On our trip to the floe edge, I quickly saw the advantages of the modern form of transport. We raced across the ice at about thirty miles an hour; the komatic, to which I clung, yawed from side to side behind the Skidoo, bucking over every ridge in the ice. We could see the floe edge from a distance. At first it was like a solid wall, stretching across the entire horizon, but as we came closer, the wall disintegrated into a thin grey mist, rising from the open water. Ice merged imperceptibly with dark waters that seemed vicious in the cold.
Owalook stopped the Skidoo about twenty feet from the floe edge and, taking a boat-hook and his rifle, walked forward probing the ice. Close to the edge he halted and began scraping the hook from side to side with a steady rhythmic motion. A few minutes passed and a small dark blob appeared in the water and then vanished. Owalook dropped the hook, sat down on the ice, raised his rifle and waited. The blob appeared again. It was three hundred yards out, and barely discernible as the head of a seal. The rifle cracked; there was a flurry of water. ‘Dead,’ announced Owalook.
It had all happened so quickly and smoothly that I hardly realised what had happened, could not conceive that anyone could shoot so accurately, even with telescopic sights. Owalook had already unfastened the small, flat-bottomed dory tied on to the back of the komatic. He pushed it gingerly to the edge of the ice, rocked it once or twice to break the thin skin between him and the water, and pushed out.
Soon he was back with the seal in tow – it twitched a little and its brains flowed in a dark stream over the ice. I felt slightly sick, and walked away, but then felt ashamed and forced myself to return. I had not been watching someone killing for sport; this was Owalook’s sole means of livelihood.
To me, the saddest thing of all is that Owalook is part of a dying breed. One cannot afford to be sentimental about quaint old ways involving a great deal of hardship, malnutrition and disease, but on the other hand the impact of an industrialised society on a simple, so-called primitive people can be terribly destructive. Today, the Eskimoes are fed and housed and clothed – even educated, but in a stereotyped way that has little relevance to their cultural background.
In 1965, Pangnirtung had a population of 412 Eskimoes and thirty-four whites. Today, in 1973, this will be considerably higher. Only five years before there had been just a few Eskimo families living in tents around the mission station, Hudson Bay Company store, and Mounted Police post. Forty-five years before the fjord had been empty. This gives some idea of the rate of change in the last few years.
For thousands of years the Eskimoes had succeeded in living around Cumberland Sound and along the length of the Arctic coast and its islands, in one of the harshest environments in the world, hunting with bone-tipped harpoons and arrows, living in snow-houses or tents of caribou skin, surviving without the aid of either metals or wood, dependent entirely upon the flesh, fat and bones of the animal life of the Arctic sea and land.
During these years they evolved methods of Arctic survival that have never been improved upon – with all the resources of modern technology, there is no better temporary shelter than the igloo or snow-house, the traditional garments of caribou skin are warmer than any modern-designed Polar suits. The Eskimo lived in small, self-sufficient groups of either one or several families. The Camp Boss, or Leader, was the best hunter of the group, and each person had his own role: the short-sighted or cross-eyed would be delegated menial tasks; the women did the cooking and made the clothes, but within that group everyone had a fair share of its produce.
Baffin Island was first visited by a European in 1576, when Martin Frobisher was seeking gold and the North-west Passage reached its southern coast. But the European had little influence on the Eskimo’s way of life until the mid-nineteenth century when they came in increasing numbers to hunt whale, and even established whaling stations in Cumberland Sound. They also began trading with the Eskimo, giving him metal cooking-pots, guns, canvas and duffel material, in return for his skins. He acquired a taste for some southern foods, adding tea and sugar and flour to his menu of meat. Today, this is still his basic diet, although he is rapidly being introduced to other imported foods. When the whaling died down at the end of the nineteenth century, the Hudson Bay Company traders took over, establishing permanent posts throughout the Arctic.
