EXPLORING HIMALAYA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27580, 23 December 1950, Page 11

EXPLORING HIMALAYA

Life In The Shadow Of Aanapurna Mussif By Major H. W. Tilman, leader of the 1938 Everest Expedition, (for the London Times.)

Since" one-third of the Himalaya lie within Nepal, we should be grateful that the Nepalese arwe sometimes willing to see their mountains' explored or even climbed. But exploring the Himalaya is .one thing and climbing-them another —one in which the mountain usually has the last word. Not always, however, for this year the dash and determination of the French proved too much for Aanapurna 1.

After the Maharajah had agreed to our visiting the Aanapurna Minal, I planned for a small party such ns explored and colleected the Langtang in 1949; but others interested preferred a larger ‘party in order to build up a nucleus of climbers with Himalayan experience such as existed before the war. Since 1939 rising costs and unsettled conditions have kept British parties away from the Himalaya. We numbered six—including myself, Colonel D. G. Lowndes, botanist; Major J. O. M. Roberts, a Gurkha officer; Dr C. H. Evans; J. H. Emlyn Jones; and W. P. Packard, a New Zealand Rhodes scholar. All the party were climbers, but Mr Packard had a scientific role. I had hoped to improve the mapping of the north-west corner of our area, which in the present map (one inch to eight miles) is wisely left blank: but the only light phototheodolite in England was already bespoke. so that instead of surveying, Packard studied land utilization in Himalayan villages. Glittering Prizes

With four Shorpas and 50 coolies, we left Katmandu on May 10, After 13 marches up the Marsyandi Valley, we turned westwards behind the Anapurna massif. Even then our height was only 6000 feet, for, like many Nepal rivers, the Marsyandi cuts through the Himalaya in a deep trough. To the east we had caught glimpses of a gigantic spur projecting southwards from the main ridge, carrying two peaks of 25.000 feet and Manaslu 26.668 feet; so at the bend we halted and spent four days up a side valley to have a look at this peak. I was loth to pit an untried party against so great a mountain, and hoped to find a mountain both high enough to test acclimatisation powers and also easy enough to offer a chance of success. To the alpinist of the party, the soaring north ridge of Manaslu was a powerful magnet, which might have attracted me too had the mountain been only half as high. Accordingly we continued up the Marsyandi to the Anapurna Himal. which offered equally great and glittering prizes—two of 26.000 feet and two of 24,000 feet. When we were fairly in the shadow of the Anapurna the scene begun to change. Mindful of our dank experiences in the Langtang in 1949. I rejoiced to see the deciduous forest, draped in moss and lichen, giving way to pine and juniper trees set in gravel or bare earth. That the monsoon rain was of little account here was confirmed by the terraced fields of wheat and buckwheat growing under irrigation. This semi-desert did not please our botanist, who had come prepared to be wet but happv amid a wealth of flowers: but above 14.00(1 feet, where during the monsoon there was constant cloud, we found flowers in ample variety.

We made our base near Manangbhot, a group of villages 12,000 feet up and Tibetan in appearance—stone houses with flat roofs, m'ani walls, prayer wheels, and chortens (Buddhist sacred places). Though in speech and looks the people are also Tibetan, they have an original bent. They are great traders, who in the winter months are found at Delhi and Calcutta and as far afield as Rangoon and Singapore; they are familiar with train, boat, and even air travel, and with the paleface and some of his less commendable ways. Many of them speak Hindustani garnished with American, wear wrist watches and army boots without laces, and carry army packs and,water bottles. One whom we were photographing retorted by himself whipping out a camera. The traveller to remote regions expects, indeed wishes, to find the natives unsophisticated enough to treat him with the respect which at home he seldom gets. At Manangbhot he will be disappointed. On these winter forays their stock in trade consists of musk pods, medical herbs, skins, and, I imagine, a deal of impudence.

