THREE MOUNTAINS—AND NANDA DEVI, 1961

HARI DANG

The heat of summer in the Doon rises to a climax in the familiar ^ fortissimo of departure to the high mountains. I recall only the separate notes as part of one bar; the shrieking crescendos of the brain-fever bird, the blossom of laburnum and jacaranda splashing gold and violet against the blue vacancy of the sky ; the house overflowing with crates and canisters, Holdie's dogs and schoolboys.

The long road to Joshimath behind us in a day of motoring, we struggled up from the last village of Lata, bathing our perspiring bodies in an icy cascade below the Lata Kharak Camp, only to shiver into our warmest clothes as we topped the spur at 11,000 feet in the face of a blizzard. At Lata we had spotted midges, but the cliffs at the alp rose into endless pellets of sleet that stung us in the high wind. Five days we were stranded in this new world, where the heat-dulled senses awakened to fresh life and one thanked the ardour's so useless in the world below. The sudden elevation to the spring snowline left us in no doubt why we climbed each summer: for here a man's warmth might do him some good, his vigour bring him some return other than frustration.

Gurdial, John Dias and I shared a tent in lively controversy which almost put to shame the storm outside, while Thadani, Suman Dubey and Doc Sharma shared another. Two attempts to force the Halls of the Mountain King ended in fiasco, for an avalanche forced us back from the Dharanshi Pass, down to the Kharak, a hanging alp on the Lata Ridge. On the sixth day the trolls relaxed and we rose to dry our clothes, and take time and Dabbal Singh off to bag a thar on the overhangs where the Lata Ridge falls into the thundering Rishi, till then considered impassable. Return to camp was jubilant, as the Sherpas serenaded the camp with their flutes, and smoke from the fragrant juniper fires rose against mountain-blue without a cloud. Kuari Pass to the south had never been so clearly the blue bastion of the high hills, or Dunagiri to the north so definitely a mountain crystal, while above the infinite depth of the Dhauli Valley, the black and bare aiguilles of the Rataban and Ghori groups rose solidly impregnable. Scraggy vegetation marched up the ramparts, and a lone splash of gaudy magenta marked a flowering rhododendron bush on a sun-washed ledge, incredibly remote from the proximate world of villages below it. We sat around roaring fires, content to sip fresh thar soup and hear the porters singing gaily over sizzling portions roasting on wooden spits; surely the right note on which to begin a mountain-climb!

The ledges and flying buttresses of the seven ravines, to be crossed en route to Dharanshi, were deep under sludgy, squishy snow, which avalanched in liquid slides. We effected a crossing in four days, ferrying our loads with the help of a quarter the number of porters we had hoped to hire, road-building in this border area having lured them away. In the no-man's land between snow and grass, I took a day off to bring down a big burrhel ram, as beyond Dharanshi shooting is prohibited. It was one of those memorable eighteen-hour days of roaming the cliffs and swards around Dunagiri and Hanuman which climbers never forget, and it was late in the night when we returned, blooded to the mountains in more ways than one.

Across the ^‘curtain' of the Malatuni Ridge is a repose and tranquillity that belies the rugged grandeur of the country. We reverted happily to an animal existence in this terrain where, above all, one could be happy. Scrambling over steep grass and slabs or crawling up cliffs where the dwarf rhododendron (R. anthopogun and R. lepi datum) carpets the rock and charges the world with its fragrance, the smell of joy, as the mountains are the sight of joy, the winter of our discontent' turns to a brief spring. From morning of jolly cheer to night of restful slumber, a peaceful oblivion pervades the mind and every breath brings growing consciousness of what Nanda Devi can represent.

Much of Hindu mythology is precisely—mythology, but where the mountains are concerned, all truths are presciently clear in the precocious insight of the sages. Nanda Devi is said to be a place of pilgrimage not for mortals, but for enlightened ⁴ rishis' already half-way to the gods. Like the ⁴ seeker' in a fable Swami Rama- krishna narrated to my father on the bank of the Ganges in the sal forest of Beasi above Rishikesh half-a-century ago, he seeks after Truth, and climbs to Heaven to interrogate the gods; he climbs up the valley where ⁴ the Ganges falls like a flight of stairs let down for the sons of man', till he reaches a mountain so high that it is always in cloud; he climbs up the edge of this frosty cirrus ; still, no Heaven! He rants and raves to God at the treachery of it all, but getting no response, sits down to brood. Far below he sees the world which he had found wanting. It seems now so fresh and clear and full of unbounded joy, where previously it had been so close with walls that hid so much. He understands then why God must be wise for he lives with this perspective of the world. He begins to descend but God appears and says he cannot now rejoin the world of men, for the route to the top is one-way. Mountaineers are somewhat like this archetypal ^c seeker', for they, too, rise on clouds of effort, if not of thought, and see the world below as sensible and harmonious. They can and do go back, till once again the walls rise too high and shut out the view of the hills. Happily, the road to the mountains is eminently two-way and the traffic on it unrestricted.

