Keeper Of The Mountains

by Bernadette McDonald

  Elizabeth’s daily routine included listening to the newscasts on BBC Radio and reading the International Herald Tribune. She began calling on some of the top political figures she had met the previous year and was soon being invited to embassy cocktail receptions. Her network continued to expand. Then the United Nations Association of Nepal held a series of meetings in celebration of the UN’s birthday, and as a representative for Time and Life, she was invited to attend. One of her appointments was with Prime Minister B.P. Koirala.

  In her free time, she explored the nearby countryside with Jeeps and motor scooters. In mid-November, she embarked on her first trek: 10 days of hiking north of Kathmandu as far as the village of Melamchi. It was definitely roughing it, with long days of walking, steep trails and cold nights. Although she enjoyed herself, she recalls that it felt considerably longer than just 10 days. But the compensations were numerous: the scenery, which she described to her mother as magnificent, and the people she met, particularly the Sherpas, who were unaware of the political changes in Kathmandu and whose isolated existence included considerable hardship. She was pleasantly surprised at how quickly she became physically fit.

  Fresh from her mountain experience, Elizabeth learned that B.P. Koirala (B.P., as she later called him) was planning a trek of his own in December. He was an informal, intelligent and friendly man, and one who knew how to flatter, informing Elizabeth that he thought her pretty. She suggested to his office, and to the prime minister himself, that she accompany him on the trek and do a story for Life about how the head of government must overcome all kinds of obstacles to make democracy work. He was enthusiastic and she was hopeful.

  All of Elizabeth’s well-laid plans vanished into thin air the day before they were to leave, however, for the simple reason that Koirala was no longer prime minister. At noon on December 15, 1960, all cabinet members who could be found (some were in hiding, some were out of the country) were taken into custody on orders from King Mahendra, who had lost patience with what he considered gross inefficiency and erroneous policy making. It was just a year and a half since Koirala had been elected. Elizabeth believed the confrontation was the result of a power struggle between the king and the prime minister. Koirala understood that the king had no intention of stepping back to become a symbolic leader, because that would negate everything his father, Tribhuvan, had believed in.

  The king assumed sweeping powers in emergencies, and since he was the one who determined what was an emergency, this was deemed to be just that. He promised to carry out the policies of his predecessor, but to do so scientifically and efficiently, without corruption and without the pressures of political parties. This meant all parties were now banned for an indefinite period. There remained a constitution and parliament, but they were there simply to rubber-stamp decisions that came down from the palace. It was the king who nominated the cabinet ministers as well as the prime minister.

  Mahendra adopted a system of government, also used in India, called panchayat, essentially a council of five advisors. He released a few politicians from jail and recycled them into the council. Koirala was not appointed, and after being confined to quarters, he fled the country and remained abroad for several years. Elizabeth now had some really interesting news worth reporting for Time Inc., but she worried about what they would do with the information – would their interpretation of her material make it difficult for her to work in Nepal in the future? It was a tricky situation because on one hand the king was moving his country forward, opening it up to foreign aid and development programs. But he was doing so with an iron glove; the royal palace had become the centre of power. The juxtaposition of his open-minded goals for Nepal and his inward-looking style of rule fascinated Elizabeth.

  Despite the delicate nature of the situation, Elizabeth was excited by the fact that this wasn’t small-time politics in an isolated corner of the world. Because of its strategic position between China and India, Nepal became skilled at playing the big powers against one another. The king’s main goal was to retain Nepal’s independence – a feat he managed in part by playing China against India and the Soviet Union against the United States, all while ruling with his own brand of autocracy. As a wire-service reporter, Elizabeth had to stick to the facts, being careful not to voice an opinion regardless of what she thought of the goings-on.