We could not see Aanapurna (26,492 feet), which, unknown to us, the French were climbing from the.south. For our objective we picked Aanapurna IV (24.680 feet), lofty enough in my opinion, but having the merit that if the party did better than expected they would be in position to carry a camp along the ridge for an attempt upon the final and difficult 1000 feet of Aanapurna II (26,041 feet). By June 16 four of us and four Sherpas has established a camp at 22.500 feet which I took to be within striking distance of the summit. Evans and Packard, in the first attempt, went up about 1000 feet before weather stopped them. For the second attempt the four of us and two Sherpas started rather too earlv on a sunless morning Within 10 minutes Roberts and our head Sherpa turned back with numbed feet, and an hour later, as neither the wind began to drop nor the sun to shine, we too retreated. As the morale of the Sherpas was not high I sent them to a lower camp in charge of Roberts, whose feet were sligh’tlv touched. On the third and last attempt altitude and decrepitude brought my faltering steps to rest at 23.500 feet. I hoped the other two would then move faster, but on that unluckv day Evans found his ceiling to be 24.000 feet. Packard, I think, could have reached the top had he had a second try Hard Trade Route

After attempting a 23.000 feet peak farther north and being foiled on it by a long ice slope, three of the party had to return. Roberts, whose 'feet were still troublesome, had taken over the bird collecting, assisted by Lieutenant S. B. Mallu, of the Nepalese Army, whom the authorities had kindlv sent with us. With two Sherpas I went to the vaguely mapped northwest corner of our area, between the Tibet border and Muslangbhot. where we found two passes not hitherto

marked. One of them, 19.000 feet high, over which flocks of sheep and goats carrying salt and rice are driven, must be one of the roughest trade routes in use. The top is crowned with a half-mile wide snow field, but before reaching that comparative oasis the way lies for 1000 feet along the foot of a huge cliff from which stones fr .1 with startlin frequency and appalling velocity. The men whom we had with us advanced in short rushes, crouching as far as possible under the cliff to draw breath, while the sheep and goats took their chance well out in the beaten zone. Surely the trader by land on such a route as well merits the title of Merchant Adventurer as he who trafficks by sea. The second pass of 18,000 feet took us into the strange district of Mustangbhot, in the upper Kali Valley—a desolate region of wildly eroded and weirdly-coloured cliffs, as void of vegetation as the upper Indus Valley. We regained Manangbhot by a 17,000 ft pass from Muktinath, the celebrated Hindu pilgrim resort. Apart from the temple to Narayah (an incarnation of Vishnu), with its 108 water spouts from which the pilgrim successively drinks, a very curious thing may be seen inside a dingy “ gompa.” On a rock ledge sits the usual gilt Buddha, but underneath this natural altar are three small curtained openings, in each of which burns a lambent flame of natural gas. A small stream runs through the middle one, and the flame appears to issue from the rock a few inches above the water. My Sherpas took away earth from the floor and a bottle of this holiest of water for their Darjeeling friends. We spent our last month at a place called Bimtakhoti, north of Manaslu. whence a pass leads to Larkya and thence by another pass a route goes to Tibet. The amount of Tibetan salt which enters Nepal in exchange for rice and grain by these numerous passes is remarkable. In the Kali Valley we met streams of sheep and goats engaged in this traffic, and here the figure of 3000 yak loads was that mentioned by the Nepalese in whose hands the trade lay. Tibetans bring salt on yaks to Larkya, where for 25 measures they get 12 of rice; from there it is carried over the pass on the backs of zos to Bimtakhoti, where the rate has improved to 16 measures of rice. The salt is then taken away by coolies, who have carried up "ice from their villages in the lower Nepal. Our expedition achieved less than we hoped. As is often the way. the climbers gained nothing but experience. But the most myopic travellers can hardly traverse fresh country without bringing back fresh knowledge, and I feel sure that the plant and bird collections of Lowndes and Roberts and Packard's observations on the economy of Himalayan villages will be of value.

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