by Ali Gripper
Darjeeling,’ Sanduk overheard Goba say to his parents. ‘This
boy is not going to do anything good here other than cause
mischief.’
Too shy to ask, Sanduk desperately wanted to know where
he was being sent, and for how long. ‘I had a vague under-
standing that it was going to be a long trip. Part of me was
curious about “going south”, as they called it, and another
part was afraid of leaving home.’
As the day drew closer, Kasang started slowly putting
special things in a bag for him; a new hand- knitted sweater
and green canvas shoes imported from China.
She leant down to talk to him for a long time. With dark
brown braids around her neck, she reassured him about the
school he’d be going to, in a big city. She put on a brave front, telling her young son that it would exciting to see cars, planes, trucks, electric lights—all the things he’d always wanted to
see—and make friends with other boys.
But Sanduk had no conception of what she was talking
about. Walung was his whole world. ‘My childish concern
was really only of my precious collection of yak horns and
special pebbles; I wanted to take my treasured keepsakes with 11
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me,’ he recalls. ‘So together we put them on a special shelf
and she promised me she would not let anyone touch them
until I returned.’
On the day Sanduk left, his mother gave him a small
handmade bag she’d sewn out of the same red- and- white
striped material her aprons were made out of. She’d sewn bells on the outside, and had filled it with flour biscuits, handmade chocolates and churpi, a type of sweet, hard cheese, and told him not to eat them all in one day.
As she leant down and put it around his neck, the enormity
of what was happening began to sink in.
Butter lamps were lit in the windows of their home (a tradi-
tional Tibetan Buddhist ritual in which yak butter is burnt), incense was burnt, and his father started chanting prayers.
Outside he could hear the yak bells clanging as his father’s
small caravan prepared to leave the village.
Sanduk pressed himself into his mother’s woollen tunic,
inhaling the familiar smell of yak wool, wood smoke and the
spices she used to make tea. ‘This is just something you have to do, my dear,’ she told him, holding him close, and softly
stroking his head. ‘Be a very good boy. Do everything your
teachers ask you. You’re going to be looked after very well,
and you’ll be coming back soon.’
Sanduk shut his eyes, and wrapped his arms around his
mother’s waist, burying his head into her apron. His father
gently pulled Sanduk away and nudged him toward the
stone path heading out of the gorge, away from the village
and everything he knew to be safe and familiar. They joined
the caravan and headed toward the thunderous torrent of the
Tamor River.
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He was seven years old.
He looked back several times. As their party descended
the path, Kasang was standing clutching her apron, her face
streaked with tears. Neither of them knew it at the time, but he would not see her again for three years.
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2
VERTIGO
‘Slow your pace down to that of the yaks,’ Sonam told his
young son as they navigated the narrow mountain passes,
their backs pressed against the cliff faces. ‘And look where you are going. Don’t put your foot down unless you’ve worked
out what stone or rock you are going to land on. Don’t look
down, don’t look around, and don’t get distracted.’ It was
good advice for the journey of life.
The Himalayas have long been romanticised as a place of
rugged and luminous beauty. The explorer and writer Peter
Matthiessen, one of the first Westerners to enter Tibet via
Nepal, seems to have fallen under a kind of spell when he first saw Mount Everest, describing it in his 1978 book The Snow Leopard as ‘glistening like a spire of a higher kingdom’.
As a boy, Sanduk was taught to regard the mountains,
especially Kanchenjunga, their home mountain, as a place
of sacred power. Rather than something to conquer, in the
view of many Westerners, the mountains were a place that
commanded great respect, calling upon great reserves of fortitude, faith and physical strength simply to survive.
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Now Sanduk was about to find out himself just how
dangerous crossing the roof of the world could be. In a trip
that would be almost unimaginable to most boys of the same
age, Sanduk walked with his father for two weeks in his
simple Chinese sneakers across stone crags, ice crusts, and
over torrential rivers on flimsy log bridges.
Their destination was St Robert’s School, a Jesuit boarding
school his father had enrolled him into at Darjeeling, West
Bengal, in northern India. The trip was probably about
150 kilometres as the crow flies, but the path was so rocky
and winding that the real distance is impossible to measure.
At that time, there was no other way to get there.
