A NOTE ON THE U.S. EXPEDITION TO NEPAL, 1949¹

FRANCIS LEESON

In the autumn of 1948 a scientific expedition bound for the Himalayan foothills of Nepal, the first to be allowed access to this area, arrived in Calcutta. Headed by Dr. S. Dillon Ridley, Assistant Professor of Zoology at Yale University, the project was supported and financed by the National Geographic Society, Yale University, and the Smithsonian Institution.

Being at the time under contract to the National Geographic Society in its photo-survey of India, I was attached to the Expedition as assistant photographer and became the only British member of the party.

Besides Dr. Ridley and myself there was a stalf photographer of the National Geographic Society, a preparator from the Peabody Museum of Yale, two student mammalogists from Yale, and two Goanese skinners, loaned by the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay.

The main object of the expedition was ornithological and included as one of its aims the acquisition of a specimen of the rare partridgelike Ophrysia superciliosa, last seen near Naini Tal in 1876. But though we searched in three separate areas of the country and twenty-four copies of a painting of the bird were circulated among Nepalese local authorities, the bird remained elusive.

A selection of small mammals and their parasites, and fish, was to be made in addition, while we photographers were to concentrate on a full-length colour film of the country and the expedition, with a still-picture series for the National Geographic Magazine.

The main party reached Kathmandu in late November after collecting in the Terai jungle near Bhirganj and Simra. As a result of interviews with the Maharaja, permission was granted to visit both western and eastern Nepal, after completing work in the Nepal valley. The first glimpse of Everest was obtained at this time from a hill a little north of Pharping on the southern border of the valley.

The easiest means of access to the east and west extremities of the mountainous little kingdom is via the neighbouring provinces of India, and accordingly, on 10th December the expedition reached the U.P. railhead of Kaurialaghat. A couple of days later we set out on a three-day march through the Terai in an elephant and bullock-cart convoy. This brought us to the point where the Karnali river, after its descent through a gorge, debouches into the plains to form the Girwa and later the Gogra. After a halt of a week at this point for collecting we pushed on beyond the Siwaliks with porters, crossing first the Karnali at Kuneghat and then the Bheri at Jummu. From this point onward, I believe, no Westerner had previously penetrated, though Colonel John Macdonald, author of Circumventing the Mahseer, fished the Karnali up to and beyond the Bheri junction several years before.

Our final camp was pitched near the village of Rekcha in a tiny valley high on the Mahabharat Lekh. From a ridge above the camp the peaks of the west Nepal Himalaya were visible. The local inhabitants called them the Zumla Himzal, possibly after the village of Zumla far up the Kamali valley. The mountains included Api (23,399 feet), Nampa (22,162 feet), and the Saipal massif (highest peak: 23,079 feet). The only record I can find of a visit to these peaks was that of A. Henry Savage Landor, two years after his journey across Tibet in the first years of the present century. He entered north-west Nepal, without permission, from north-east Kumaon and explored the area north of the Api and Nampa peaks, before returning to Kumaon.

Our return journey to the plains was made by a new route, reaching the Karnali south-west of Rekcha and following the west bank of the river down to the Siwaliks. The general impression of this part of Nepal was that it was more intensely cultivated than expected, even the hill-sides deep in the interior being crowded with tiny terraced fields. We had complete freedom of movement but were accompanied as a rule by a Subedar and two sepoys whose chief function was to obtain supplies for us and the coolies.

The lowlands of eastern Nepal proved more accessible than the west. Biratnagar, just across the border from the Indian railhead at Jogbani, is Nepal's only manufacturing town. On 21st January 1949 the party left for Dharan Bazaar, at the foot of the Siwaliks, in a truck and command car. The first part of the 20-mile journey was over a bad road which later developed into a fine metalled highway under construction by a Nepalese transport contractor. At Dharan we were received by Major-General Mahdub Sham Shere Jung Bahadur Rana, Governor of the District of Dhankuta, comprising the north-east corner of Nepal and including part of the Kanchen- junga massif. He had earlier met the expedition in Kathmandu.

The march into the Himalayan foothills took six days of steady climbing, crossing the Tamur river at Mulghat and passing through Dhankuta, capital of the district of the same name. This part of Nepal has been visited by Europeans more frequently than any other except Khatmandu. In 1848 Sir Joseph Hooker crossed into the Tamur valley from Sikkim and followed the river up to the Tibetan border, returning on the Nepal slopes of the Singelela ridge and crossing back into Sikkim via the Islumbo pass. In 1934 J. B. Auden, with a party sent to examine the effects of the earthquakes of 15th January 1934, traversed from Jogbani to Dharan, Dhankuta, Ghainpur, over the Milke pass to Taplejung, and thence by the Singelela ridge to Darjeeling. In recent years journeys have been made by several geologists in connexion with the Kosi Dam Survey, and only a few months before our visit, Dr. Cory, an American geologist on loan to the Nepal Government, travelled in the same area.

