A LATERAL APPROACH TO HIMALAYA

BILL AITKEN

TO VIEW THE HIMALAYA laterally is like suggesting we find a rainbow Indra Dhanush beautiful because of its overarching radiance and effect on our well-being rather than be impressed by the height and extent of its optical parameters.

For a lateral approach to the Himalaya I use the word lateral in its literal sense, of a sideways look, instead of the customary frontal vision. In other words it invites a fresh perspective that may offer unexpected areas for exploration that in turn can yield unlooked for delights.

This lateral alternative allows both science and poetry a say in assessing the impact of the range on the viewer. Thus the immaculate east-west geomorphic symmetry of the Indus and the Brahmaputra both rising near Kailash and enclosing and range, is echoed in the north-south mythology of Lord Shiva cushioning at Gaumukh on his matted locks, the force of Ganga Maharani's deluge, also from Kailash.

In short, the lateral look seeks to unite science and intuition and sidestep conventional viewpoints and current fashions regarding the structure and significance of the range.

The frontal view takes the range head on and pronounces on the score of verticality those high points along the innermost ridges (irrespective of any aesthetic merit) to be of more significance than the middle, lower and outer portions.

No one is likely to win a gold medal for climbing the fourteen highest peaks of the Shivaliks! This frontal regard for the big summit alone to be worthy of our energies, distorts the reality that rare and beautiful moments can-and do-occur anywhere on our approach.

It can be a flower, animal, bird, vista or sunset but that moment is etched forever irrespective of the altitude. Here is an example from Volume III of the Himalayan Journal:

I had scarcely reached the bank when I stopped suddenly in amazement. Was I dreaming? I rubbed my eyes and looked again. No. Just above the edge of the snow it stood out vividly. So fascinating was it to stand there and gaze on this marvel in an aching pain of wonder that I felt no desire to step forward and break the spell.... In the face of such unsurpassed loveliness one is afraid to move.

No summit account I have read catches the immediacy of Frank Kingdon Ward's heightened mood on discovery of a rare botanical species. Perhaps the snow line is the ceiling for 'the aching pain of wonder'. Higher than that and aching pain tends to be recorded more vividly than wonder.

To the aesthetic moments of wonder must be added situations of real terror on the approach when your life seems to hang by a thread. These heart-stopping occasions not only pump adrenaline but stimulate the lateral awareness of life's miraculous dimension: Danger is an ally when it shocks us out of our ordinary everyday consciousness and forces us to glimpse Eternity from the corner of one's eye — the lateral angle.

After the urge for altitude the second great distorter of mountain enjoyment is the modern expedition's undue regard for time. This urban affliction has now reached the furthest Himalayan village and the first wages of every hill recruit to the army are invested in a large and flashy wristwatch. Whether it works or not is unimportant. The wearer is demonstrating solidarity with the proposition that time is nearer to God than timelessness.

Even the modern pilgrim to Badrinath has adopted the mode of desperate rush and the moment his summit has been achieved (in his case darshan of Badri Vishal) he speeds non-stop back to the plains concerned more about his fuel bill than his soul. His visit to the threshold of Eternity has been shortchanged by obeisance to the false god of time.

It seems Shipton and Tilman's spontaneous explorations of Garhwal in the mid-thirties marked the end of the footloose and free era. Jack Gibson's affair with Banderpunch is another example of the laid back lateral approach where options are kept open and inability to reach the top did not mean the expedition was a failure. After his climbing and skiing days were over Gibson took great delight in walking the mountains interested in local lore, natural history and whatever subject crossed his path. Gibson was a generalist who asked questions: unlike so many expedition leaders who are generalisers, assuming that what they have to say about Upper Ladakh must also apply to Lower Kumaun. Of course those who are young and sportingly inclined can quote at the head of us oldies the Garhwali proverb 'An old bullock can only plough the lower fields'.

Fixation on achieving the summit has great value if you are aware of the miraculous transformation that takes place within you. One moment you are at death's door fighting for breath; a step later, on top, rapture floods the being — a total reversal of all physical and mental symptoms. Nothing has changed outwardly yet one step has transformed your prospects from death to super consciousness. This uncanny reversal clearly comes from inside you. An inner peak has been surmounted and realisation of this fact puts you in possession of the treasure buried at the end of our lateral rainbow. The summit has been the means to an end. It is not the end itself.

