about mountains...

A TALE OF MOUNTAINS, MOUNTAINEERS
AND A TOY CAR

Smrithi Poornachandra

The snowy peaks of Zanskar glittered and ice crystals hanging on to the black rocks sparkled and shimmered sending out sparks of cold fire. Our boots crunched on the soft snow as we walked. It was breathtaking, like a scene from Everest on IMAX, only much more beautiful. But I was filled with gloom as we walked down towards Base Camp leaving behind a half fulfilled dream – Mount Nun. Situated in the Zanskar Range and towering proudly at a height of 7135 meters, it stands, a beautiful and stern giant.

Googie, my climbing partner who was nursing an injured and rapidly festering hand, was silent too. We had been a part of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation’s women’s expedition to Mount Nun, but petty rivalry and acrimony amongst the climbers along with my friend’s injury had made us decide to leave the expedition. Negative feelings were the last thing one wanted in what I believe to be is the sacred abode of the Gods.

It had been a tough decision to make, to abandon something I had spent months training for. It was no surprise then to find myself walking down the moraine with a heavy heart. But among all those heavy thoughts, what weighed the heaviest was a small object in my rucksack. Wrapped in a small plastic with the prayer flags and incense that I had carried for the summit was a little blue-green toy car that belonged to Asanga, my five-year old nephew.

He had come into my room as I was packing for the expedition. “Here, Bari (aunt), take this car and leave it at the top of the mountain,” he said. I told him that I would take it with me, but I couldn’t promise if I would be able to get to the top. “One cannot be very sure that one gets to the top all the time”, I had said.

“But you have to.”

“I will take it with me as far as I can get, and hopefully it will be to the very top. Even then I will place it there for sometime and bring it down with me. Okay!”

“No! You have to leave it there. At the very top of the mountain”, he said.

Seeing him so insistent, I asked him why it was so important to leave the car there. “The main thing is,” I added, “It’s not nice to litter a sacred place.”

“Because the Mountain Gods will recognize the car as mine and call me someday to collect it. Then I will be a mountaineer just like you.”

Walking down with my back to Nun I wondered briefly if I had made the right decision in leaving and what was I going to tell Asanga when I got home…

Nun was out of sight but I still turned around to take a last look at the mountains I was leaving behind. It takes a lot of courage and strength to climb, but it takes even more to stand by what you believe in. I knew deep in my heart that I would have done my best and weather permitting, got the peak, if that was all it meant to me. But the mountains are sacred, and mountaineering for me is more of a spiritual journey than a physical climb. As I approach the snowy peaks I greet them with the prayer that they allow me to climb and grant me the peace they hold within their souls. It would be wrong to therefore stay on and foster feelings of negativity in my heart when I was in a place that I considered sacred.

“If your presence is the cause of hurt
Why then are you angry with him?”

So said a great teacher, the Buddha. The climbing of a mountain is similar to Buddhism, I think. Just as one gets across crevasses, over ice walls, around avalanche prone areas and just as one keeps pushing the limit to go that one extra mile, so too in following the Master’s teaching, one meets with similar mountains of the mind where one tries to overcome human faults. Somehow the physical obstacles seem a lot easier to overcome than the mental ones. I had chosen to move away and now as I looked back, I wondered if I had made the right choice.

I could see the porters and the Sherpas of the French team coming down the steep slope with their heavy burdens. Their team had decided to call it a day and was heading back as well. Their guide, a tough mountain Sherpa named Tenzin called out, “Don’t worry, ET and Googie, you can always come back again another time.”

“Yeah,” I muttered under my breath as he easily caught up with us with his sure-footed quick steps. He smiled, I nodded and we kept walking in silence for the next hour. I was not feeling very social and neither was Googie, so we just walked ahead of Tenzin and his friend Sangaey, who tried his best to cheer us up just as we did our best to stay sunk in gloom. I was thirsty, so coming up to a flat rock we rested for a while and drank some water.

“You needn’t look so angry. You can always come back you know”, said Sangaey.

“Yeah, and the next time come with people you have known for at least little a while. Don’t just throw in your lot with a bunch of names on paper. That way you’ll be doing yourself and them a favour”, added Tenzin. “Come on! It’s just one peak. There will be plenty more to climb.”

