When we wrote up our free ascent of the Scoop in the Nevisport book we postscripted it ‘On-sight’, which it was, apart from the last ten feet. We felt we had tried so hard for that climb that we were entitled to forget about our little indiscretion.
2 Strone Ulladale, renamed Sron Ulladale by the O.S.
CHAPTER SIX
BHAGIRATHI DIARY
It is better to waste one’s youth than to do nothing with it at all.
— Georges Courtline
July 10
Walked into Bob’s new office this morning to find him peering through the curtains, spying on those in Pete’s Eats across the street. He likes to know what’s happening, who’s about. When he senses my presence he swings round on his swivel chair and lowers his shades. “Hey, Aardvark.” This is his ‘affectionate’ nickname for me. “We’ve had more arrivals.” Bob jumped up and beckoned me to the giant mound of boxes dominating one side of the office. “Soya Dessert, ten cases! We won’t have to buy food for ages.” Bob has sent a draft letter to every food, equipment and cosmetic company in the country and the swag has been rolling in for days now: five cases of mushroom pâté, mountains of chocolate, muesli, noodles, a case of Golden Virginia tobacco, hundreds of tins. Things seem to be getting out of hand. Last week I even got to visit a peanut butter factory. Watching it all oozing out of that giant sphincter made me feel sickly and I had second thoughts about walking out with twelve gallons of the stuff.
July 15
The portaledges we’ve been making with Hugh Banner are coming on. We hired a local machinist to make the tent which looks like a wendy house with a plastic window in it. A £100 voucher came from the Co-op to help us with our trip which we promptly cashed in for hard liquor at Leo’s supermarket.
July 20
Had a fund-raising slide show at the Heights which went a bit crazy. Some of the speakers got too drunk to work the projector or even to communicate with the audience. First prize in the raffle was Johnny’s Skoda which we had to push down to the pub. At least it tempted lots of folk to come, the fact that first prize was a car. The first winner didn’t want it after she saw it and neither did the second. It must have been the spray can graffiti all over it that put them off. We pulled out loads of tickets before we found someone who would tow it away. We had to give some of the straighter members of the audience their money back. One said it was the worst slide show she had ever seen but the hard core seemed to like it.
July 30
Got our cheque off the MEF for £800. I’m made up as I wasn’t sure how well I’d done at the interview. I was weirded out, there at the RGS with all those faces looking at me, and when Hinkes asked me if I’d ever worn crampons before I wanted to say “Course I’ve frigging well worn crampons before,” but I just had to play it cool and say yes. We’ll show ’em.
August 8
Thirty tubs of pear and apple spread arrived. We’ve been busy on Joe Brown’s sewing machine making holsters. I bragged to Joe about the Golden Virginia sponsorship and he just told me to “Give that up for a start. It’s a mug’s game.”
August 12
Portaledge trouble. And only thirteen days to go. Bob went on the radio in the garden of the station and pretended to be on the summit of Snowdon. Johnny’s obsessed with synergy and wants to make a ledge that will turn into a sledge or a glider. Climbing’s falling by the wayside as we speed around the country collecting stuff.
August 16
Got pulled and fined on our way to get jabs at the Tropical Medicine Centre in Liverpool for doing ninety in a fifty. Bob’s not happy as he’s been banned for years anyway for under-age driving. The Heights want us to move the Skoda out of their car park.
August 18
A week to go and the damned portaledges still won’t work right. Once you put the thing together it won’t come apart again. Our expert engineers at HB are doing a great job though.
August 23
Packing turned into a Soya Dessert fight on the banks of the Menai Straits and we practised with our new Charlet Mosers on a telegraph pole in the garden. Getting up the pole was easy but getting down again was a bit trickier and resulted in some dangerous falls with brand new sharp spikes flailing around.