As a student of theology I may be forgiven for recognising in the Himalaya a reflection of that which is noble and uplifting in ourselves. The sight of Mount Kailash and Manasarovar make us feel good because we instinctively recognise in them the seat of our own awareness and before it the placid reaches of the calmed mind. Their centrality to the range seems uncanny.

The ancients referred to the Himalaya as Shivalaya not primarily because the Lord of Yogis mediated on its flanks. Shiva is also antaryami the Inner Ruler who quickens our conscience; the true mountain guide infact.

The lateral approach seeks to open our third eye that will reveal the Himalaya not as an unchanging, impassable barrier rooted in hoary antiquity but as a living, moving creature of time, working out its destiny, as do we upon it.

The lateral approach accepts the findings of both science and myth but refuses to accept any one finding as the last word. It is always open to suggestion. Because the Himalaya is moving only at a speed of 50 kilometres per million years does not mean it is not moving at all for the purposes of everyday life. In Mussoorie where I live, on a faultline, we experience sufficient tectonic quivers to allow the owner of the Honeymoon Hotel for example to borrow from Hemmingway when advertising for customers; 'Sleep here and we guarantee the earth will move'.

For most people unfamiliarity, fatalism and convention combine to overwhelm any rational assessment of the Himalaya. In Mussoorie flimsy unsanctioned and unsafe resort buildings have been allowed to come up in spite of warnings that a serious earthquake in the region is overdue.

In the interior of Garhwal hillmen organise pilgrimages to the Goddess Mother to expiate for the pollution occasioned by the lunar mystery of menstrual flux, obvious of the reality that without the outpouring of molten magma from Mother Earth's core there would be no Dev Bhumi to purify!

Why is it that when we wake up in our bed each morning we find the sight of crumpled sheets and blankets so unsightly? Yet from our early morning tent in the high Himalaya the same effect of crumpled ranges on a macrocosmic scale of folding has us reaching for our camera.

The fact of the matter is, each one of us carries his own notion of the Himalaya and defines it as differently as Shankaracharya did from Shipton, as Kurt Diemberger does from Kali Das.

The villager from the plains sees the Himalaya as the home of benevolent gods to be worshipped, the local inhabitants as hostile deities to be appeased. The politician sees them as borders on which he can whip up mass neurosis, the hydroengineer as the source of agro-inputs. To the travel agent they ring bells in the tourist season, to the equipment manufacturer they mean a risky investment: should his boots reach the top they are the best in the world but if they fall short by one bootlace no one will give them a second look.

To members of the Himalayan Club these mountains are the stuff of our dreams. We love the Himalaya for what she is and travel long distances just to acclaim her beauty. Like a come hitherish mistress she only has to beckon — and we come hither. The image of the Himalayan Club many carry is that of a relic of the Raj; those Angrez gentlemen seconded from the Alps who shot markhor, chased butterflies and drank toasts to the Great White Queen — imposter Mother Goddess of the World.

The mountains were a macho outlet for the moribund lifestyle of the Victorian middle class. Their journals exude a narcissistic recapitulation of what helluva guys lay beneath the bowler hat and pinstripe trousers. This seeming sublimated loinsmanship however, only echoes life's orological urge to tumescence shared by all living things and symbolised by Lord Shiva's vital energy.

Because of our passion for the Shivalaya the Himalayan Journal is more than a record of climbs and peregrinations: it is a repository of heroic lore; its editors are high priests of Himalayan arcana before whose names we falter and stammer.

Kenneth Mason and other British editors demonstrated the frontal approach in their omniscient summing up of men and situations. Of Maurice Wilson the Yorkshire fitness freak who perished from exposure above Camp 3 on Everest after a solo attempt in 1934, Mason writes with Olympian finality.

The mountain took no part in his death.

He died of his own accord.

