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Synopsis Parvez Dewan can send you to sleep about Jammu. If anyone has the Ultimate Dossier on this region, it is he, after years of running about India’s northernmost state, administering and adventuring his way around its valleys, peaks and rivers. Along the way he discovered sculpted stone tables (and stunning bathing beauties) at enclosed mountain springs, met shamans who drank the blood of slaughtered goats and mystics who walked on live coals, changed from a cynic to a staunch votary of Himalayan mysticism, revived Basohli’s famous miniature paintings, worked with nomadic Gujjar tribes (and tried to promote the embroidered shoes and jewellery that they wear), earned a reputation for trekking to every village in his jurisdiction once every year and survived three bomb blasts (during the first of which he won the love of the people and the Front Page of local newspapers for trying to save two children trapped amidst flames). This was in the course of work. (More or less.) between whiles, he managed to watch exciting, fast-paced folk dances, translated dozens of folksongs, took copious notes on almost everything and, in particular, tried to take forward Jammu’s legendary Hindu-Muslim-Sikh unity. In this first-of-its-kind encyclopaedic three-volume set on Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, one on each region, Parvez dewan shares in detail, his interest and excitement in the fabled land that has been the arena of his adult life: an up-to-date yet timeless guide to the magical trinity o Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh that crowns the sub-continent of India.