock and gash your bum.

Heck, why settle for one of the highest mountains in the world? Take seven of them. Or anyway seven peaks in one massif. That’s the Gasherbrum. One might be forgiven for thinking it’s Gascherbrunn, which would seem properly Germanically alpine, but these peaks are nowhere near Switzerland or Austria. And their name is from Balti, a language that is a form of Ladakhi, which is in…