British historian Peter Hopkirk’s derring-do account of the “Great Game” first drew me in. The title of his history (published in the 1990s) echoed Rudyard Kipling’s use of the phrase in his 1901 novel Kim, which had by then become shorthand for describing the 19th-century geopolitical rivalry between Britain and Russia in Central Asia.

His ragtag bag of explorers, traders, spies, spivs and ambitious officials, who played the Great Game in the Western Himalaya, did so in the most physically perilous conditions, seeking fame, glory and occasionally wealth. Battling acute altitude sickness and extreme cold on the world’s highest mountain passes, they were guided and supported by traders whose families navigated these commercial arteries for centuries.