Although the Eskimo became increasingly dependent upon these imported goods, he did not radically change his way of life. He still lived in small groups in the best hunting areas; still lived off the land. His life was undoubtedly a hard one and if he was improvident, or unlucky, his family could starve. He was also a prey to diseases, particularly those carried by the Europeans. Epidemics of polio or measles attacked complete communities. Chest troubles caused a heavy toll.
The establishment of a permanent trading post at Pangnirtung, followed by a Mission hospital and Mounted Police post, still had little effect on the life of the Eskimo. The site had been chosen for its good anchorage and position as a centre for trading to the camps scattered around Cumberland Sound. There was no reason for Eskimoes to settle there, as it was a long way from all the hunting grounds.
And then, in the late fifties, the Canadian Government suddenly became aware of the Eskimo population; before this they had been happy to leave the welfare and administration of the far North to the Mounted Police, its economy to the Hudson Bay Company, and its education to the church; but now the Department of Northern Affairs began to take an increasingly active interest in the northern coastline of Canada and developed a strong sense of responsibility towards its population of 12,000 Eskimoes, trying to bring them a standard of living and availability of opportunity comparable with that of the people living in southern Canada.
One of the most important facets of the government’s programme was education. Until the Eskimo could read and write English, and eventually compete on an equal footing with other Canadians, there seemed little hope for his future development. Even today, very few adults can speak a word of English, and the children, who have been to school for some years, barely have a working command of the language.
A school was opened in Pangnirtung in 1960: in 1968 it had five teachers and over a hundred pupils. The opening of the school naturally attracted the Eskimoes to Pangnirtung from their camps around Cumberland Sound. There were other reasons, too, all of which had a cumulative effect, for as the population of Pangnirtung increased, so did the amenities: Saturday-night Bingo, the movies; a coffee bar for teenagers, complete with juke box; an enlarged Hudson Bay Company store as well equipped as any of our own supermarkets.
The government had just launched a housing programme with the intention of renting prefabs of one to four rooms to all the Eskimoes on the basis of the individual’s family size and income. The houses were undoubtedly more comfortable and convenient than the double-skinned tents in which the Eskimoes had lived up to this period, but aesthetically they were hideously ugly-little boxes littering the foreshore of Pangnirtung Sound.
There had been a wonderful peace and strange beauty in the tented camp at Bon Accord, one of the last family camps to survive. There was no Bingo or Saturday-night movie, but the family who lived there appeared to have a peace of mind which was lacking in Pangnirtung.
As I climbed into the Otter and took off on my journey back to England, I couldn’t help feeling sad that a people who had survived so successfully and proudly in so harsh an environment were slipping into the role of the aimless unemployed, with full bellies, synthetic entertainment, yet with no real purpose or place in a modern technological world.
I should have liked to return home, for I was worried about Wendy, now getting close to the date when she was due to give birth, but I had another assignment in central Canada to do a story on a newly-opened oil field. My trip to Baffin Island had been the closest I had come to straight journalism, where I had to do more than just have an adventure and record it. I had been fascinated by the lives of the Eskimoes and had felt a deep sympathy with them.
The Athaba
ska Oil Sands were different. I was confused by the massive machinery, the economics of the operation, and felt nothing in common with the managers and operatives of the concern. At the end of a week of talking to people and taking pictures of this symbol of modern industrialisation dropped in the middle of the featureless, trackless forests of mid-Canada, I still had very little idea of what kind of story I could possibly write. In fact, I never did write one.
And then, back home to England, to write up my Eskimo story, to be with Wendy once more, now in the final stages of her pregnancy. Daniel was born by a caesarean operation on the 25th April 1967; an agonising gap in our lives had been filled, but at Bank End Cottage, beautiful though it was, we were constantly reminded of Conrad’s short life. We did not take the decision consciously, but I think we needed to make a move to break away from these reminders. We bought a house in Cockermouth early that summer, but even as we bought it I was beginning to feel restless in the Lake District. The idyllic, easy-going days of Woodland were for ever finished. I was getting more and more journalistic work, more lectures, and this meant long, awkward drives out of the Lake District to wherever I happened to be going. I began to feel isolated, both from the society of other photographers and writers and from the main climbing stream. By this time a strong climbing community had formed in Wales, based around Llanberis, but in the Lakes there was no such development. There was a fair number of local climbers, but these were scattered over a wide area.