Auden reported bad visibility on his journeys, made in February, March, and April of 1934. The snows were never quite visible at all in east Nepal and visibility generally was so poor that it was often impossible to see more than a distance of five miles. We experienced overcast weather until, at Chitre, 7,500 feet up on the Buranse Danda on the night of 27th January, an ice blizzard enveloped the camp, causing one tent to collapse under the weight of ice. The following morning dawned clear and we had our first view of the east Nepal Himalaya, though Everest was hidden by the only cloud among the peaks.

Our next view of the snows was obtained from Mangalbare where our final camp was pitched on the north side of the 9,976-foot high, thickly-forested, Tinjure Danda. The mountains remained visible usually for only an hour or two after sunrise: then clouds would rise from distant valleys or drift across the camp and veil the stupendous panorama for the rest of the day.

Everest, though 64 miles away, was obvious, the south face falling away sharply while a ridge running east-south-east appeared to link the massif with a pyramidal peak (22,110 feet) some 17 miles nearer to us. Binoculars revealed clouds of snow blowing up frequently— apparently from the famous 'steps' of the north face of Everest, invisible to us. On windy days the ice particles were whipped into a great plume which trailed across the sky eastwards beyond Ma- kalu. There was much speculation among us as to the identity of a great rock peak immediately to the left, and apparently just south of Everest, and certainly very close. It was possibly Lhotse (South Peak, 27,890 feet), for at sunrise the steep snow-free south-west ridge of Everest throws a dark shadow on the sheer black creviced face of this satellite.¹ It is interesting to compare our picture with the picture in vol. vi of the Himalayan Journal taken by the 1933 Air Expedition and entitled 'Summit of Mount Everest and South Face of Lhotse from the South'. Does the latter picture really show Lhotse?

Makalu, 10 miles nearer, dominated the whole mountain scene, and all the locals claimed it to be the highest peak, calling it Sagar Matha which, according to our Munshi, means 'the highest of all'. To the west of Everest and the peaks in its immediate neighbourhood stretched a long, dazzlingly white horizontal ridge, the western end of which rose slightly to terminate in the 22,208-foot peak of Chamlang, 54 miles from us.

I felt I had to 'do something' about the mountains, and as they were too far away to climb about on, and photography was too quick and easy, I rose at dawn on each fine morning and worked at a water-colour sketch of the scene. But the story about Everest generating its own weather was certainly borne out by my own observations for, very frequently, the only clouds in the sky were grouped about that peak, and to see the whole mountain unclouded was a rare occurrence. I was able therefore to sketch only a little each morning until, towards the end of our stay at Mangalbare, heavy snow brought a few crystal-clear mornings, but the accompanying drop in temperature and freezing wind then soon froze hands and feet and pierced even the warmest clothing of anyone rash enough to sit out in the snow at dawn!

Snow fell first on the night of 4th 5th February and continued throughout the following day until the camp was thickly blanketed. The bowers made from tree-branches and leaves to shelter the skinners' workshop and the kitchen from the wind became miserable and wet as the heat from the fires melted the snow covering, and water dripped down on the occupants. No one could keep his feet warm or even dry, as few had come prepared for a sojourn in deep snow. Little collecting could be done, though skinning and stuffing the many specimens awaiting attention continued while my fellow cameraman and I struggled out to record the blizzard and snow scenes in 'glorious technicolour', using towels to protect our equipment.

The camp now lay under nearly 14 inches of snow and evacuation became essential before the morale of servants and coolies broke. The latter, who numbered nearly sixty, were bare-footed and blanketless and sheltered only by rough lean-tos of branches. The Tinjure Danda was impassable so it was decided to retreat immediately below the snowline into the Arun valley to the north-west. This was done successfully despite a good many minor slips and falls, and the evening of 7th February found the party in the dry, 4,000 feet lower down.