Though no longer the legendary place it was, the gorge of the Rishiganga still commands respect. At first glance it appears impossible and the second and third glances seem to confirm this, but step by step, the riddle solves itself as one climbs across a fascinating succession of tenuous ledges and finally arrives on the ⁶ Sanctuary' down after a week or more of ferrying and carrying. Strolling up the crisp snow-burnt grasses, we counted off the peaks of the Rishi reassuringly, like a greedy miser counting money— Dunagiri, already climbed by Andre Roch, Hanuman, Rishi Kot, the unseen Lampak, Changabang, Kalanka, Scimitar, and the ring around us. The going up the Dakhni Rishi Glacier is rough. Slag heaps of grit and sandstone, gaping grey grottoes of gritty ice, make a mockery of the pure white snow above. To make things worse we had with us Lhakpa Sungre, who had a penchant for leading the way and establishing cairns at inconceivably remote promontories on the glacier's chaos. His handiwork taunted us from ridiculous vantages in his erratic wake. We followed, till it dawned on us that he hadn't the slightest clue where he was going, his ebullient constructions being merely the innocent child's game of building toy towers with wooden blocks! Realizing that his following was dwindling, he sheepishly brought up the trailing rear at the site of Base Camp on the ablation platform now annually being eroded by the glacier just below the termination of the Coxcomb Ridge.

Nanda Devi rises curiously flattened through foreshortening above Base Camp, and across the glacier we could see the symmetrical ice summit of Nanda Khat, and the fascinating arete peak we christened 'Cream Roll' (see photo). Devistan with its three summits even then attracted us from across the downs of the Sanctuary.

There is nothing frightening about Nanda Devi; none of that grim feeling of blind ^‘outer forces' which often assails one on some of those high peaks in Nepal. Perhaps it is merely ' blind imagination' that harbours this illusion. One feels the same protective Presence in the lakeland hills of Britain, which sometimes leads one to ignore hazards that would be considered dangerous elsewhere, though the laws of gravity are the same everywhere.

Dodging rock-falls at the expense of one twisted ankle, we made our way over the break in the coxcomb above camp, and up the rock and snow of the right bank of the glacier which descends from Nanda Devi, flows along the east peak and wraps itself around the spur descending from the coxcomb. The site for Camp I, the precarious upper end of the coxcomb, is a shattered rock arete, and we had to dig tent-platforms arduously out of ice-bound shale. Though a fortnight behind schedule because of shortage of porters, we finally occupied this camp on June 5; Gurdial Singh, John Dias, Kiku Thadani, Suman Dubey, Doc Sharma and I, with four Garhwalis, including Bahadur Singh and Kalyan Singh, and three Sherpas, Nima Thondup, Kalden and Lhakpa.

The cloudless horizons reflected our optimism as we made our laborious way up the ice-bound rock arete to where Tilman's party had established their Camp II in a ⁶ gite' or sheltered platform, below the point where the arete becomes completely ice-glazed and turns up to head for the snow-platform of Camp III. Three days we reached this spot and dumped loads, but each time we were forced to return for lack of a tent-platform. To excavate one would have taken more tools and manpower that we had and the ice covered every rugisity and hollow impartially, leaving no place for even the most imaginative of sites till the snow-platform of Camp III. On the third trip up we held a conference shouted over the wretched ridge, as clouds boiled up the west face of the mountain to invade us with a shower of sleet. John Dias was at the crest of the arete, cutting steps, and we were strung along ropes down to Gurdial, who rightly advised retreat. Suman and Nima had both had minor slips and just then, unroping to join John Dias at the crest, my crampons broke through the glazing of ice, and I w^yas jettisoned down the rock, to be brought up short by a projecting aiguille and the rope. This last seemed to settle it, though we argued some more before dumping loads in the hope of making another attempt on the morrow.

Waking that night at Camp I, we saw the early break-through of the monsoon thundering and glaring its way over the Sunder- dhunga Col. It hit us at 3 a.m. : the first monsoon storm of the season, and we awoke from under snowed tents into a melancholy breeze and a grey sky. A day's patient confinement only discouraged us further, and we decided to retreat from Nanda Devi. While the Sherpas salvaged what stores they could, we quaffed gloomy cups of tea at Base.