Can we detect under Kenneth Mason's suppressed indignation that Wilson's real sin was to have set foot on Everest without the ashirvad of the Himalayan Club's honorary editor? A lateral view of this incident challenges Mason's claim that the mountain took no part in Wilson's death.

Up till 1820, when the British banned the custom, it was viewed as a meritorious act for a pilgrim who wished to approach Lord Shiva diretissima to write his name at Gopeshwar Math and commit his body to the void at Bhairav Jhump near Kedarnath.

Although Wilson was no Shiv bhagat the fact remains that he was drawn to the Himalaya and not to the Alps. Like many pilgrims to the Shivalaya before him Wilson answered the summons of a maddening urge. Who are we to judge whether that summon is divine or daft?

I mention Wilson because I happen to be born the same day his soul was reclaimed by the Himalaya. I was also educated in Yorkshire and had my youthful fads about food. But there any resemblance ends. I have always considered Everest the ultimate dump blonde among peaks: but accept that dump blondes are better than no blondes. However we should not blind ourselves to the reality that the peak is only part of the mountain. The most vital statistic about a mountain from the lateral point of view is not its height but its inspirational impact on our heart. The top is not the central reality of a mountain's persona anymore than a high IQ is the mark of an enlightened person.

The Himalayan Club's brief is to encourage science, art and literature besides sport but a glance at the Journal's contents will show science and art to be the poor relations.

The Journal makes no mention for example of the artistic glories of Roerich that await the visitor to his house in Naggar nor seems aware of the fascinating fossil park at Kala Am in the Shivaliks where Cautley found the bones of Ramapithecus, at a site near the source of the now underground river of the Vedas, the Saraswati, linking today's earthquakes in Gujarat with Himalayan faultlines.

There are dozens of such unexplored fields the casual expeditioner can stumble upon at moderate heights where neither permission nor elaborate equipment is required.

If you keep your eyes open in the foothills you might spot fossilised specimens whose original home was across the Great Divide in China, proving that when Ramapithecus walked, the Great Himalaya was no higher than today's Lesser Himalaya and then even frogs could reach the summit of Everest-without oxygen and Sherpas! When I was a schoolboy the theory of Continental Drift to explain the rise of the Himalaya was viewed as highly speculative. Today it happens to be received wisdom. But how does this clash of continental plates explain the fact that the Himalaya is also a quarter of a perfect circle? Place a compass point on Turfan a freak depression on the roof of the world and describe a circle, and its circumference passes through or near Nanga Parbat, Namche Barwa and close to Kailash-Manasarover, (roughly mid-way between the two) making the physical echo the latter's psychic centrality.

Mountaineers need to contribute more actively to solve these riddles and give some time to study the range in its totality. Too often they rush past the Shivaliks, the Lesser Himalaya and even the Greater Himalaya to set up camp on the Zanskar Range, closing their eyes to every wonder on the way in order to achieve a reading of 7000 metres on their altimeter.

From a lateral point of view they are depriving themselves of the satisfaction that arises from foreplay. Over the years I have seen dozens of expeditions great and small ruin their chances of a memorable outing by their stampede to the snow line. I have watched them arrive at Rishikesh dogtired after an overnight journey from Delhi. At 5 in the morning they fight their way aboard the crowded bus to Joshimath. They suffer heart attacks when their piled up equipment falls off the roof and after 12 hours of squeeze and strife they have to fight in the Joshimath tourist bungalow for a patch of cold stone floor to sleep on. Their dream of a great Himalayan experience has already soured and next morning their plans to move to base camp into a nightmare when it is discovered they only have permission to climb the mountain, not permission to enter the area where it is situated. The whole day they sit idle while a man goes back to the district headquarters at Gopeshwar to sort out the bureaucratic hassle.

Compare the ease with which such hassles can be avoided by adopting the lateral approach. Though you arrive tired from Delhi overnight a dip in the Ganga revivifies you. Make sure you donate a small sum to the priest at Kankhal for this temple blesses all pilgrimages to Uttarakhand. Even if you are not superstitious this is sensible insurance in getting the gods on your side — and avoiding a huge bill for a rescue helicopter.

