Coronation Everest (10 page)

Had anyone any questions or observations? Hunt asked, looking benignly round the tent with a soldierly air, as if he were about to order his company commanders to synchronize their watches.

‘Yes,’ said Michael Ward, with a vehemence that nearly knocked me off my packing-case. ‘I certainly have. I think it’s a great mistake that you’re going so high yourself. It’s a great mistake. You’ve done too much already. You shouldn’t go with that support team. I feel this very strongly.’

He spat this out with a flashing of eyes and a quivering of his saturnine head; and John thanked him gravely. The passionate doctor proved to be partly right. Hunt, who was forty-four, climbed extremely high with extraordinarily heavy loads, eschewing oxygen to save weight, and going to the absolute limit of his endurance; and of all the climbers he was the most exhausted, so that I used to wonder, after the event, looking at his tired drawn face and thin body, moving with an air of infinite weariness, whether he would ever be quite the same again. But there, it was the sacrifice of leadership.

Ward himself was a distinguished climber as well as a physician, and in a way, of all those present in the tent, he was the best qualified to offer an opinion on the plan; for if it had not been for his vision we would not have been on Everest at all. When, after the war, the Communists overran Tibet and the northern side of Everest was irrevocably closed to westerners, the southern approach to the mountain (which we had followed) was unknown. In 1921
Mallory, who saw the upper part of the icefall from his col on the frontier, thought it doubtful that anyone could get up it. Thirty years later a pioneer Anglo-American reconnaissance party, who looked at it from the Khumbu Glacier, also thought it unlikely that there was a passable way to the summit from the south. Thus for a time it seemed that there was no possible post-war route to the top. Ward, however, was the leader of a group of irrepressible mountaineers who believed that there
was
such a way, and who pressed their views incessantly upon those dignitaries who have power of life and death over Himalayan expeditions. Their pressure led to a bigger reconnaissance expedition, in 1951; to the Swiss expeditions of 1952; and to our present venture, now reaching, as the wind blew and the tent shuddered, some kind of uncomfortable climax.

The conference ended with mugs of tea all round. I withdrew to my tent to write a long and technical dispatch; and there settled upon the whole party a new and closely-knitted sense of purpose. Not everyone agreed with Hunt’s plan, for reasons too complicated for me to explain; the forthright Gregory, for instance, insisted that the first assault had no prospect of success and would fulfil no very useful purpose; but there was a feeling that a new stage in the adventure had been reached, that duties had been defined and opportunities distributed, and that the direction of our efforts could now be seen more precisely. I sat on my boxes of treasure, typed out my dispatch on my tumbledown typewriter, and wondered if anyone was interested at home.

7

Sherpas

As the climbers slogged their way up the Lhotse Face, hampered by heavy snowfalls, I settled down at Base Camp for a week or more to ensure that my communications were working properly. Living night and day with my Sherpas, sharing their petty pleasures and annoyances, I began to acquire some insight into their strange exotic characters, and to perceive some vagaries of personality behind their brown faces, as smooth and as shining as nuts that have been polished on schoolboys’ sleeves. They were a hearty, extrovert, boisterous people, and I always had to fight a feeling of slight repulsion at their overwhelming insensibility – insensibility truly in the grand manner, overcoming all barriers of custom or manner, so that no secrets were inviolate and no idiosyncrasies protectable. If you have hidden habits, or eleven toes, or
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
in your sponge-bag, do not go visiting among the Sherpas.

For generations the Sherpa porters, who had helped so many sahibs into the mountains, had been famous for their courage in adversity and for their unfailing good humour. Nobody had ever questioned their fundamental worth, brave, friendly, honest, strong and loyal. All the same, a man is best judged at home, and until 1950 no European had ever penetrated to Sola Khumbu, where the Sherpas come
from; the porters of the old expeditions were generally recruited in Darjeeling, where many Sherpas had set up home in the hope of finding more and better work. There were times, I confess, during my own stay in Sola Khumbu when I became no more than a reluctant admirer of the Sherpas, respectful indeed of all their high qualities, but weighed down with the burden of their heartiness.

For example, our first tottering march into the valley of the Dudh Khosi was made hideous for me by the jovial hilarity of the inhabitants. Oh, the plates of
chang
I drank, and the inexplicable jokes I laughed at, the dances I tried to dance, the backs I slapped, the girls I flirted with, the dear little children whose pranks I laughingly endured! Never a moment did I spend without a crowd of jovial Sherpas to watch me, thrusting their grinning heads between the flaps of my tent, poking their grimy fingers into the scrambled eggs, or simply standing staring, like that insatiable crowd on the veranda at Namche Bazar.