I might mention here that those of us keen on climbing had little opportunity for anything serious, for our route took us over what are really nothing more than grassy forested hills of unusual height, although these are, of course, the continuation of ridges leading down from some of the highest peaks in the world. The Tinjure Danda, for instance, forms part of the watershed of the Arun and Tamur rivers, which are fed by the glaciers of Everest and Kanchen- junga respectively. Only once did we reach a height of 10,000 feet, and this only on a trek to a spot height by a couple of us with the expedition altimeter in an effort to locate the exact position of our final camp in the absence of a good map and a compass. On this occasion we saw the Kanchenjunga massif rising up in a series of almost vertical precipices and battlemented ridges, 50 miles to the north-east. The well-known Phalut ridge, objective of many Darjeeling trekkers, was silhouetted against the eastern horizon.

The march back to Dharan Bazaar via Chainpur, the Arun river, and Dhankuta took nine days, for in eastern Nepal marches are short though wages high (at five rupees per porter per day, against two rupees eight annas in the west, and a little more in central Nepal).

At Dharan the expedition was again received by General Mahdub, who was just about to leave his winter camp there for his headquarters in Dhankuta, and then motored to Chatra on the Sapt Kosi for a final hunting camp a few miles south of the site for the proposed Kosi Dam. Many of us who had thought of this project as still being in a state of anticipation were surprised to find a permanent camp at Barakhakshetra with radio-telephone contact with other camps and New Delhi. Half a mile farther up-river forty-three tunnels were being blasted into the rock faces of a 1,000-foot-deep gorge to give geologists access to the heart of the rock, which must one day support a 750-foot high wall holding back a lake 74 square miles in area, stretching many miles up the Sun Kosi, the Arun, and the Tamur, making possible ferry-services north, widespread irrigation south of the dam, and hydro-electric power for all eastern Nepal, not to mention control of the floods which have laid waste a 70-mile width of Bihar.

The expedition returned to Calcutta at the end of February with nearly a thousand bird specimens, some of them of great rarity, and over a hundred small mammals, taken during the three phases of the trip. We reeled off 10,000 feet of colour film and took many hundreds of colour and black-and-white stills, which depict the landscape and life of parts of Nepal hitherto unphotographed.

In conclusion I might say that from our experience of the cooperation and at the same time the laissez-faire of the Nepalese authorities, it seems very likely that permission would be granted without much difficulty for the passage of the next Everest Expedition through Nepal, thereby saving the long and weakening trek of the past through Sikkim and Tibet. When I commented in Kathmandu on this new and pleasing attitude to the young and progressive General Bijaya, Nepal's equivalent of Foreign Minister, his reply was, 'Yes, we want to open up Nepal—now.'

 

Note on Photograph of the Everest Group from the South provided by the National Geographic Society of the U.S.A.

This was taken by Mr. Volkmar Wentzel from the Tinjure Danda (Survey of India Quarter Inch Map 72M) at a distance of 64 miles and an elevation of 9,360 feet. It presents the Everest Group from a new angle for of course, every Everest expedition has approached and attacked the mountain through Tibet. Any previous telephotos have been taken from a greater distance and from further east. It should also be noted that no detailed maps have yet been made of the region south of Everest. All the above factors make identification of the peaks somewhat difficult.

The Royal Geographical Society have, we may say, examined the problem very carefully, especially when their attention was drawn to the misleading caption to a somewhat similar photograph published in The Times of 22nd March, 1949.

The Lhotse massif masks all but the top thousand feet of Everest, and the snow plume is only just discernible. Definite identification of some of the peaks shown in the illustration facing p. 52 is not possible. The prominent peak between Everest and Makalu is possibly Pethangtse (22,060 feet), or more likely Peak 22,110, which is nearer and may mask the former.

It may be of interest to know that Lhotse, which means 'South Peak^’, and Pethangtse were so named by the 1920 Reconnaissance.—Ed.

Hindu Kush Expedition, 1951

Several members of the Himalayan Club residing in Europe are planning an expedition to climb Tirich Mir (25,263 feet) in the Ghitral Hindu Kush during the summer of 1951. Among those hoping to take part is Captain Ralph James, R.A., whose account of the 1946 attempt on Nun Kun (23,410 feet) in the Zaskar Himalaya was published in volume xiv of the Himalayan Journal. He considers another attempt on Nun Kun impracticable at the moment owing to the unsettled situation in Kashmir and the prohibitive cost of coolie transport there.

Anyone who would like to hear more about the Tirich Mir Expedition or who has any information about previous attempts is asked to contact Francis Leeson, 5 Southbourne Overcliff Drive, Bournemouth, Hants, England.

Api-Nampa Massif

The only confirmed visit to the Api-Nampa-Saipal region appears to have been a flying one by Dr. Longstaff in 1905. (Vide A. J., vol. xxiii, August 1906).—Ed.

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