I decided to sound stupid and look foolish, and tell them the truth.

“I feel bad having turned back, but there’s something else. I have a five-year old nephew who thinks I am Tenzing Sherpa, Hillary and god knows who else, all rolled in one. Now I’ve got to go back and tell him that I failed to take his car up to the summit. How the hell do I do that?” I glared at them fiercely, daring them to laugh. To my surprise they didn’t.

“Ah, kids! Real tough explaining things to them. Maybe his dad could do it.”

“He doesn’t have a dad.”

And there, sitting on a rock in the middle of nowhere, two tough mountain Sherpas take some time to think and come up with a solution to a little boy’s dream - a boy who they have never even seen.

“You are coming with us to Leh,” Tenzin announced, “And you can get medical attention for your friend at the army hospital there, after which you can climb Stok Kangri and leave the car there.”

“But I’ve never been to Leh… and I don’t think…”

“Come, we are wasting time”, said Tenzin, and walked swiftly down the steep path once more. As he walked he explained that Sangaey would accompany us from the roadhead Tangol to Leh. Tenzin, who was in-charge, would take the French group to a place called Padum and then meet us at Leh.

We were sitting in the local bus that was going to take us to Kargil. “I’ll meet you in Leh,” said Tenzin, “And don’t worry about stupid things like money or where you’re going to stay. That’s not important. The RIMO boys will look after you. You’ll be staying with them.” RIMO is the mountain adventure company they work for, and it is based in Leh. The bus rumbled off towards Kargil, leaving behind a smiling Tenzing hidden behind a cloud of dust.

Once we got to Kargil, Googie and Sangaey both called home. I didn’t. My husband, an army officer, was in Bhutan on a foreign posting. I didn’t want to try and explain to him that I had left the expedition he had helped me train for, that I was now on my way to Leh with an injured friend, to stay in a place full of strange men, and climb another mountain called Stok Kangri with a man I had barely known for a few days. All this, so that I could take Asanga’s blue-green toy car to the summit. He is a very reasonable man, my husband, but I was sure it was rather too much to expect from the most reasonable of men. Besides, I was pretty certain that after hearing this, he would be worried if I was suffering from a form of altitude sickness or from a mild head-injury.

Back home, I knew my mother would be anxiously waiting to hear from me, but I also knew once I spoke to her she would insist I return home. As for Asanga, I didn’t want to think of the look on his face when he got to hear that I had failed to take his car to the summit. It was a restless night in Kargil for me. The next morning Sangaey put us in a bus to Leh and we were off. The view along the way was amazing: the dusty barren mountains were a stark contrast to the green hills of Darjeeling, my home town.

Once in Leh, my friend got immediate medical attention at the army hospital. The infection would have reached the bone in a day or two, so we were told. But after the operation, she was going to be all right. We heaved a sigh of relief and dragged my still slightly groggy friend back after the operation to “our room”, which the RIMO boys had vacated for the two of us.

Tenzin was right. They did look after us. Not only did they give us one of their rooms, but even insisted that they liked sleeping in the same room, and that being mountaineers they had all got so used to sleeping on the ground, and that they didn’t quite like sleeping in proper beds. We all know the truth. One does look forward to a nice clean bed and a little space after weeks and months of cramped tent life! For the few days we were there, they would not hear of us going around the town unescorted after dark. We didn’t have much money, as we had not foreseen this. But not wanting to burden them too much, we said we would eat out. To make sure we ate well, they kept “taking us out” as they put it, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was unbelievable. It was too much, when we were even served bed tea. All this was done for us by a bunch of men who didn’t even know us.

Staying with these men, we saw a whole new facet of the mountaineering world. Cooks, porters, mountain guides (Sherpas, as they are called) and kitchen boys. These are the same men who lived in the face of constant danger, guiding people up and down the treacherous slopes of famous mountains that make mountaineers famous. Kanchanjunga, Everest, K2, Annapurna, Nanda Devi … The unsung heroes, the support group without whom no expedition could be a success. Men, who laughed hard, gambled and drank and sang, and risked their life and limb to look after and sometimes rescue people in the mountains. Men who sometimes spoke a language of their own like “tuppling” for tarpaulin, “kherepass” for a crevasse and “kharampom” that meant crampons. Men who had seen it all, blizzards, bad weather, accidents and deaths, and were genuinely happy for others when success was met and fame followed.