Another factor was that although I had been climbing round the Lake District for five years and had by no means exhausted all the climbs in that area I had begun to tire of Lakeland hills and was looking farther afield.
I wanted to move to London, feeling that now my career was developing into that of a photo-journalist and since all the magazines had their offices in London, this was the place where I should also be. Wendy, on the other hand, loved the Lake District, had built a circle of close and loyal friends and had grown roots much deeper and more lasting than I ever could. With real justification she felt that since I was away from home so much, in the main doing things which I thoroughly enjoyed, she should have a strong say in where we lived.
These two, differing ambitions caused the greatest strain our relationship has had, before or since. I was determined to move; she wasn’t at all sure whether it was even in my best interests to do so, but she knew she could not budge me from my view. We spent several very unhappy weekends, hunting for a possible home in London. Starting in Hampstead, where I had been brought up, we breezed into an estate office and asked for houses at around what we considered to be a reasonable figure. The receptionist raised a polite eyebrow, and assured us they had nothing at less than double that figure. Eventually we found our financial level which took us to an area where we trailed round a series of slightly grotty terrace houses, deafened by the sound of traffic, becoming suddenly aware of the smell of petrol fumes. We fled from London and headed for home.
On the way back we stayed with Nick Estcourt, who had recently moved from London to work as a computer programmer with Ferranti in Manchester. He and his wife Carolyn lived in a flat at Alderley Edge which, after London, seemed delightfully clean and quiet – the perfect compromise. Already we had plenty of friends in the Manchester area – we could get back to the Lake District comparatively easily and, living on the outskirts of Manchester, there was not the same feeling of claustrophobia which London seemed to generate in me almost as badly as in Wendy.
Less than a year after we had bought our house in Cockermouth, we started hunting for a house on the southern side of Manchester, and as we hunted the tempo of my own career seemed to grow ever faster. It was spring, 1968, and I had been asked to accompany Nicholas Monsarrat to Hunza as photographer, while he wrote a profile on this obscure little kingdom in the heart of the Himalaya. And later that summer I was due to join an expedition to attempt the first-ever descent of the Blue Nile – again as writer and photographer. But first I was to visit Hunza.
– CHAPTER EIGHTEEN –
THE VALLEY OF THE HUNZA
Hunza is an emerald in a setting of browns, greys and dazzling white, an oasis in the heart of a mountain desert of soaring ice peaks and sun-blasted rock. They say its inhabitants live to ages of anything up to 130 and that they are descended from the soldiers of Alexander the Great.
Nicholas Monsarrat and I were trying to find out how far reality lived up to legend. In London this remote Himalayan valley had seemed almost too accessible: VC10 to Karachi, a connection to Rawalpindi and the next morning a local plane to Ghilgit in the heart of the mountains. A tourist brochure assured us that there was a jeep road through spectacular scenery into Hunza itself, and it seemed we could be there within forty-eight hours of leaving London.
I should have been disappointed if this had proved true. Our first delay was in Rawalpindi where we waited for three days in the anonymous cloying luxury of the Hotel Intercontinental, while storm clouds scurried over the foothills to the immediate north. The plane could only fly to Ghilgit in perfect conditions.
Monsarrat and I must have made an unlikely looking pair. He, urbane, charming when he wanted to be, yet with a caustic wit that could lash out unexpectedly, had come equipped with dinner jacket and clothes for every social occasion. I had two rucksacks full of boots, ropes and climbing gear.