August 25
Last night is too much of a blur to remember. We overslept. Outside Bob’s house this morning there were bodies everywhere, under cars, in the fields and on the side of the road. Like an invasion of colourful giant slugs. We piled into the Dwarf ’s van and got to Manchester late. Even after extensive repacking and jiggery pokery – I had my pockets loaded with pitons, screws and other potentially dangerous weapons – our bags were still too heavy and the man wanted a grand in excess baggage. We became incensed: “But we’re the official Bhagirathi 3 expedition, supported by the BMC. Surely we can arrange something?” We did. The guy let us on and even allowed me to empty my pockets of iron into the hold. As we ran for the plane the passport controller thought we were a rock band; Dawes has a bald head with a single plait coming out of his forehead, I’ve got my usual Mohawk and Joe and Bobby are in bright clothes, shades and jewellery and are swaggering around like a pair of rock stars. Sat in Moscow airport now waiting for our delayed Aeroflot plane to Tashkent. Just saw the airport cops beat up a black guy for daring to complain about this gross food.
In the air now. What a take off. The whole thing shook violently and the baggage compartments sprang open, jettisoning the luggage onto the heads of the passengers. Someone started to scream and was reprimanded by one of the burly hostesses. Just been drinking vodka at the back with a team of Siberian workers who kept trying to force mouldy sausage on me.
August 27
Delhi. What is going on? This place is completely barmy. When you get off the plane it’s like walking into a steam room. We almost collided with an elephant that had strayed onto the dual carriageway on the taxi ride into town. In a traffic jam a woman came over and held her baby to the window. It had a hole in its stomach showing its intestine. I didn’t have any money to give and didn’t know what to do. I wanted to take them to hospital but we don’t know how this place works. It smells really bad here, there’s flies everywhere and people with limbs missing. But there’s colour, too, and action to make cities back home seem like big brother is watching us. I’m going out walking.
August 28
Went walking last night with Bobby, just soaking the place up, and ended up in these tiny pitch dark streets around Payer Ganj. We heard groans and piles of rags would shuffle about in the dirt, but it wasn’t worrying. In some downtown area in Britain we would have certainly been mugged. Today we met Simon and the rest of the team and they took us to a ‘café’ for lunch. Well, it was a corrugated shack stood on top of an open sewer. The cook was filthy, with a running nose and smoking a bedi and he cleaned our plates with a brown rag that also served as his handkerchief. Simon smiled, he was obviously trying to psych us out. But it didn’t work. We tucked into the dahl and roti and, in the sweltering heat, washed it all down with dusty glasses of tap water. Johnny complained that his glass was dirty and much to all our mirth the cook wiped it clean with his snot rag. Later we drank copious amounts of fruit juice with crushed ice at a street stall. I had read somewhere that ice was dangerous but Simon assured us it was OK. We also met our liaison officer who is a truly repulsive man. Hermunt is short and fat and his teeth are rotten and yellow and he chews betel nut constantly and spits the dark contents of his mouth to the side of the dining table. At dinner tonight he boasted about his caste and seemed angered when I was not impressed that he was a Brahmin. He snapped his fingers at the waiters and also shouted at them if they happened to bring the wrong dish out.
One other ridiculous event of the day involved Johnny. We were all hanging out in our hotel room, trying to cool down, and Dawes appears with these three Sikhs. He tells us that they’ve told him his future and his past and that it’s changed his life. He said all he had to do was write his mother’s name on a piece of paper
, making sure the Sikhs who where all around him couldn’t see, then hide it in his pocket, and they were capable of telling him his mother’s name. Then they told him he would marry an air hostess. He was so impresse he gave them seventy quid which we worked out to be about six months’ wages for a Delhi cab driver. We took the piss out of him mercilessly and joked that he might fall in love with one of the Aeroflot women. Johnny actually had the last laugh though as tonight Bob and I went our separate ways to buy some of the fabled Indian charas and each came back with match boxes full of incense!