Once during the march I was walking happily up a riverside path, not far from Namche, when I caught sight of Sen Tenzing and Ang Nyima, sitting on the terrace of a house high above the road. They were both extremely drunk, and Ang Nyima was sitting in a kind of daze, an expression of indescribable foolishness blanketing his face. Sen Tenzing, on the other hand, was unnaturally animated. Waving his
chang
pan he jumped to his feet and shouted to me to join them. I was fond of the old rogue, so I foolishly accepted the invitation and toiled up the path to the house.

‘Ah, sahib, this is the best
chang
in Sola Khumbu. In the whole of Nepal! There is no
chang
like this
chang!
The woman of this household is famous for it. Have some, sahib! Here, take this bowl, and you will find the
chang
inside the room there, over in the corner!’

I peered into the room, which was very dark, and could just make out some kind of container in the corner. There was a stifled giggle from the doorway.

‘That’s it, sahib! Over there, just open the lid and put the bowl in. Famous
chang
, sahib! Take your fill!’

I opened the lid and put in my bowl, to find that the container was what used to be called, in more spacious days, a commode. Bacchanalian and uncontrolled was the laughter which now rolled in gusts through the open door. Sen Tenzing was splitting his sides; Ang Nyima was giggling a loose high-pitched giggle. ‘Famous
chang
, sahib!’ said Tenzing, taking my pack off my back, getting out the tea, and preparing to boil a kettle. ‘Now, would you like some scrambled egg, sahib, or some
chupattis
with marmalade? Here, sahib, let me loosen your boots!’

What can you do with such people, who throw a custard pie at you with one hand and make you a cup of cocoa with the other? Only count ten, and then say thank you. For indeed their kindness was inexhaustible. Often and again I was pushed into the house of a perfect stranger for a meal, lavish in scale and (for a tired traveller, anyway) often delicious in quality. The Sherpa houses are well constructed on two storeys, with paned windows and pleasant tiled roofs. They stand square, squat and wholesome-looking, very different from the squalid shanties of the Katmandu valley. The ground floor is used as a storehouse, and in its gloom you are quite likely to stumble into a tethered yak, wheezing among the hay.

Up the rickety wooden staircase you go, the Sherpas leaping up it gaily, the sahib puffing and scrambling behind; and at the top you find yourself in what seems at first to be some kind of revival meeting or assembly of
illegal saints. The whole of the upper part of the house consists of one long room, thick with beams and rafters, not unlike an Elizabethan cottage in England. It is dim and murky. A little light comes through the windows (unless they are piled too high with snow) and the rest comes from a large fire of yak-dung burning merrily in the middle of the room. Smoke from this fire swirls about, and from the outside you can sometimes see it seeping through cracks in the structure, like steam escaping from a Finnish bathhouse.

You may have looked forward, as you heaved yourself up the stairs, to a quiet evening beside the fire with your host, the two of you attended by his bustling but self-effacing little wife. Such is not your fate. The room is almost certainly packed to suffocation with Sherpas. Some are sitting on the floor, talking loudly to each other. Some are moving about carrying pots and pans. Some are poking the fire. Some are roasting potatoes. Some are feeding children. Some seem to be dead. Many of these people are members of the householder’s family, many (like yourself) mere passers-by; but all are perfectly at home, and all equally facile in handling the baby. Don’t be shy. Crack a joke or two as you join the assembly, or slip on a banana skin.

The walls of this big room are lined with trays, pots, pans, buckets, bowls, and other more obscure instruments of hospitality, and before long you will find yourself eating a splendid meal. The rowdiest old hag will prepare you a plate of boiled potatoes, spiced with salt from Tibet (and garnished with margarine from your rucksack). This is the staple diet of the Sherpas, and eaten beside a yak-dung fire, in the murk of a Sherpa living-room, it can be delectable. There is
chang
, of course, in flat trays, very thick and sticky;
or cocoa brewed by your own attendants; or perhaps Tibetan brick tea, most appalling of beverages. Soon you will feel content among these peasants, for all their loud high spirits, and lean back on your rucksack with a potato and a bowl of
chang
, the firelight flickering over your face, the chatter of Sherpas loud about you, the aromatic smoke curling around your head, like some replete barbarian monarch resting among his court.

The Sherpas, nevertheless, led a hard, exacting life. Their homeland was harsh and sparse, so unfriendly that they must move their yak-herds from pasture to pasture through the seasons. Sometimes they grazed them at 14,000 feet, at the beginning of a glacier; often they led them in convoy, carrying merchandise from India, over the 19,000-foot pass of the Nangpa La. Though many Sherpas lived in Darjeeling, in those days their own country had been little affected by western influences. There were no wheels in Sola Khumbu, except prayer wheels; no telephones, of course, or printing presses; no roads; no doctors; only one or two dark secluded shops, selling the bleakest of little cheap trinkets. Theirs was a shuttered and anachronistic existence, tucked away in their beautiful inaccessible land.