His father walked along the narrow ledges and stone paths
as if it was second nature; he was as nimble and sure- footed as the yaks. Elegant even. But at seven, Sanduk was still finding his feet. There were many moments in those first hard days
when he stumbled, or tripped, or was so terrified that his feet refused to budge. It was then that Sonam’s loyal assistant,
Dharkey, who helped him with everything from arranging
trips to his business affairs, would coax the boy onwards.
Sanduk trusted Dharkey. ‘He had such a kind face. He
would hold my hand crossing the roads and bridges that I was
frightened by and would pat me to sleep at night. He’d help
me put my coat on and make sure I’d eaten enough breakfast
before I started out.’
On the first night, Sonam and Dharkey were too exhausted
to cook anything other than porridge with dried meat. Sanduk
was on the verge of tears; he desperately wanted to go back
home, back to his mother’s kitchen and his warm bed by the
fire with all his family.
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‘I must have been anxious, sleeping in a cave in the moun-
tains, because when I woke up in the morning, I realised I’d
peed into the sheepskin rug I’d been sleeping on.’
His father, normally so strict, must have understood how
strange all this was for the seven- year- old. As they watched the sun light up the south face of Kanchenjunga, Sonam simply
brewed tea, made porridge, and threw the sodden blanket on
the back of a yak to dry in the sun. Nothing was ever said
about the matter.<
br />
Sanduk dreaded every one of the small, swaying suspen-
sion bridges that punctuated their journey. One step in the
wrong direction and he could fall into the crevasse. Mistakes could be fatal. At one point, they crossed the roaring Tamor
River on a single plank of wood.
‘I remember that Dharkey held one of my hands, and
another trader held the other. I didn’t look down. I knew if
I’d fallen into the river, I would have just been swept away.’
Sanduk’s strength grew quickly; within days he realised he
was made of the same stuff as his father. Toward the end,
he took pride in keeping up with everyone else in the party.
Often, he would walk in his father’s or Dharkey’s footsteps
for hours. He remembers listening to the fast thud of his own heart and using every muscle in his body to keep up with
the men.
He grew fond of the yaks with their fluffy tails; how nimble
they were at high altitudes above the snowline, and how they
slowed down and grew stubborn at the lower altitudes. He
loved the brightly coloured ribbons and bells tied to their
woolly manes.
They had that barren, awe-
inspiring landscape all to
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themselves. They didn’t meet anyone else for the entire trip.
It was just snow, rock and sky. The only sounds were the
swoosh of eagles overhead, the roar of the river, and the occasional rockslide. Sometimes it was so quiet that the silence
seemed to ping. At night, they would camp in shepherds’
huts or caves that Sonam or Dharkey knew from their many
previous trips. They would make a small fire and cook corn
and potatoes, or dal bhat.
At night, the stars were so bright and close that Sanduk
felt as if he could reach out and touch them. He would fall
asleep as soon as he lay his head on the blankets Dharkey had laid down for him.
The most gruelling part was along the border of eastern
Nepal and India. They were on an exposed ridge for days, in a blizzard, with the sub- zero wind and snow whipping around
them from every direction. Sanduk had a cap, but no gloves,
and his fingers were so cold they felt as if they were going to snap off. The wind seemed to pierce through his clothes and
lash his body. It almost took his breath away.
Sonam’s party only began to thaw out as they descended
out of this stone and ice world and into the softer, gentler
foothills around West Bengal, near Darjeeling. Suddenly,
within an hour, it seemed, they emerged into a completely
different landscape. They made their way through forests
of juniper and oak trees and banks of rhododendrons, and
his father pointed out the bamboo thickets that were home
to the elusive red pandas. Sanduk was mesmerised by the
rich colours; the yellow corn fields and the velvety green
tea gardens, stretching out around them, as far as they
could see.
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On the last day of the trek, when Sanduk and Sonam
emerged into the outskirts of Darjeeling, his senses were overwhelmed by the noise and mayhem.
Swarms of bicycles buzzed by, their bells jangling like
a chorus. Radios blared Hindu music from shops, their
shelves loaded with glass jars filled with lollies and biscuits.
The women looked like exotic creatures, wearing colourful
saris and daubs of red paint on their foreheads. Even more
astonishing were the tall Caucasians with their blue eyes and blond hair.
It was the first time Sanduk had ever laid eyes on a bus.
‘I thought they were a very curious looking machine,’ he says.
It helped that they were decorated that day, as they are so
often in India and Nepal, with garlands of marigold flowers
to celebrate one of the Hindu community’s many holy days.
