The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places (18 page)

We rode up the valley, leaving on our right a red, loaf-shaped mountain called Lungdep-ningri. Opposite, on the northern side of the valley, were seen two fine Ovis Ammon sheep feeding on a
conical elevation. They bore splendid horns, and carried their heads royally. They soon perceived us, and made slowly up the slope. But they paid too much attention to our movements, and did not
notice that Tundup Sonam, with his gun on his back, was making a detour to stalk them from the other side of the hill. After a while we heard a shot, and a good hour later, when the camp was
pitched, Tundup came back laden with as much of the flesh of his victim as he could carry. Thus we obtained a fresh addition to our somewhat scanty rations, and Tundup’s exploit enhanced the
glory of this memorable day. In the evening he went off again to fetch more meat, and he brought me the head of the wild sheep, which I wished to preserve as a memento of the day at the source of
the Indus.

The ground rises exceedingly slowly. Singi-yüra is a rugged cliff to the north, with a large hole through its summit. Singi-chava is the name of a commanding eminence to the south. Then we
made through the outflow of the Munjam valley running in from the south-east. Above this the Indus is only a tiny brook, and part of its water comes from a valley in the south-east, the Bokar. A
little later we camp at the aperture of the spring, which is so well concealed that it might easily be overlooked without a guide.

From the mountains on the northern side a flattish cone of detritus, or, more correctly, a slope bestrewn with rubbish, descends to the level, open valley. At its foot projects a slab of white
rock with an almost horizontal bedding, underneath which several small springs well up out of the ground, forming weedy pounds and the source stream, which we had traced upwards, and which is the
first and uppermost of the headwaters of the mighty Indus. The four largest springs, where they issued from the ground, had temperatures of 48.6°, 49.1°, 49.6°, and 50.4°
respectively. They are said to emit the same quantity of water in winter and summer, but a little more after rainy seasons. Up on the slab of rock stand three tall cairns and a small cubical
lhato
containing votive pyramids of clay. And below the
lhato
is a quadrangular
mani
, with hundreds of red flagstones, some covered with fine close inscriptions, some bearing a
single character 20 inches high. On two the wheel of life was incised, and on another a divine image, which I carried off as a souvenir of the source of the Indus.

Our guide said that the source Singi-kabab was reverenced because of its divine origin. When travellers reached this place or any other part of the upper Indus, they scooped up water with their
hands, drank of it, and sprinkled their faces and heads with it.

Through the investigations made by Montgomerie’s pundits in the year 1867 it was known that the eastern arm of the Indus is the actual headwater, and I had afterwards an opportunity of
proving by measurement that the western, Gartok, stream is considerably smaller. But no pundit had succeeded in penetrating to the source, and the one who had advanced nearest to it, namely, to a
point 30 miles from it, had been attacked by robbers and forced to turn back. Consequently, until our time the erroneous opinion prevailed that the Indus had its source on the north flank of
Kailas, and, thanks to those admirable robbers, the discovery of the Indus source was reserved for me and my five Ladakis.

We passed a memorable evening and a memorable night at this important geographical spot, situated 16,946 feet above sea-level. Here I stood and saw the Indus emerge from the lap of the earth.
Here I stood and saw this unpretentious brook wind down the valley, and I thought of all the changes it must undergo before it passes between rocky cliffs, singing its roaring song in ever more
powerful crescendo, down to the sea at Karachi, where steamers load and unload their cargoes. I thought of its restless course through western Tibet, through Ladak and Baltisan, past Skardu, where
the apricot trees nod on its banks, through Dardistan and Kohistan, past Peshawar, and across the plains of the western Panjab, until at last it is swallowed up by the salt waves of the ocean, the
Nirvana and the refuge of all weary rivers. Here I stood and wondered whether the Macedonian Alexander, when he crossed the Indus 2200 years ago, had any notion where its source lay, and I revelled
in the consciousness that, except the Tibetans themselves, no other human being but myself had penetrated to this spot. Great obstacles had been placed in my way, but Providence had secured for me
the triumph of reaching the actual sources of the Brahmaputra and Indus, and ascertaining the origin of these two historical rivers, which, like the claws of a crab, grip the highest of all the
mountain systems of the world – the Himalayas. Their waters are born in the reservoirs of the firmament, and they roll down their floods to the lowlands to yield life and sustenance to fifty
millions of human beings. Up here white monasteries stand peacefully on their banks, while in India pagodas and mosques are reflected in their waters; up here wolves, wild yaks, and wild sheep,
roam about their valleys, while down below in India the eyes of tigers and leopards shine like glowing coals of fire from the jungles that skirt their banks, and poisonous snakes wriggle through
the dense brushwood. Here in dreary Tibet icy storms and cold snowfalls lash their waves, while down in the flat country mild breezes whisper in the crowns of the palms and mango trees. I seemed to
listen here to the beating of the pulses of these two renowned rivers, to watch the industry and rivalry which, through untold generations, have occupied unnumbered human lives, short and
transitory as the life of the midge and the grass; all those wanderers on the earth and guests in the abodes of time, who have been born beside the fleeting current of these rivers, have drunk of
their waters, have drawn from them life and strength for their fields, have lived and died on their banks, and have risen from the sheltered freedom of their valleys up to the realms of eternal
hope. Not without pride, but still with a feeling of humble thankfulness, I stood there, conscious that I was the first white man who had ever penetrated to the sources of the Indus and
Brahmaputra.