  Professionally, Elizabeth managed a small coup in January 1962 when Time Inc.’s chairman of the board and the Delhi bureau chief arrived, expecting Elizabeth to entertain them and introduce them to all the important people. Thanks to her infiltration of the upper echelons of Nepalese society, she was able to secure interviews and lunches for them with important ministers and, more impressively, a half-hour interview with the king – his first press interviews since taking over the government. She was fascinated to hear him articulate his thoughts in his soft-spoken manner.

  Then, in early February she met an Englishman named Micky Weatherall on a plane heading south to Simra near the Indian border. He lived in an enormous palace belonging to one of the most prominent members of the Rana family. A civil engineer, Weatherall was in business with his Rana host to build bridges under contract to the Nepalese government. He had grown up in Darjeeling and spoke Nepali, Hindi and half a dozen other languages. Elizabeth and he decided to drive back overland from Simra together. It turned into an adventure of several days, for they were hauling enormous steel girders behind a couple of tractors, one of which was driven by Weatherall. Elizabeth pulled up the rear in a Land Rover. They travelled through steep, rough country with some challenging driving, becoming good friends in the process. Upon their return, Weatherall invited Elizabeth to his palace, Baber Mahal, for a party he was throwing for one of the Rana family members. It was an introduction into a part of Nepalese society that Elizabeth otherwise would have had difficulty penetrating. In particular, it opened the door to a friendship with General Mrigendra Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana, his wife and their children.

  Elizabeth and Weatherall became close, spending a lot of time together in Kathmandu, as well as heading into the nether regions of the country where he had construction projects. They were also friends with American journalist Barbara Adams and Prince Basundhara, brother of the king. Barbara was something of a curiosity in Kathmandu. She had first arrived in 1961 from Rome with her husband, an Italian photographer. After a brief vacation in the country, he was ready to leave and she wasn’t – so she stayed. Shortly after, she became romantically involved with the prince. Barbara Adams did some reporting work in Nepal, but spent most of her time socializing. She was flamboyant, and talented in linguistics, speaking at least four languages.

  The two couples often gallivanted around the country together, which usually meant an adventure. Barbara and her prince wanted to marry, but it was not to be. The prince, who was already married, had to ask permission from the king to remarry under the recently created remarriage laws. The king said yes, but only if Basundhara’s wife agreed to the divorce. She refused – apparently she didn’t want to give up being a princess. So the prince and Barbara were forced to remain lovers for years.

  When Barbara and her prince finally split up, both Weatherall and Elizabeth tried to mediate, but it was irreconcilable. Elizabeth thought Barbara was egocentric and their friendship eventually waned, but not before they’d had a few more adventures. Many years later, the friction between them finally exploded at a garden party. Barbara had been writing regular columns for a local newspaper about political and environmental issues and was openly critical of the current prime minister and the cabinet. At the garden party, she complained bitterly about problems she was having trying to renew her visa for Nepal. Elizabeth remarked, “Well what do you expect when you write that kind of stuff?” Insulted, Barbara threw her out. But as difficult as their friendship sometimes was, they continued to see each other occasionally and were polite.

  Kathmandu had a small social community in those days; everyone in the expatriate circles knew each other. One
of the more unusual characters was an American named Father Moran. A Jesuit, he was affectionately called the “American Lama.” He had set up a primary, and later a secondary, school for boys in the valley and was recognized by everyone as a scholar, a diplomat and a man about town – racing around the city, sometimes in a Jeep, sometimes on his motorcycle, but always in a hurry.

  Another local character was the Swiss geologist Toni Hagen. Here was a man who knew his way around not only Kathmandu but the entire country, as Elizabeth would learn. For 12 years he had roamed Nepal, exploring hundreds of valleys, covering thousands of miles of trail, identifying dozens of different dialects and infiltrating places no foreigner had ever been. Many speculated on ulterior motives for his extensive wanderings, especially near the Tibetan border, but he was a true explorer and had the stories to prove it.