August 30
Hired our own bus, loaded it up and headed for the Himalaya. We’d only been going a few hours when in the dark we came to a halt. Up ahead there was a crowd shouting and flames in the road. It looked like there was a body on fire but it was hard to see, and none of us was going to investigate. It turned out that some kids were pouring petrol over each other and torching themselves. Hermunt explained that they were unhappy because the government had, in an attempt at equal rights for all castes, given a large percentage of professional and civil service jobs to the lowest castes. The students who had studied long and hard were now out of jobs and this was their demonstration. I am amazed at the strength of their feeling. Students at home might do some banner-waving, but this is on another level. I’ve got so much to learn here.
August 31
Uttarkashi. Met our agents who are going to organise our cooks and porters. It’s a pretty shifty outfit. Mr Buddi is small and weasely with piercing dark red eyes and the first thing he did when we got in his office was roll a joint under the desk with one hand. He insisted we all smoked some of it before doing business and then slowly turned to look at us all in turn and grinned. Occasionally he ordered the boy out to buy ten cups of hideously sweet tea. Bobby and Johnny could not control themselves and began giggling. Then came in Mr Rana, the brother of Mr Buddi. He was short and muscular and looked hard as nails and his eyes were even redder and darker. Bob and Johnny had to turn away and hide their faces, they had lost the plot. When we got to our hotel we tried to pack all our equipment into twenty-five kilo porter-loads but we ended up just sitting and staring at the floor. I tried to sleep but I couldn’t and I kept looking at the curtain for what seemed like hours as it appeared to dance before me.
September 1
Got on the bus bound for Gangotri. At first it was OK but as we climbed into the Gangotri Gorge our driver got progressively more stoned. On the mud road we were dangerously close to the edge many times and we could look down a thousand feet to the wrecks of other buses. We took comfort in the fact that Mr Rana wasn’t driving, as he was swigging back the whisky also. After a tea stop we climbed back aboard and, to our horror, we found Mr Rana sat behind the wheel. He offered me the bottle and put his foot down. We lurched wildly round corners on the road cut out of a scree slope as he played chicken with the oncoming vehicles. He kept grinning at us and gesturing for us to roll one up as we sped along. We all partook just so there would be less for him but at each chai stop he seemed to find more. At one stop Mr Rana introduced us to a friend of his. The man was tall and evil-looking and was draped in gold jewellery. He wore the smartest clothes and showed us his gold teeth with a sly smile. We shook hands. Keeping his eyes on us, Mr Rana nodded towards him and then looked sternly at us. “Smuggler,” he said, breaking into a grin. Johnny looked interested and asked him just what did he smuggle. But the man only grunted and stared at us. Bobby was busy across the road reaping wild marijuana which grows everywhere.
We booked into a medieval hotel with stone beds and no windows and after unloading all our kit went to explore the village. This is the last settlement on one of the most famous pilgrimages in the world, to the source of the Ganges. There are naked men with long dreadlocks huddled under boulders, women selling pujas, flowers and things for throwing into the raging brown river and hundreds of well dressed Indian pilgrims furiously eating dahlbhat with their fingers in the tiny dirty cafés. There are monks and yogis and colour everywhere. In the temple the pilgrims queue to kiss the stone linga, Shiva’s penis, in the morning cold. Bobby and Johnny are both complaining of feeling ill.
September 2
Didn’t get much sleep last night as Bob and Johnny kept crashing into each other in their desperate attempts to beat each other to the bog. All night they were puking and shitting. On the walk today Johnny shat in his new tie-dye trousers and a New Zealander had to carry his bag as we were all too tight to help out. We have hired loads of porters and they have come from Nepal to work their off season. They are a good bunch. Saw Bhagirathi 3 today and it’s hard to believe that we’ll be on it soon. I feel funny from the altitude already.
September 3
I feel lousy. I’m in an ashram at Bhojbasa and I’ve been sick all night. The others have all gone but Johnny’s stayed with me. I’m itching too, like there’s fleas in this bed. I’ll be better tomorrow.