EVEREST BY STORM

Edmund Hillary

(1919–)

After decades of failure, the first certain ascent of the world’s highest mountain was made in May 1953 by a team of 11 climbers, supported by an
army of Nepali porters and commanded by Colonel John Hunt. Planned with military precision, each two-man summit attempt was deemed an “assault”, and success a “conquest”. In
this postcript to the age of exploration, individual endeavour was subordinated to the expeditionary
esprit.
Hunt himself supported the first “assault”, by Tom Bourdillon and
Charles Evans, and wrote the account of the whole expedition. The second attempt was made by Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander, and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepali, both distinguished climbers in their own
right. Their triumph was recorded by Hillary in an unembellished prose and incorporated in Hunt’s official narrative. Hillary subsequently led the New Zealand component in the first overland
expedition to the South Pole since Scott’s, and travelled extensively in Nepal, where he championed educational and social projects.

O
n May 22 we again stared at the Lhotse Face. Despite the possibly grave consequences to the assault plan I had sent Tenzing and Hillary up to Camp
VII the day before to give encouragement to the Sherpas in their vital mission and support, if it were needed, to Wylie and Noyce, and we watched in amazement as a whole string of seventeen little
dots spread out across that great white expanse, creeping gradually – with painful slowness but moving nonetheless – in Noyce’s footsteps of the day before. As the day wore on, it
became obvious that they were going to make it and at long last I was able to put an end to the anxiety and suspense by deciding that the assault should start.

The first assault: Evans and Bourdillon

The weather, having done its best to deter us for five weeks, had suddenly turned fine on May 14, just the day before we had planned to be ready to seize any opportunity we might be given. It
had succeeded in delaying our readiness for a week, but miraculously – I can give no other explanation – the elements continued to smile upon our struggle. Bourdillon, Evans, Da
Namgyal, Ang Tenzing and myself went up to Camp V on the evening of May 22, meeting there on arrival some of the most stalwart of the men who had made this possible by carrying loads to the distant
Col that day. Among them were Hillary and Tenzing, who, having left Camp IV only the day before, had climbed to the South Col and were now on their way back to Advance Base from 21,200 to 26,000
feet and back in thirty hours – not only this, but they must now get ready to follow us in the second assault. These facts speak eloquently of the guts and stamina of these two men.

Using oxygen though we now were, we found it a long, hard climb to the South Col. We spent a restless and anxious night at Camp VII, with the great west wind sweeping across the Face of Lhotse
in tremendous gusts which buffeted the tents and seemed intent on uprooting us bodily, tents and all, down the mountainside. We struggled on upwards next day (May 24) heavily burdened and slowed
down by the tiresome breakable crust formed on the snow surface by the wind; no traces remained of the large party which had climbed these slopes only two days before. At about 4 p.m. we at last
climbed out of the couloir and stood on the top of the Geneva Spur gazing down at the South Col of Everest, a dismal enough scene. We were also looking for the first time at the final keep of the
fortress of Everest, the last 3000 feet of the mountain. This was an awe-inspiring sight. A tall slender snow peak, the South Summit (28,720 feet), rose directly above our heads, incredibly close
yet somehow depressingly far above; leading to it was the ridge by which we must climb, running down to the south-east, its angle gentle in places but surprisingly steep in others. To reach it was
not going to be easy, for we must climb by one of several steep snow-filled gullies in the South Face, which rises above the Col for over 1000 feet. The peak clear, but a great plume of snow dust
was as though appended to it – a banner of cloud which is an almost permanent feature of the mountain.

