When our six-member team of mountaineers from “The Himalayan Club”, accompanied by a cinematographer, set out from Rongdo, a quaint village in Ladakh, we had no idea of our final destination of where we would eventually land up. We had on a map, an audacious plan to traverse the Eastern […]
Exploration
Introduction This is the second of two articles describing exploration of the glaciers on the south-eastern flanks of Kanchenjunga. The previous article covers the South Simvu glacier, which was not even on maps until 1955; this is on the exploration of the Zumthul Phuk glacier and its legendary Rock Needles. […]
“Maps, if caviare[1] to the general, are, as Louis Stevenson has insisted, very suggestive to persons with proper imagination.” – Douglas Freshfield, Round Kangchenjunga, p-20 Story of maps and an invisible glacier For the last few years I have been trying to explore the valleys and glaciers of the south-eastern […]
Summary: During my first visit in 2001 to the Lepcha villages of north Sikkim and especially Dzongu1, I heard about a short, bipedal, hairy, shy creature living in the forest. They called it “Bon Manchi”, literally ‘man of forest’. This was enough to fuel my imagination and influenced my decision […]