Our errant course down the glacier was brightened by a clearing sky and the prospect of other mountains and we pitched camp on a grassy terrace as smooth and green as a billiard table. Next day we moved camp to a fluvial terrace above the Devistan Glacier and, then, crossed the ice-fall warily to pitch the large mess-tent on the snow-slopes between the twin summits of Devistan at an altitude of nearly 20,000. From there, the slopes steepen to the summits, and up these we laboured under a gruelling sun in mid-June till clouds arose to tatter themselves across the ridge. Ice-slopes alternated with soft snow, and traversing one difficult patch of ice, we reached the false summit of Devistan I. After another hour of plodding and climbing up a corniced ice-wall which flanked the summit, we strolled up the summit ridge to the top, just too late for clear views of Trisul and Bethartoli, though occasional clearings in the clouds gave us tantalizing glimpses of all the hills.

A few biscuits and a mouthful of lime-juice later and we plodded our way back to camp, to find flowers in blossom and the temple shape of Nanda Devi above us clear of all cloud, save its characteristic shawl-like plume. The thought that we had given it up too easily was a torture till the moonlit nights below it at the Sanctuary Camp reconciled us to the futility and vanity of such thoughts in the hills. We had come before; we would come again. Nanda Devi would still remain, even if others more ambitious and robust than ourselves climbed it before us. Our Sanctuary would still welcome us with the old rapture, if our hearts remained young to its soft touch. Once we had climbed it, it would no longer be the same. Of such sophistry is comfort made, and I set about photographing the juniper fire and the moonlit mountain, with distressing results!

Nima hunted spring-onion bulbs with his hands behind his back, Guru buried himself behind his flowers, John Dias and I brushed our beards and argued, while Suman and Sharma and Thadani wrote or strolled or rested on the sward. Ruffling his cropped hair, Gurdial came over from his tent in the evening; ' John Dias, I think we should climb a mountain!' The tent fluttered with the suggestion; a chorus of differing opinions! ⁶ Why must we climb a mountain ? ' ⁴ Let us try " Cream Roll ' Why not Changabang?' How could we agree? There were far too many mountains and all were fascinating!

Himalayan Rubythroats poured forth rich melody and a burrhel scampered across us, as we decided to try Maiktoli, 22,320 feet, and the south-western bastion of the inner Sanctuary. We believed it unclimbed, though we discovered later that Eric Shipton climbed it in 1934. Maiktoli-wards we moved, in the rapid rhythm of well- strung instruments. Over lakes and dry hollows, across unknown glaciers and unsuspected ridges, we moved up the left bank of the Sundergunga Glacier to pitch camp on a thin moraine at 16,000 feet. The next day we moved our mess-tent into a shallow snow-filled crevasse below the medial ridge of Maiktoli on the glacier at 18,000 feet. Clouds dropped in a steady if friendly stream over the Sunderdhunga Col; the familiar mountains disclosed strange new shapes and the sun still managed to shine through and invade us with crippling glacier lassitude. We slept that night on the familiar note of controversy over that great hazard to mountaineering: kerosene! Our dreams would have defied Freud's company, for we dreamed of kerosene, raining, snowing, burning. Kerosene became the newest element, introduced into all matter by our devoted Sherpas, and the very snow seemed polluted with it. Our tea smelt of it, our biscuits were moist with it, our sleeping-bags had their share, and the lid went off the pot, as Suman broke open a sealed tin of lime-juice powder to find it also tainted! We have still to solve this mystery!

From this camp, we surmounted the medial ridge which rises between the two areas of the glacier and plodded up the rapidly- softening snow under a sky as clear as an animal's conscience. Maiktoli is an easy mountain, connecting the Sunderdhunga Col with the Devistan Ridge, and to the west with the Mrigthuni Ridge.

As often happens in the Himalayas, a storm arose from behind the peak and we were scarcely off the ramp of the medial ridge on to the easy slopes above, when we had to struggle against a high wind that stung us with snow crystals. We pushed on through this, rushing up the final steep ridge that leads to the narrow summit. We began the descent almost in panic, because visibility was reduced to a few yards and it was hard to distinguish between earth and sky which mingled in hoary confusion at our feet. Finally, we accepted ourselves lost in the vast expanse around us, and halted to stamp our feet, eat canned mango and argue about the correct direction of the ramp of the medial ridge, the only safe way back to camp. To turn downwards too soon would have meant an incontinent dive over steep ice-cliffs and to turn down too late would mean a night in the only-somewhat-easier ice-fall of the other branch across the ramp. Just as we reached an impasse in our arguments Lhakpa spotted the ice-axe which Gurdial had left behind on the way up, taking with him a ski stick instead, and we rushed down in the gathering storm to camp.