I suppose it was this seclusion that led them to their worst excesses of boisterous bawdy when a foreigner appeared. No doubt to some deep-hidden cell of the Sherpa mind his arrival signalled a warning of alien danger, and set the Sherpa organism a-prancing with practical jokes. But indeed the very shape of the Sherpa seemed designed for horseplay. His dress was functional but wonderfully quaint, and his body was made for laughter. The Sherpa’s face was round and brown (about as brown as a sunburnt
Neapolitan’s), creased and wrinkled with fun, with slanting Mongolian eyes and high cheek bones, the whole reminiscent of a slightly Oriental Toby jug. His stocky body was tough and agile, and extremely dirty. He wore a sort of shirt surmounted by a cloak. On his head was often a tall conical hat, gold brocade for the top of it, fur for the bottom, and on his feet were high embroidered boots, colourful with flowers and ornamental designs. What a sight he was as he came roaring down a mountain path, fit and supple as a goat, his face wreathed in welcoming smiles, drunk as a king from
chang
, the very embodiment of good fellowship and broad humour! Falstaff would have liked the Sherpas.

But oh! when the evening drew on, how the old Sherpa women screamed to each other through the dusk, like screech-owls in the woods! When they were young the Sherpanis were fragile and touching. Dressed in their gay aprons and Dutch bonnets, with flowered boots peeping through their long skirts, they stood on the outskirts of the throng, smiling faintly, their babies carried in boxes on their backs and totally smothered with blankets. They looked like fresh young sprites, from Alpine meadows. But middle-age fell upon the Sherpanis like thunder. Their faces soon became haggard and drawn, their voices inexpressibly awful. Swiftly their movements lost their grace, and their complexions their fresh mountain bloom. They would ogle you still, if you inadvertently allowed your eyes to appear above the rim of the
chang
bowl, and they were always ready with a chaff or a quip, which, hurled across the floor to an acquaintance on the other side of the room, whipped past you like a meteor. They never lost their brazen confidence, however advanced their state of decomposition; for the Sherpa men always treated them
as equals, and they played an important or even predominant part in the affairs of the community. So who would not be a Sherpani? Beautiful in youth; desired in womanhood; a real scream in middle-age; respected and consulted until the final throes of dotage. Theirs was a triumph of enlightened feminism.

Almost every day, as I travelled through their country, the Sherpas annoyed me again with their irritating intrusiveness. Privacy was an abstract totally beyond their conception, and anyone might walk freely into anyone else’s house. Nobody stole anything very much; everyone knew everyone else. It did not in the least surprise me, listening on the radio one day to Dennis Brain playing a Mozart horn concerto, to find a whole covey of hillmen bursting through the tent flap to hear him too. Nor was I much put out, returning once to camp at Thyangboche, to find one of the oldest, dirtiest and merriest of the lamas trying on my spectacles; he did not take them off when I approached, but looked at me for a moment, trying to get my blurred image into focus, and then sat down with a heavy bump on my sleeping-bag, convulsed with laughter. If he thought I looked funny, he should have seen himself.

But
au fond
, beneath it all, they were the most lovable and loyal of friends. For every moment of annoyance I had, the Sherpas gave me a hundred moments of pleasure. When the old harridan had done her screeching, she would lift her sixty-pound burden without a murmur and stride off through a blizzard on to a glacier. At any time of day or night your Sherpa would bestir himself to cook your meal, heat your water, carry your pack, climb your mountain. He asked no more than a reasonable fee, and perhaps any old pieces of equipment you had finished with; in return he would do far more than his duties
required, giving you always splendid service and good company, and caring tenderly for your health. I spent some days with Sonam at his house in Chaunrikharka, recovering from a bout of illness; sleeping in a temple-room, in the company of eight hundred figures of the Buddha; visited throughout the day by swarms of curious well-wishers; fed with tough roast chicken and
rakhsi
; and treated always with great kindness and courtesy. Before long, I am afraid, the Sherpa as we knew him in 1953 will be a figure of the past, obliterated by fame, fortune and foreign innovations; and I am glad to have caught a glimpse of him first.

Two moments in particular I cherish as characteristic of the Sherpa people at their best, away from the harsh hilarities of the valley. The first occurred at Base Camp one night, when I was sitting with Sonam and two other Sherpas by the entrance to my tent. It was a lovely clear evening, with the mass of the icefall looming like a phosphorescent cliff above us. We had been talking of the old days of Everest, the days of the old heroes – Mallory, Norton, Tilman, Shipton – and I had brought out from my bag W. H. Murray’s book on the history of the mountain. Flicking through its pages, I came across a picture of the old Abbot of Rongbuk Monastery, on the Tibetan approaches to Everest, in his lifetime one of the most revered figures of Sherpa Buddhism, and a man of great piety and kindliness.