Avoid the scrum that attends all through buses to Joshimath and catch the Dak bus to Gopeshwar that leaves uncrowded at midday. You spend a comfortable evening in an empty tourist bungalow and next morning only have to step across the road to the District Magistrate's office to sort out any administrative problems.

By lunch you are in Joshimath in a relaxed and upbeat mood and have no need to look for porters. All those of the frontal school's expedition, unhappy at losing a day's wages, are eager to set out immediately at cut-rates!

Thus in the lateral mode, you have saved time, money and energy. Also you have been exposed to hill culture. Gopeshwar is the home of Chandni Prasad Bhatt and the Chipko Movement.

Expedition reports of the frontal school tend to either demonise or glamourise the local people. They encourage on the one hand the Shangri La notion of wise men and unaging women waiting to be discovered if you go high or further enough. The lateral approach however asks you to accept that leaking roofs, smoking chimneys and nagging women are met with at all altitudes — and tend to get worse the higher you go. On the other hand the frontal school tells you the hillman is poor dirty and lazy, while the lateral approach asks you to try and understand why this is so.

The hillman's life is unremittingly hard and all efforts to better his condition are frustrated by the hostile terrain. Your potatoes are dug up by porcupine; your grain is stripped clean by rats; bears steal your plums and maize, and pine martens raid your beehives for honey; leopards snatch your dogs, and landslides sweep away your sheep and cattle. The heartbreak of living in the Himalaya needs to be remembered when expedition leaders haggle over payments to porters. The villagers are desperate and have nowhere to go. The expedition leader is desperate to get back to comforts the hillman can only dream of.

As well as a lateral approach, a lateral retreat from the Himalaya is recommended. The frantic expedition exodus that looks neither to the left nor right misses out on the chances of meeting real magic.

I remember after a long day's motor bike ride from Rampur Bushair tooling down the winding road from Shimla, the last place in the world for any mountain glory to manifest itself. It was dusk and as I coasted down with the engine off, I was astonished to find a full grown leopard casually lope across the road a few yards in front of my motor bike. He tried to leap up a vertical dirt wall but fell off, snarling like a rock climber who has made the wrong move. Then he loped back across the road to disappear down the hillside leaving me with a mix of fear, beauty and wonder.

We have all seen stuffed leopards adorning palaces and museums but to bump into the real thing is something you can never forget. It is this living magic of the Himalaya the lateral approach seeks to emphasise as yielding the moment of true satisfaction.

Ask me the most astonishing sight I have ever seen in the mountains and it has nothing to do with peaks or passes, Lamas or gompas. We had done two days marches in one afternoon when, descending a canyon in Zanskar, I glanced up, and saw half a dozen ibex effortlessly waltzing back and forth across the canyon's walls, a miraculous demonstration of how impossible things are performed if you are open to their possibility. The beauties of the Himalaya are a grace that can descend at any time.

Whether we look up at the sublime end product or down to the tumultuous roots what we need to find is the source of wonder triggered off by the ibex. This is the lateral pearl of great price.

To conclude: Going to the mountains it seems to me, is much more than escape from humdrum urbanity to experience sensory stimulation. It also seems far beyond the conventional call of religion, concerned to induce pious upliftment or of sporting challenge to test the limits of human endurance.

We go because it is bread and butter for our soul. We go because it answers the deepest of all personal needs — to drink at the wellspring of being; to touch the root of a profound mystery we are all a part of.

Let me end with a founder member of the Himalayan Club. General Bruce's feelings as he witnessed the awesome rise of mountain seen from the Great Bend of the Indus — the perfect lateral viewpoint.

It gave me a feeling of impossibility.

It gave me a feeling I was not there.

And it also gave the feeling that if I was there,

It would not much matter.

Mallory's famous dictum 'Because it is there' falls short of the real reason why this mountain chain lures our soul. The Himalaya is sublime not because it is happens to be there. Like the human soul it reflects, it is its nature to be sublime.

SUMMARY:

A gentle approach to the Himalaya. This is the text of the lecture delivered by the author in Mumbai, 3^rd February, 2001, at the Himalayan Club Millennium Meet.

 

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