The spring transformation of the Sanctuary was complete when we returned to our camp below Nanda Devi after a lazy walk down to the zone of life, cleansed and exhausted by our happy exertions. Followed days of indulgence as we relaxed the brutal stranglehold of time on our lives. Living in the present is gloriously irresponsible and we spent many days oblivious of the world of compulsion, in a state of Grace. This was home, so why not forget! Indulge! lying down in the pushing grasses when the sun rose clear, to smell the growth and taste it with avid tongue like mindless creatures chewing the cud. How good, how safe, I thought, to be animal. How comfortable and joy-making to have no memory save that of pasture, no thought of unfulfilled desires, no fear except of a gentlemanly snow-leopard. No duty, no conscience, no enemy but ' winter and rough weather \ But men are born human. They become mountaineers. Restlessness is their fate, strife their duty, in thought their pain and in action their deliverance. Why explain the mountains ? Explain, rather, the love of them that inflames all we are as human beings who can think and imagine and be unhappy. We talk of sport, when the mountains tell us with a laugh that they will outlast us, that we shall die in 30 years or 60, and they in 30-million. Don't we, with all our vulnerable paranoic humanity, deserve more time ; don't we, with all our weakness and vanities and colloidal softness, suffer more than they in death ? What all the arts of man when we remain mortal, what all the joys when we know they will not last ? Re-incarnation was a good myth for bygone days, but now, when even the stars above Nanda Devi move like satellites, we need something more. Given such little time for such a grand Himalaya of possibilities, what can one do but sit in the sun in a barrel and think ? The ' downhill only' of life, devoid of the support of Faith in some beneficent Power can be a very bitter and eroding race, but Nanda Devi has a way of tempering the sadness with a strange faith that clears the dread.

As ever, we forgot all contentment and tranquillity in intense and passionate debate as the spell was broken one day while we sat on slates, toasting potatoes and tired feet below the mountain's shadow.

Rishi Kot (circa 21,000 feet) rises above the Rishi junction, and Gurdial wanted to try it, but generously bowed to our preference for Trisul. Thadani wanted to climb it in the daytime, while John Dias and I wanted to try a night-climb from some rocks at 18,000. Blissfully, we chose our own routes to the Gorge Camp near Pisgah at Tilchaunani. Kalden and I explored some high lakes and went over the col above the camp, descending to it in a sensational cover of ragged mists over lakes which had never seen any reflection other than clouds and animals since the mountain rose. The Trisul Nala joins the Rishi two miles below the Rha- mani Camp from the left bank. We hacked our way through this forest with khukries and passed through stands of brooding firs to cross the Trisul Nala and pitch camp in an ablation valley on the left of the Bethartoli Glacier. Next day we pitched our Base Camp at nearly 16,000 feet on the left of the Trisul Glacier. Burrhel and musk-deer roam these valleys but there is evidence that much poaching goes on in the summer months, as a track of sorts permits shepherds to bring their flocks this far. Here we ate and drank well as fresh supplies had come up and there was none of the old flavour of kerosene. But Dabbal Singh's cooking has drawbacks. He loves chillies and his only answer to any question more complicated than the whereabouts of burrhel is an endearing ⁴ kuch pata nahin, babuji' with ⁴ kya jante, babuji' and ^‘ ho bhi sakta hai, babuji’ as variations of this fatalistic theme song of doubt and ignorance. The lid flew of the kettle when we asked him after one meal why he had put chillies in the sweet rice pudding, and pat came the smiling response with a helpless shrug of the narrow shoulders: ^‘ Kya jante, babuji!'

While Thadani, Kalyan and Lhakpa moved off to establish their camp in the snow at nearly 20,000, John Dias and I, with Nima and Bahadur were left at 17,800 feet by Gurdial, Sharma and Suman, who helped us with the ⁴ carry'. Three nights we waited here, ready to take advantage of the first clear night which would permit a moonlight ascent, but watery shadows chased themselves over the glow and we slept fitfully under the threat of falling rocks from the ridge above; finally, having exhausted our supplies, we resignedly rattled down to Base, having seen Thadani start off from his higher camp for the daytime climb.