As Sanduk stood there trying to take in the chaotic pageant,
an overpowering sense of inferiority swept over him.
‘I remember looking down at my own clothes and feeling
so embarrassed by my homespun yak wool trousers and shirt.
I felt like such a country hick. It was as if I’d somehow turned up in a modern city from prehistoric times. I wanted to disappear, or hide.’
He didn’t get a chance. The next thing Sanduk knew, his
father was bidding farewell to Dharkey and the rest of the
group, and wrangling his son up onto the roof of one of
the buses. ‘I remember staring at its large rubber wheels in
amazement. Was this thing going to fly? Was a horse going to
drag it along? Was it going to float on water?’ He got some
of the other passengers to help us find a seat on the roof. The noise coming out of it as the driver turned a handle at the
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front and the engine started gave me such a fright. I remember Dad holding me close to him as we bumped our way over the
road and around the bends.’
When the bus finally shuddered to a halt at Darjeeling, with
a blast of black soot, they clambered off and walked through
the town, along the high ridge with views of the Himalayas,
to St Robert’s School, a solid brick residence built by British missionaries in the 1930s. Sanduk was limping from blisters
as they crossed the lawn. Neither he nor his father said a
word as they looked up at the large wooden doors. They
knocked and took a deep breath.
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3
Hey, bhotey
The boarding school Sonam had chosen for his son did not
enjoy the picturesque grandeur of nearby St Joseph’s School
which, with its handsome sandstone buildings, was framed by
the snow- capped Himalayas. St Robert’s, by comparison, was
a run- of- the- mill, government- funded school costing about $14 a year for boarding and tuition. ‘It was the equivalent
of two yaks, or six months’ salary,’ Sanduk says. ‘St Robert’s was one of the most affordable schools in Darjeeling, but for my parents it was quite a lot of money at the time.’
The 300 students who trooped into the three-
storey
building with a plain tin roof were mainly from India’s lower and middle class.
The warden at the time, a Jesuit priest called Father
William Mackey, peered down from under a thatch of snowy
white hair at the seven- year- old standing before him in his homespun clothes. The curiosity was mutual. Sanduk looked
up at the tall man with cobalt blue eyes, wearing what seemed to be a dress, a garment that turned out to be a clergyman’s
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cloak. ‘I remember Father Mackey gave me a funny little
smile . . . it was as if he’d known me for a long time.’ Little did Sanduk know what a comfort Father Mackey’s friendship
would be to him during the next six years.
Everything at the school, even the most common objects,
were totally unfamiliar to Sanduk
. The tables, the chairs, the blackboards, the electric lights, the radio and the heaters—
he’d never seen any such things before. He stood with his
mouth open, taking it all in. After a tour of the school grounds, he was taken to the tailor, where he was measured up for his
uniform of grey pants, grey sweater and white shirt, all of
which made him feel even more ill- at- ease.
Sanduk was just as taken aback when he was shown the
boarding house, a separate residence not far from the school, where he was to live for the next six years.
It was originally built in the 1930s when the British had
turned Darjeeling into a genteel hill station for the colonial administration. Its wide wooden stairs ran elegantly between
the two storeys, and the surrounding lawns and gardens were
meant to be reminiscent of the English countryside.
He was shown the room he was to sleep in, filled with about
eight narrow wooden bunks. For someone used to sleeping
around the embers of the fire on a mattress with his family
close by, the arrangement must have seemed decidedly odd.
‘Were you supposed to sleep on the top bunk one night,
and the bottom the second? I was scratching my head, trying
to work out how these double- bunkers worked.’
Sonam placed his son’s small metal trunk filled with
special quilts his mother had sewn for him on top of his bunk.
Sanduk was unpacking them, getting his bearings, when his
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father said something he couldn’t understand at all at first.
He squatted down on his haunches beside Sanduk, put his
hands on his shoulders, and said, ‘Son, I have to leave you
now. You need to be a good boy. Study hard, read everything
you can, and I’ll come back soon.’
Sanduk was incredulous. His father was going to leave him
alone in this strange place, surrounded by strange people?
‘My father had always been a fairly distant, authoritarian
figure, but suddenly I realised how important he was to me.
I remember clinging to him and saying, “I don’t want to stay
here! Not on my own!” I remember him stroking my head,
and trying to comfort me. He kept saying, “You’re going to
be okay, my boy. You’ll be okay. They’ll look after you well, and I’ll come back soon.” He promised to come back at the