The flight from Rawalpindi to Ghilgit must be one of the most impressive in the world. The twin-engined Fokker Friendship ridge-hops over the tree-covered tentacles of the great peaks – one second the plane is barely clawing its way over a ridge and the next it is suspended over the abyss of a deep-cut valley, brown waters swirling far below. The gigantic mass of Nanga Parbat towers over the plane with its complex of ice falls, snow fields and rocky buttresses.
Approaching Ghilgit the plane dives through narrow valleys, giving the impression of driving flat out along a narrow country lane. We overshot the runway once, caught a glimpse of mud-roofed houses and upturned faces, seemed to fly straight for the rock wall of the valley, banked at the last minute and touched down at Ghilgit airport. The following day an air force plane crashed on its way out to Rawalpindi with the loss of twenty-two lives, a grim reminder of the dangers of flying among high mountains.
Ghilgit itself is a dusty garrison town, surrounded by bleak rocky hills, but the bazaar has a feeling of Kipling’s North-west Frontier, of being the threshold of something more strange and exciting. Jeeps jostle with pedestrians and donkeys, bearded holy men stride through the teeming streets, and the shops, like open-ended boxes, are crammed with brightly coloured trashy goods. It is a world of men, and the few women in sight are heavily veiled by the hideous burkha. The muezzin calls the faithful to prayer over the loudspeaker, harsh and metallic. Here is an uneasy, at times ugly, marriage between progress and tradition.
We spent the night in the rest house and the next morning were ready to start the final stage of our journey by jeep to Hunza. Our party had now grown. The Pakistan Press Information Department had put at our disposal one of their officials, a Mr Mir. At times one felt he had the role of an ‘Intourist’ guide, deflecting us from anything that might not show Pakistan at its best. At Ghilgit we were joined by another guide from Hunza, who had with him his seven-year-old son. With the driver and his mate, six of us, with all our baggage, were crammed into the back of the jeep.
At first the road ran up a wide flat valley – weeping grey clouds clinging to its rocky flanks, the road, a dirt strip marked by cairns of stone; and then the valley began to narrow, the road crept up its side, wound in and out through tottering pinnacles of rock, clung to precarious slopes of scree. The jeep was now permanently in bottom gear; each meeting with an oncoming vehicle became a battle of wills between the drivers as to who should go back to the nearest parking place. The road was like a switchback gone mad, as it bucked from valley floor, over spurs, round re-entrants and down again. And as the rain fell, water rushed down every gully, eating away the road, carrying little avalanche
s of stones that built up into drifts across it. I have never known a journey like it. I was perched on the outside of the jeep and seemed to overhang the creaming torrent hundreds of feet below. The jeep snarled and skidded on the loose stones and mud, brushed the precarious outer wall, teetered past giant bites that had been eaten from the road.
After forty miles, with another twenty-five to go, we were finally brought to a halt: the entire road had been swept away. We spent the night in the rest house at the nearest village. There were no amenities and the only available food was a few hard-boiled eggs and leathery chuppaties, which we ate under the assembled gaze of the inhabitants. I could see Nicholas Monsarrat’s sense of humour beginning to wear a little thin, and that night he began to mutter about returning to London to meet his publishers’ deadline on a new novel he had just finished. By morning, his mind was made up – he was determined to return; Mr Mir was eager to volunteer his services as escort – his winkle-picker shoes and sharp city suit were hardly suitable for a trek into the lost valley of Hunza.
I decided to walk on into Hunza. Apart from anything else, I have always preferred being on foot to being in a vehicle. In a jeep one is separated from the people of the land, not only by the speed of one’s passing, but also by the barriers set up by one’s relative affluence. The rain still poured down, but I had a feeling of freedom as I plodded on with my interpreter, his son and an elderly mail-runner who volunteered to carry my gear.
That night we reached the village of Hindi – we were on Hunza territory for the first time. Hindi is a tiny oasis of green clinging to the arid rocks and sand of the gorge. Houses like little mud boxes are scattered among a mosaic of terraced fields and irrigation channels. Everywhere are trees, straight rows of poplar, clumps of apricot, little jungles of lavender.
The Next Horizon Page 29