  A much quieter man, though no less intriguing to Elizabeth, was the Austrian Peter Aufschnaiter. Famous for the seven years he had spent in Tibet with fellow Austrian Heinrich Harrer, Aufschnaiter wasn’t a willing storyteller. But occasionally Elizabeth coaxed him into sharing stories of his unusual experiences. After escaping from a prison camp in India into forbidden Tibet, he and Harrer had worked with the citizens of Lhasa long before the country was open to foreigners, building infrastructure and growing close to the Dalai Lama’s family before they were eventually forced to flee the country.

  At the beginning of March 1961, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth arrived with a contingent of foreign press in her wake, some of whom stayed with Elizabeth. In the course of covering the events herself she even managed a brief chat with “the other Elizabeth,” as some of her friends called the queen. But her biggest story was a “human interest” piece about a Sherpa couple from the Khumbu valley who wanted to come to Kathmandu to see the queen. The only problem was that the Sherpa woman was extremely pregnant and expecting to deliver any day. They came anyway, walking several days down from the hills. En route to Kathmandu, the appointed time arrived. They stopped for an hour, she had their baby and then they continued for another week to Kathmandu. In honour of the royal visit, they named their newborn baby Philip, after Queen Elizabeth’s husband.

  The royal visit provided Boris Lissanevitch of the Royal Hotel with an ideal opportunity to display his talents. He did it all: banquets, picnics, tent camps, a model of Mount Everest and more. And for the coup de grâce, he organized a royal tiger shoot, a tradition for any foreign dignitary coming to Nepal. But there was a problem. The Duke of Edinburgh was closely linked with several international conservation bodies and he simply could not be seen shooting a tiger or – even worse – photographed standing over a slain one. At the same time, he couldn’t insult his royal hosts. A diplomatic solution was found. On the morning of the shoot, the duke emerged from his tent with an allegedly infected trigger finger firmly encased in plaster. Elizabeth was amused that an international “incident” had been averted.

  There are many Boris stories, but the one that put him on the international map was his elephant salute. As the queen, Prince Phillip and their entourage left their tiger shoot camp, Boris arranged no fewer than 376 elephants, lavishly decorated and painted with gold and silver, into one immense, breathing wall. When the queen drove away from her jungle adventure, each elephant lifted its trunk one after the other in a solemn and majestic royal salute. As Elizabeth (Hawley) recalled the moment, “nobody thought on the same scale as Boris.”

  On her first New Year’s Eve in Nepal, Elizabeth attended a gala party at the Royal Hotel, where she met New Zealand climber Sir Edmund Hillary. He had just come out of the mountains with what was alleged to be the skin of an abominable snowman. Hillary’s yeti expedition was one of the largest and most international ever to enter the Himalaya to that point. More than 20 expedition members had come from New Zealand, England, India, the United States and Australia. The team included five journalists and photographers, 11 scientists, one radioman, one builder and seven veterans of one or more Himalayan expeditions. The primary objectives were scientific research in high-altitude physiology, meteorology and glaciology. But the much-publicized “yeti fur” brought back by Hillary ultimately proved to be the skin of a Tibetan blue bear.

  The most important of the expedition’s scientific objectives was to research and document the effects of high altitude on the human body. They erected a hut at 5791 metres and equipped it with a physiological laboratory manned by a team of eight physicians and physiologists for five months. They also climbed Ama Dablam, angering the Nepalese government by doing so without a permit. The disgruntled government ordered them to leave the country, but Ed Hillary flew back to Kathmandu and successfully negotiated permission to stay, as well as a permit for the 8481-metre Makalu, fifth highest mountain in the world and situated 20 kilometres east of Everest. Their attempt on Makalu was without bottled oxygen, and although they did not reach the summit, they did manage a high point of 8350 metres as well as a rescue operation when Hillary became ill. The climbing party included three strong New Zealand climbers: Hillary, Peter Mulgrew and George Lowe.