These men didn’t have heroic tales of dangerously dangling over a thousand foot drop, or having narrowly cheated death in some perilous situation. Their stories from Everest and Kanchanjunga and Nanda Devi were all about when they had done something very foolish or found something hilarious. They laughed at themselves and at each other. It was amazing how they had managed to find humor even in the worst of situations.

The best part is that most of these men are highly skilled climbers, many who have worked as instructors in the mountaineering institutes of India. One of them was leaving for England to work as a climbing instructor there. I know I can never thank them enough for having shown me what generosity of the spirit really means.

At 10.30 AM the next day, I told Googie not to worry and that I would be back the next evening.

“Do what you do and have fun. I wish I was going as well. Don’t worry about me,” she smiled, “the RIMO boys are here.” We laugh.

I knew Googie would be okay.

Sangaey had hired a vehicle to take us up to the roadhead. People pay him to guide them in the mountains, and there he was, paying for the vehicle as he would not hear of me paying for anything.

We left the roadhead at 11.30 AM and began our trek towards Stok Kangri. At 6150 meters it was a baby compared to the mighty Nun! Our plan was simple, to travel as light as possible and to travel fast. At 7’o clock PM we halted for the night.
After a meal of instant noodles and tea, made over a fire of dry yak dung that Sangaey had collected along the way, we got into our sleeping bags and slept behind some boulders. We had no tent. I was tired and slept soundly, bundled up warmly in Sangaey’s jacket as well as mine. He said that the night would be would be “horribly cold”, and insisted I wear them. Poor Sangaey, I don’t think the night passed off comfortably for him. He was right, it was a very cold night, and I don’t think the boulders were enough as wind shields.

At 3.30 in the morning, he woke me up. Silently we made our way towards Stok Kangri in the dark, our head lamps casting long shadows. At 11.22 AM, we were up on the summit of Stok Kangri, a mountain that will always hold a very special place in my heart.

I burned incense and offered my prayer flags and prayers to the Gods. Then I took out the blue-green toy car that had traveled all the way from Darjeeling to Nun, and thence to Stok Kangri. I placed the car on the snowy peak, and Sangaey took photos of the car and me.

“You can now show him the photographs of the car on the summit. Anyway, Stok Kangri is a lot easier to climb than Nun!” Sangaey laughed. I laughed too. Deep in my heart I prayed to the Mountain Gods to let Asanga come to them, and when he did, I prayed, may he come with a humble heart. “Watch over him when it is time for him to come. And watch over Sangaey and Tenzin, and all the RIMO boys as they guide people along your icy slopes.”

We climbed down and made our way to the roadhead at a pretty good speed. There was no vehicle to take us to Leh town. We decided to keep walking since we had no other choice. It was almost nine in the evening when we got back. I was tired but stumbled into a phone booth to call home. I know it is well past Asanga’s bed time.

“Mom, this is Smrithi. I think I have been walking for fifteen hours today, and I am very tired. But tell Asanga that his car is at the summit of a mountain called Stok Kangri in Leh.” And before she could say anything about me being in Leh, I hung up.

Asanga is six now. He still pores over pictures of mountains and mountaineers. He is able to point out crampons, karabiners, slings and ice axes. He is impatient to grow up and go to Stok Kangri when he turns thirteen. Sangaey was right. Mount Nun is rather too big for a thirteen year old kid.

Thanks to a little blue-green car, I met some really wonderful people who went out of their way to make a little boy’s dream come true. Maybe what I saw in these tough and cheerful men was what the Mountain Gods wanted me to learn. Thanks to these men, I came back from Leh richer in experience and in friends. Hopefully I am a better person than when I had left for the expedition.

I would like to think that as Asanga grows up in Darjeeling, the prayer flags atop Stok Kangri flutter the prayer “OM MANI PADME HUM”. His little blue-green car lies under the snow, while the Mountain Gods patiently wait for another mountaineer to find his way to them.

© August 2006