Himalayas to the Remarkables

A boy who learned stillness before he learned ambition.

Veer Pahadi grows up in a Himalayan village where the roads close in monsoon, the nearest hospital is two hours away, and every morning begins with a two-kilometre walk through the forest to fetch water from a mountain spring.

His mother teaches him one lesson that will last a lifetime.

From the Himalayan foothills of Garhwal, Veer earns a scholarship to a boarding school in Dehradun — his first step away from everything that made him. From there, the city calls: Mumbai and its glass towers, its ambitions and its betrayals, where a false accusation threatens to end his career before it begins, and where he must choose between running and standing still.

And then, New Zealand.

In Wellington, Veer finds work that finally makes sense of everything his village taught him — building technology for the people the world has forgotten to connect. He finds the Remarkables, a mountain range in the South Island that looks, from a distance, like the Himalayas but smaller and greener and somehow more accessible. And he finds Aroha — a woman who understands, without being told, what it means to carry a landscape inside you.

A novel about the distance between where we begin and where we belong — and the particular grace of discovering that you are allowed to belong to two worlds at once.

A Novel Inspired by True Events.

Perfect for readers who loved The Kite Runner, The Namesake, and Lion — stories of immigration, identity, and the long journey home.