  Later that spring, Elizabeth was asked to do a story on Hillary’s health, since he had experienced a mild stroke while at high altitude. She was convinced the famous climber’s climbing days were over, and she wondered whether he would go back to New Zealand and perhaps run for Parliament. Or maybe “he’ll just go back to his bees,” she wrote to her mother, referencing his previous means of livelihood.

  These early days of mountaineering in Nepal were exciting, as there were major peaks still to be climbed. For example, nobody had tried to climb 7855-metre Nuptse. Although photographic evidence by Sir John Hunt had suggested a possible summit route by the South Ridge, British climber Chris Bonington and expedition leader Joseph Walmsley found a better route on the Central Ridge that led more directly to the summit. Within a six-week period in 1961, two summit teams reached the top, enjoying some difficult technical climbing as well as a view of nearby Everest.

  Although Elizabeth was increasingly drawn into the world of mountaineering, with its daring stories of courage to report, the politics of Nepal continued to occupy her time. In October she was assigned a Time story to ascertain the contents of a boundary treaty signed by the king of Nepal on a state visit to China, in which he and the president of the People’s Republic of China had “disposed of the question of who owns Everest.” Nobody in Kathmandu knew the answer, so it took some behind-the-scenes digging to discover that the treaty stated that the border followed the ridge line of Everest: “What we see from Nepal, i.e., the southern side, is Sagarmatha, the Nepalese name for Everest, and what they see from the Tibetan region of China is Chomolungma, the Chinese–Tibetan name for the mountain,” she was told. Her network of highly placed contacts served her well in getting an answer and getting it in time for the deadline.

  At this time, Elizabeth began the frustrating exercise of trying to learn Nepali. Confessing to not having a good ear for languages, she also bridled against the inflexibility of scheduled lesson times. It was a half-hearted attempt from the beginning; secretly she was convinced that anyone she really needed to speak with would speak English much better than she could ever speak Nepali. All of which added up to her decision, after only a few lessons, to give up the struggle for good. Years later, when her assistant Heather Macdonald informed her that she was learning Nepali, Elizabeth asked why. Heather responded that she wanted to understand the culture better, but Elizabeth patiently explained that “everyone here speaks English.” Heather describes her attitude as a combination of New York cosmopolitan and British raj. Elizabeth never did learn to speak Nepali.

  In May 1962 her professional life changed once again, although not dramatically. At the time, Reuters had a part-time correspondent stationed in Kathmandu, an Indian man who also worked for the Times of India. When King Mahendra put a sudden end to the constitution, slapped all the members of the government that he could find in jail and declared political parties illegal, the Reuters cor
respondent naturally reported on it. The authorities were not pleased with what appeared in print, so they demanded that he leave. One day soon after this, Elizabeth was sitting in her office when two Reuters executives and the Reuters bureau chief in Delhi appeared at the top of her stairs. They were looking for a replacement and asked Elizabeth if she would do it. She knew the job would not pay well, but it would allow her even more access to the inner circles of current affairs in Nepal. She said yes.

  Initially it meant little more than having a young Nepali arrive at her door each morning to tell her what was in the local newspapers and the government’s publicity department bulletin, as well as the National News Agency report. Her job was to check for accuracy, which she did on her newly acquired telephone. But with the upcoming week-long celebration of King Mahendra’s birthday starting June 11, she knew her Reuters work would increase.

  Her first news exclusive was not about politics, however, but about a small climbing expedition headed by Woodrow Wilson Sayre (the president’s grandson). Sayre was thought to be lost in bad weather on a remote mountain. The climbers eventually showed up, but upon interviewing Sayre, Elizabeth declared him to be a strange and irresponsible sort of person. Privately to her mother, she suggested that the expedition had been asking for trouble, as they were not especially experienced, had never been to the Himalaya before and had left their Sherpas at base camp to go alone into dangerous terrain. She was not impressed, particularly when she later learned from her mother that he was planning to write a book – which he eventually did, entitled Four Against Everest. She suggested it wouldn’t be worth buying, ending her tirade with “God preserve us from more climbers like Sayre.”