September 4
Still feel queasy but have to escape the food at this place. Will start walking soon.
September 9
God, I feel dreadful. I’m back in bleeding Bhojbasa. It’s a bit of a long story and only now do I feel well enough to write it down; Johnny and I left this place a day after the others, thinking we’d be up at base camp in no time. Neither of us has ever been this high before, even base camp is higher than Mont Blanc. We passed Gamuk, the source of the Ganges, where it comes spewing out from beneath the Gangotri Glacier and had a last chai stop with the babas. Then we climbed up onto the glacier and traversed the left side, like we were told to do. We moved dead slow ’cos neither of us was feeling brilliant. We walked all day over endless rubble heaps until we had finished all our water. It started to go dark and the camp was nowhere in sight, so we had to admit it, we were lost. Johnny searched for water and prepared for us to bivvy, whilst I nursed a blinding headache. We had a few sips with gravel in it and went to sleep in the rocks. I had a pretty bad night and in the morning we realised that we had gone too low and that the camp should be just above us. I felt dreadful as we scrambled up a giant scree slope and then I saw Uttar Singh, our young cook, above us. He came running down, smiling, and helped Johnny with his bag! At camp Bob and Joe were relaxing in the sun. I had a brew with them and crawled straight into my tent.
I guess it must have been a couple of days later when Joe came into my tent and forced me to get up. He told me he wanted to do some tests. I had been puking and moaning endlessly. I crawled out before the panel of Bobby, Johnny and Joe, who had in his hands a copy of Medicine for Mountaineers. How many fingers am I holding up? they asked me. How many hands are you holding up? I asked them. Walk heel to toe for us, they said. And I fell over. They whispered amongst themselves and flicked through the pages of their book and then they casually informed me that I had cerebral oedema. If you don’t get down straight away you’ll die, they said. But I can’t walk, said I. I’ll carry you, offered Johnny. And that was it, back to the hell hole of Bhojbasa. It was going to be a long piggy-back for the Dawes, but as we descended I felt better all the time and after a few hours I was able to support myself. He stayed for a couple of days but then went back up to the others. I’ve been hanging out for a few days longer, eating dahl and gravel soup in the black hole and listening to the Butthole Surfers in my room. I occasionally go outside and sit by the Ganga and just stare up at the mountains. I’ve been to America and Mexico before, but here I feel a long way from home. Everything feels way out of my control. I’ll be back on track tomorrow.
September 11
Walked up to BC alone and felt OK. Johnny was there on his own as Joe and Bob had decided to switch to the Scottish route. He seemed a bit dejected that the team had split so early on, but the guys, who are back down from their carry now, didn’t know when I’d be better. JD and I will have a look at freeing the Spanish route.
There is a tense atmosphere up here. Joe says he’s not that happy climbing with people who’ve never been mountaineering before an
d that’s why he wants to go just with Bob on the easier route. Shivling is incredible in the moonlight. There are more stars here than I’ve ever seen – it’s so clear, so high and no smog.
September 12
Load-carrying today along the mudflats, past leopard prints, and up a heinous hill we called the Triple Cromlecher. We dumped fifteen days’ food under a huge boulder below the West Face. I’m glad we’ve decided not to try it. It looks possible but I got scared just looking at it. The wall consists of an El Capitan of freezing granite topped with a thousand feet of disintegrating shale. When the sun came round and started to loosen things up you could hear the rocks spinning through the air for ages before they hit the base. Back here at BC Bobby and Johnny had an argument over a game of chess. I couldn’t understand the waste of breath. And later Johnny and Joe had an argument about onions. The team seems a bit stressed. Maybe it’s Uttar Singh’s badly tuned radio which transmits an incessant din from the confines of his tent. At dawn, when the woeful wailing starts up, it is greeted by groans and shouts from the other tents. In the end Bob burgled the poor lad’s batteries.
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