To reach the surface of the Col you have to descend a slope of some 200 feet, so down we went, with the uncomfortable feeling of going into a trap, for this slope, gentle and innocent as it was,
must again be climbed to get back to our comrades and safety, at 26,000 feet and very weary, after making our attempt on the summit. It was a dreary, dread scene. There were the tattered remnants
of the Swiss tents set up there last autumn, the bare skeletons of them, all but a few shreds of canvas stripped from them by the westerly wind. Around were scattered remains of equipment, a
bleached climbing rope, oxygen frames, odd tins of food. A more comforting sight was the mound of stores carefully weighted down with boulders, which had been carried up for the assault. We dragged
out two tents, and set to work to put them up. For the next hour and more we were engaged in a struggle which none of us will ever forget. We were trying to put up just one of those two small
tents, fighting with the wind, an invisible enemy which pulled the canvas from our hands and made our task all but impossible. Weak as we were after our climb, deprived now of oxygen, we were
hopelessly inadequate for the job. We tripped over the ropes, fell over stones, got in each other’s way. In the end the tent was up somehow, just before we became completely exhausted and the
sun went down. We scrambled in and, amid a confusion of gear, settled down, utterly weary, for the night.

It had been blowing hard during the night; but the morning of May 25 was not only brilliantly clear, the infamous north-west wind, which had so nearly prevented us from getting into our tents,
had died away to a stiff breeze: conditions were as favourable for an assault on the summit as they ever can be on Everest. But we quickly decided that we must wait for another day before essaying
it. It will be remembered that Evans and Bourdillon were to make their attempt directly from the Col and for this an early start was essential. We had been far too tired the night before to get
ready – and getting ready at 26,000 feet is a slow and exhausting business. There remained much to be done, particularly in preparing our oxygen equipment. Moreover, one of the two Sherpas
who were to help me in getting a part of the stores for the highest Camp (IX) up on the south-east ridge was in a bad state of exhaustion and we still hoped he might recover with rest. Despite the
drawbacks – a possible turn of the wind or weather against us; using up food and fuel not allowed for in the plan; the risk of our own physical deterioration – we stayed through that
day on the Col, resting and getting ready for the morrow. On the 26th after some delay and much anxiety over the functioning of the oxygen equipment, both parties set out – Evans and
Bourdillon as summit party and Da Namgyal and I as support party. Ang Tenzing was still sick and we two were fairly heavily laden with a tent, fuel, food, in addition to our own oxygen sets and
personal equipment – about 45 lb, each. The two “summiters”, with the more powerful oxygen soon pulled ahead of Da Namgyal and myself, as we followed very slowly in their tracks
up the snow gully we had chosen to lead us to the south-east ridge. Near the top, the angle of the snow steepened uncomfortably and we had to move away on to a slope of rock and snow on the right.
A little higher the slope eased suddenly and we found ourselves beside another pathetic relic of the Swiss Expedition: the frame of a small tent just below the ridge, where Tenzing and Lambert had
spent a terrible night without sleeping bags almost exactly a year before, during their splendid effort to reach the top. Here we lay to rest and recover from the ordeal of that climb up the gully,
fighting and gasping for air for a while; in my case, though I did not realize it at the time, there was a blockage of ice in the tube of my oxygen set which must have added very considerably to
the pain and grief of that day’s climb. We were both pretty tired by now but decided to struggle on up the ridge as long as we could. Being short of one of our carrying team I had realized
that we should probably not be able to lift the stores for the top camp as high as I had planned – I had always intended to place it much higher than any camp established on Everest before
and hoped that this might be at 28,000 feet. Now, without Ang Tenzing, it seemed that the best we could do would be to dump the stores and leave the second assault party with their three Sherpas
under Gregory, to carry them still higher. Before leaving, I looked round at the view – on the world, in fact, for we were now climbing on its roof. There was Lhotse, for all its 27,800 odd
feet not very much higher than we. Away on the western horizon rose another Himalayan giant, Kangchenjunga, third highest in the world, only 800 feet lower than Everest itself. We must have climbed
on for another half-hour or perhaps a bit more (it seemed an eternity) until we found a niche in the crest in the ridge where the loads could safely be placed. Here we built a cairn – the
height we now reckon to have been 27,350 feet – and leaving our oxygen bottles for Hillary and Tenzing we started down towards the Swiss camp. Even going downhill now seemed a very great
effort; every step had to be carefully considered for we were moving on steep ground and a slip would have been serious. We moved one at a time down the couloir, each safeguarding the other with
the rope passed over his ice-axe; as we went down, I was relieved to see figures spread out across the great slopes of the Lhotse Face on their way up to the Col. This was of course the second
assault party, who had started forty-eight hours after us because of the exhausting feat of Tenzing and Hillary in accompanying the Sherpas to the South Col only a few days before. Here they were,
fitting perfectly into the timing of our own attempt. We were both well-nigh at the end of our tether when we reached the level ice surface of the South Col, and without the wonderful help of
Hillary and Tenzing, who had got up ahead of the rest of their party, I doubt whether I should have had the strength to crawl back to the tents.