National Geographic Magazine

Amazing discoveries and experiences await you in every issue of National Geographic magazine. The latest news in science, exploration, and culture will open your eyes to the world’s many wonders.

Science-Based Coverage Is More Vital Than Ever

HOW THE WORLD SEES THE VIRUS • From Italy to Brazil to Russia, photographers capture intimate images of isolation.

THE BACKSTORY • CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND OUR CONTROL HAVE FORCED US APART. HOW DOES THE HUMAN SPIRIT ENDURE?

Why Weren’t We Ready for This Virus? • FOR DECADES THE WORLD HAS IGNORED PANDEMIC PREDICTIONS FROM THE EXPERTS. MAYBE THE CORONAVIRUS WILL CHANGE THAT.

We Are Not Made for This New Normal • IN PERILOUS TIMES, OUR DEEPEST HUMAN IMPULSE IS TO DRAW CLOSE TO EACH OTHER—THE VERY THING WE’VE BEEN TOLD NOT TO DO.

WHEN THE VIRUS CAME TO KENYA • IN BUSY SETTLEMENTS, PANDEMIC FEARS AND HOMEMADE FACE MASKS

THE BACKSTORY • STAYING SAFE FROM COVID-19 CAN BE AN UNAFFORDABLE LUXURY IN THE CROWDED SETTLEMENTS OF NAIROBI.

Hands Free of Virus • WILL THE WORLD’S POOR FINALLY GET THE CLEAN WATER THEY NEED TO WASH THEIR HANDS—AND DRINK?

THE GREAT MYSTERY OF EVEREST • Nearly a century ago, Sandy Irvine and his climbing partner, George Mallory, vanished on a high ridge of Everest. Did they make it to the top, 29 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were celebrated as the first to scale the world’s highest peak? The author and his team retraced Irvine’s steps to try to find his body—and the camera that could rewrite the story of the mountain.

HIGH HOPES

DRESSED FOR THE SUMMIT

THE LOOMING CRISIS OVER • The Indus, one of the world’s mighty rivers, depends on glaciers in the Himalaya and neighboring ranges to release a steady flow of ice melt in the spring and summer. It supports some 270 million people. But as warming shrinks the glaciers, the flow in the river will decline beginning around 2050, putting millions at risk—and elevating tensions among India, Pakistan, and China.

UNDER STRAIN FROM SOURCE TO SEA

INDUS LIFELINE

MAKE YOUR OWN GLACIERS • What do you do when the snows you depend on for water are melting too quickly, and glaciers have receded high into the mountains? At the northern tip of India, the people of Ladakh are dealing with climate change by creating huge cones of ice that give desperate farmers water when they need it.

THE HIMALAYA’S GHOST LEOPARDS • For millennia, snow leopards have haunted some of Central Asia’s most forbidding terrain—soaring cliffs, plunging gorges, high deserts. Here, thin air, deep snow, and subfreezing temperatures have allowed these obscure cats to elude the human gaze and disappear into the landscape like phantoms. But thanks to conservation, camera traps, and now tourism, they are finally coming into view.

MOUNTAIN HUNTERS

A NEW WINDOW INTO THE WEATHER • They set out to install the world’s highest weather station to give scientists unprecedented data on storm-shaping winds and climate change. During their exhausting journey on Mount Everest, they set up five stations at various elevations—and were reminded that nothing ever comes easy on the world’s tallest mountain.

SCIENCE ON HIGH

AMI VITALE • FROM OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS