House of Snow

by Sir Ranulph Fiennes Ed Douglas

  I was glad when the proceedings were over and we could see the shattered Nike being led off to his house. Undoubtedly this function had been good for the village. Not only the Nike had been under judgment. We knew that in a week’s time the Nike would be drinking chang with his fellows as though nothing had happened, but suspected that the village might still remember the original cause.

  A few days later the Nike’s wife made a pilgrimage to Thyangboche. Her husband had been sorely shaken by Desmond’s comment on making his peace with God, and she was bearing gifts and a request that the head lama intercede. Three times she saw the head lama and stated her husband’s plea and three times she was turned away. “This man has committed a great crime,” said the head lama. “He must work out his own salvation.”

  SKYLIGHT TO THE CLOUDS

  Our firm stand in the village had produced immediate improvement in the support we received for the school construction, and real progress was made over the next few days. The daily bad weather was making climbing conditions on the mountains both difficult and dangerous, and I recalled a reluctant group off Taweche to come and help us with the building program. The school site had become a hive of industry. In one corner two men with an 8-foot saw were pitsawing balks of timber into rafters, beams and planks; the masons were putting the final touches to the rock walls; the carpenters were completing the joinery for the windows and the decorative frieze, called langdy pangdy, which was to come under the overhanging roof; the school children were gathering rocks for the enclosing walls of the playground; most of the sahibs were sawing and hammering at the floor and framework; and Desmond Doig was building a seesaw and swing. Already the building was taking shape and our pride in it was growing accordingly.

  The weather was still harassing us. Fresh snow on the rafters made them slippery and dangerous and a stiff wind whistled around our ears, making down clothing a necessity. During the worst spells we’d come off the building and crowd around a blazing fire with our umbrellas up and the snow weighing them down. In the few moments when the clouds lifted we could see the mountains heavily plastered with snow, and sounds of frequent avalanches rumbled across the valley.

  “This is the worst winter we have known for a generation,” said the Sherpas, “and still the summer refuses to come. When can we plant the rest of our potatoes?”

  Under our determined onslaught the building grew rapidly. The floor joists were placed in position and the flooring timbers securely nailed down. The heavy central beam was raised with much grunting and groaning, and the rafters were cut and then hammered into position. To combat the vigorous winds that could be expected here, we threaded wires through the rock walls a foot from the top and nailed these securely onto the roof structure. It was quite an exciting moment when we were ready to put the corrugated aluminum onto the roof. Dave Dornan and I started this and made haste with such enthusiasm that we didn’t notice we were lining up the sheets a little out of plumb. Perfectionist Murray Ellis came to supervise our work and to our chagrin made us pull off a dozen sheets and put them back square. Despite such setbacks we completed the covering of the roof in a day. Our particular pride was the sheets of corrugated Fiberglas we had set into the roof as skylights. It was already apparent how effective they were going to be.

  To our delight, the next two days were fine. The snow rapidly disappeared from the ground around us and black rock could be seen again on the peaks above. We reveled in the warm sun and hurried on to the last jobs, perhaps the most difficult ones – the fitting of windows into the front and side walls, the hanging of the door, and the cutting and nailing of planking onto the front wall. These would not have been problems with square-cut timber, but with the irregular product of pitsawing it was difficult to produce a good flush finish. There were many grumbles and complaints before all the holes were blocked and our sliding aluminum-frame windows from Chicago were safely in place and causing gasps of admiration from the local experts.

  Desmond and I were still worrying about how to arrange schooling for the children of Phorche. The only solution to their isolation seemed for them to stay in Pangboche for the week and return home on weekends. On investigation we found that it would be prohibitively expensive for the children to be boarded out with individual families. The practical answer was to have them all living together. After much negotiation we managed to lease one of the biggest and newest houses in the village. The rent was Rs 200 ($27) per annum, so I signed the lease for three years and paid the money in advance. The lease was then presented to the village of Phorche. We worked on the house, transforming one end of the upper story into a comfortable room for Mr. Phutenzi, the schoolteacher. The elders of Phorche came in force to examine the house and were happy with it. They advised us that seventeen of their children were coming to the Pangboche School. Various adults would take turns living in the house to maintain discipline.

  Opening day for the school was April 29. It was a patchy morning with sun at first, but by midday we were enveloped in a warm drizzle. We had hoped for brilliant sunshine. Our Sherpas were far from despondent. “This weather is most propitious, sahib,” they said. “We need the warm rain for our potatoes. The gods must be looking with high favor on our new school.”

  At 12:30 the head lama of Thyangboche entered the village, and at 1 P.M. approached the school with a long procession. Despite the rain it was a colorful and cheerful scene. People had come from far and near. All the Pangboche children and parents were there in their best finery – even the Nike with his pretty daughter – and there was a strong contingent from Phorche. As a special treat for this occasion, we had brought eighteen bright-faced children from the Khumjung School. We crowded into the new school for the ceremony, with the patter of rain on the roof adding to the din of cheerful voices. The many who couldn’t get inside crowded at the windows, oblivious of the rain and we were afraid that the walls would burst under the pressure. But the speeches, the exchanging of scarves, the ceremonial drinks, the blessings by the head lama all went off without a hitch in an atmosphere of warmth and goodwill.

  After the ceremony we had Tibetan dancing by the people of Pangboche and, as a crowning event, a series of songs by the Khumjung school children. Their Nepalese songs were quite delightful but we had to hide our smiles a little when we heard English nursery rhymes rendered with vim, vigor and very little accuracy.

  The Pangboche School started with a roll of fifty-four pupils, ranging in age from five years to twenty-six. Two of the men in the village were determined to learn to read and write and had signed themselves on as pupils at the same time they had enrolled their little daughters of six and seven. For the two months the school was in operation before I left the area they attended classes regularly. As all the pupils were starting completely from scratch irrespective of age, I asked Phutenzi how the progress of the fathers was comparing with that of their little daughters. “There is no comparison, sahib. The daughters are already far in advance of their parents. Their little minds remember things so much more easily.”

  It is our hope that the school in Pangboche will transform it. No longer will the village be regarded as a den of thieves by Sherpa and expedition alike. We are confident that the basic material is the same as in any village, and by education and guidance it can learn to follow more closely the pattern of cheerful tolerance and natural dignity which is so much a part of the Sherpas we love. And we have learned, too, from Pangboche – learned not to judge a village by the grubbiness of its faces or the poverty of its homes. Where opportunity has been completely lacking, how can we expect people to meet standards we accept as routine – but too often flout ourselves? We are expecting much from Pangboche’s schoolhouse in the clouds!

  TIGER FOR BREAKFAST

  Michel Peissel

  Michel Peissel (1937–2011) was a French ethnologist, explorer and author. He was an emeritus member of the Explorers Club and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He has produced, directed, or initiated 22 documentary films
on his various expeditions.

  A strange land, Nepal... its existence is due more to the work of surveyors than to any very definite modern administrative unity. Mountains are the only common denominator, mountains and mountain people from east to west, north to south, from the damp pestilential terai jungle up through the rice-terraced foothills on to the mighty snow-covered peaks of the Everest Range, the Annapurna Range, and the Dhaulagiri Range, which separate Nepal from the invisible but ever present psychological mass of Chinese-occupied Tibet. From the bar I could see the snow-capped mountains beyond which looms the specter of communism and mysticism combined, representatives of which occasionally come down to the sunny Valley of Kathmandu, where Tibetan monks brush elbows with silent employees of the Chinese Embassy.

  As always, the hotel was buzzing with projects and intrigues, millionaires and princes. Boris had just returned from Hong Kong, barely in time to cater successively the banquets given on successive nights by King Mahendra of Nepal in honor of Nehru and to Nehru in honor of the King. Sir Edmund Hillary of Everest fame, now engaged in building schools for the Sherpas, was scheduled to arrive the following day. And Boris told me of his pleasure that Russia’s space couple, Valentina Tereshkova and her husband, Andrian J. Nikolayev, were due in on their honeymoon the day after, accompanied by another cosmonaut and his wife. The depressed, bearded members of the ill-fated Italian expedition still haunted the corridors of the hotel, wearing blue jeans and smelling of Tibetan butter, amid American tourists complaining that in Nepal conditions were not up to pay, having forgotten that the country, to use Boris’s expression, “was still in the seventeenth century, having already in ten years moved up from the Middle Ages.”

  How I was to get to know Boris in such a whirlwind was a question that no one could answer. Being around Boris was like touring the world in a capsule. One unusual character after another appeared, seemingly with each round of whisky, ranging from the Russian cosmonauts on their honeymoon to the newly arrived German ambassador, whose room adjoined that of the Pakistan ambassador. Both were waiting for their new legations to be built.

  “How do you think you can catch him alone?” remarked Inger, Boris’s beautiful young Danish wife. “In the fifteen years we have been married, I have spent only two evenings alone with him.” Upon which Inger hurried off to have the tea ready for the Tibetan refugee committee that would meet in their private flat before the king’s brother, Prince Basundhara, arrived with his American fiancée.

  Just how, I wondered, would I find out about Boris in Russia, Boris and the ballet, Boris in World War II, Boris and the Maharaja of Cooch Behar, Boris and Hollywood, Calcutta, politics, Saigon, tigers, elephants, and Nepal?

  The day after our arrival a slight noise awoke me at dawn. The room servant was bringing my “morning cup of tea,” a detestable colonial custom of British India that requires that the white “sahib” have a cup of tea left by his bed at five in the morning. Needless to say, the only advantage of this custom is that when you get up three hours later the tea is cold and you have to order more.

  That morning I could not fall asleep again. I therefore rose and strolled out of my room into the park. There I was surprised to see rows and rows of maidens coming in through the gate. Girls of marriageable age, they were covered with heavy gold and silver trinkets that dangled upon their black, tight blouses, which were tucked into the broad belts that held up their long pleated skirts. They laughed and joked as, bent in two, they carried in heavy loads of pink wood cut from the rhododendron forests that cover the summits of the green hills that enclose the valley on all sides. In Kathmandu there is no modern fuel. Cow dung is the most common source of heat, and as Boris could hardly use cow dung, he has had to resort to the services of the Tamang tribe, a mysterious people notable for their jewelry and the way they put their young women to use. It is the privilege of the members of this tribe to bring each morning to the hotel the wood necessary for the clients’ daily baths. The isolation of Kathmandu and the primitiveness of services in Nepal have resulted in the slightest convenience becoming a complicated ritual. A good example is the preparation of a hot bath.

  The wood carried in each morning is stacked in neat bundles in a corner of the gardens, and while the Tamang girls await their pay (given in silver coins, as paper money is still regarded with suspicion by the peasants), a lowly caste of half-naked coolies, wielding primitive axes about their bare feet, go about smashing it up. Once this operation has been performed, the hotel room servants, known as “bearers,” come and collect the wood and bring some to each room. As central heating would be unthinkable in a land where lead pipe is unknown, every room has a small, archaic oven, along with its own boiler and water supply. Such a complicated system, through careful synchronization at the expense of the hurried guests, can occasionally provide a tepid bath at about ten A.M. This is the time when Boris himself gets up and grabs a book to retire for an hour in his bath, a morning ritual that he misses only when in the jungle.

  Immediately after the Tamang girls have disappeared, the hotel sees its grounds invaded by the goldsmiths and other merchants who come in to take up their positions by the small showcases that cluster the ground floor gallery of the hotel. Ever since Boris first proved that Nepalese handicrafts were beyond doubt one of the greatest attractions of the country, the artisans of the valley have been busily at work. Most of them speak Tibetan, as their best clients before the arrival of American tourists were the monks and wealthy nobles of Lhasa, where thousands of Nepalese craftsmen used to resort to carry on their trades before the takeover of the Tibetan capital by the Communist Chinese.

  The Nepalese seem to excel in filigree copper work encasing thousands of semi-precious stones, and their wares vary from bejeweled miniature birds to great representations of Kathmandu’s pagodas executed with a refinement worthy of the most precise scale model.

  Kathmandu, which has no regular modern industry whatsoever, is still a medieval hive of goldsmiths, wood-carvers and engravers, and remains the greatest market town of all the Himalayas.

  Strolling out of the hotel gate, I stepped out into the road. A few hundred yards away from the hotel is the end of what seems like a small footpath. This is in fact one of the twenty or so trails that lead into the city from the hinterland. Unimpressive to see, these paths nevertheless lead on for hundreds of miles over hills and down valleys, winding a network of communications all over Nepal.

  Here I could watch the porters and coolies jogging to the sway of the bamboo poles balanced on their shoulders. From before sunrise till after sunset a constant flow of humanity brings to the capital the varied fragrances of all the districts of the nation of Nepal. Here can be seen every dress, every costume, every cargo, and every type of man from the innumerable different regions of the country: wool coming in in large bales carried by red-dressed, sweaty and often smelly Tibetans; small steel ingots brought in by the kami, or steelworkers, from Those, where mines thousands of years old are still worked. Here also come the wealthy merchants with their leather bags containing gold and precious stones: turquoises from the high Himalayan plateau, coralline and other semiprecious stones from the hills. Over these paths also travels rice, the great commodity of the country, which pours in incessantly to feed the thousands of city dwellers. Along these same tracks come peasants with great baskets loaded with chickens, or driving herds of thousands of goats to be either killed in sacrifice or simply shorn of their wool in the main squares of the capital.

  Food is a great problem for the inhabitants of Kathmandu, who are forever menaced by a rice shortage. It is almost as great a problem, however, for Boris. In Kathmandu the only meat available is buffalo meat. Practically everything else has to be imported. This forces Boris to spend much of his time fighting the customs officers; not those of Nepal but those of India. The primitive postal service further complicates transactions for Boris. Until recently all mail had to be sent through the Indian Embassy, as Nepal had not yet joined the Internati
onal Postal Union. Boris has now finally helped set up a customs office in Nepal, explaining to rice-eating clerks the origin and ingredients of such things as caviar and salami. In fact there is not a single dish served at the Royal Hotel that could not tell of an incredible journey. And between Copenhagen and Calcutta more than one precious cargo has been lost. Usually this happens in Calcutta, where goods are frequently mislaid, and very often are found only when the smell of their putrefaction finally succeeds in attracting the attention of negligent customs officials.

  His towel wrapped around him after his one-hour bath, Boris then begins his daily fight to keep the hotel supplied with necessities, sending endless messages to customs offices in India to the border towns of Nepal.

  In 1954, when Boris started the Royal, he had had no experience in hotel operations. Even in his former activities as executive secretary of the famous 300 Club, which he had founded in Calcutta, his functions had been primarily social. It came as something of a shock to discover that in Nepal almost everything, even providing the guests with baths, had to be arranged from scratch.

  It was only as the years went by that it grew somewhat easier for the most urgent necessities to find their way into the valley. The newly built road from the Indian border to Kathmandu was the first great leap forward. Although it looked at first as though this masterpiece of engineering would revolutionize the valley overnight, much patience was needed before it came into full use. The lack of vehicles was the first problem. Then the Indian government delayed in building a linking road between the Nepalese border and any Indian town of significance. The nearest large Indian town was more than 200 miles from the border. All this led Boris greatly to enlarge and develop his own vegetable gardens on part of the hotel grounds. In these gardens a variety of vegetables new to the country now grow in abundance under the influence of Kathmandu’s exceptional climate.