At 8 p.m. we sat and talked outside the Base tent, as clouds raced down from the Rishi on a changing wind. By 8.30 the moon had chased the shadows from the oiled steel of the sky, and peeped down mockingly at us from the Devistan Ridge above, flooding the Trisul Valley in a liquid ambiance. Impulsively, John Dias and I decided to climb then and there, and strapped on boots and crampons. The night was full of noises and the rucksack of liquids, as the four of us tried unsuccessfully to ford a stream flooded by the daytime melt. To climb in wet boots would further the frostbite-danger so we turned upwards, thus avoiding the stream, and climbed up the face of Trisul direct, and over the ridge on the far side of which we had camped the preceding nights. With John Dias and I alternately leading, Nima and Bahadur sandwiched in between on the rope, we crunched up in rapid rhythmic steps. The night frost had frozen the slush and we cramponed happily and fast up the slopes and over the ridge. The tinkle of water died away below us as we left the world of sound and movement for the static world of silent questions. As we sipped cold coffee to keep us awake, Nima remarked: ⁶ Sahib, ab pahar naraaz nahin hain\ The mountains are no longer angry! What could I add to such succinct wisdom! The mountains were no longer angry. How right he was, old thoughtful, lovable Nima, so like a Garhwali in his meditative bent. How could they be angry ? The moon bathed the landscape in light and changed ugly contours to soft shades, Nanda Devi rose with each step we took, and one by one all the mountain company of the Rishi stood silhouetted against the glowing steel of the sky. The clouds froze into barred patterns of frosted cirrus, which sublimated or turned to docile cumulus reposing somnolently in the valley till their time would come again. A world of clear shades and silent sky.

The climb itself must have been tiring, but all I recall is a glorious sense of unity and release, and the effortless cramponing up hard snow, and the moon, graciously whispering:

' There is no effort on my brow,
I do not strive, I do not weep,
I rush with swift spheres and glow,
And when I will, I sleep/

Sleep, yes, that insidious enemy caught us unawares at each rest. It was heavenly to repose behind the pack, hiding in its neutral warmth. It is only in deprivation we appreciate the common blessings, and keeping awake through a long night, whether for tiger or in the mountains or at war, is salutary ‘zen’.

Trisul rises in a long series of swells and steeper pitches, but is nowhere difficult on this northern side. The French say: ‘il faut toujours faire le plus difficile’ but in the Himalayas, ' il faut tou- jours faire le plus facile’ and Trisul from the north must be the easiest mountain of its height anywhere. We passed Thadani's camp, learning of their successful climb the previous day, and stripped down to shirt-sleeves in the heat of rapid movement. At 2 a.m. we halted level with a 21,000-foot summit, to regard Nanda Devi topping the Devistan ridges, an ultra-violet sea of cloud absorbing the light over the inner Sanctuary. Just then, Bahadur gasped, and Nima let forth a hurried flood of ‘Om mani padme hum's, as a flaming torch half as big as the summit platform of Nanda Devi detached itself from the peak and moved silently and smoothly, like the shadow of a flying eagle across the arete towards the east.

I am not superstitious, and John Dias is profoundly cynical, except for his staunch Catholic faith, yet we were both moved beyond words. The mountains spoke to us then, of ourselves, and in those few moments was packed the most perfect peace I have ever known. The weird phenomenon, and our receptive mood, disarmed our sophistication and stripped us of the analytical faculty. ⁴ A silent electric discharge between differing masses of moist ionized air'; explained my scientist friends in New Delhi. So it was, of course, an explicable phenomenon neatly branded by science, but it was more than that, a godhead that would prove more than transient, a heightened awareness that would cling to us for life. Or, as that scientific visionary Peirre Teilhard de Chardin would say, we had taken another step nearer to ⁴ Point Omega' and the whole human race with us.

We moved forward in the old rhythm, somewhat dazed by sleep and the moving panorama that is so impressive even by day. Ice and wind and snow were forgotten now they were the beneficent cover of our chosen earth. At 2.30, while we donned jerseys, the ripple of wind and the first scrape of snow on hard snow disturbed our peace. The wind ruffled the slumbering clouds and nudged them awake. Another two hours at our rate would see us at the summit, 23,360 feet, in time for the grandest sunrise in the world over the hills of Kumaun and Garhwal, and over Tibet in the north, where even then a faint fluorescence spread like a rumour over the sky of the copper plain. So engrossed were we in the next step that it was something of a hurtful surprise to see monsoon clouds pouring and tumbling over the Sunderdhunga Col in the final breaking of the main monsoon. As we sat on our rucksacks regarding the unfolding event, the effort of the past days and the more than 5,000-foot climb of that night broke on our bodies with accumulated vengeance and we felt suddenly deflated and exhausted. The wind swooned dirge-like and the lightning spread over a wide front in silence. Wilder and nearer it came, heralded by companies of snow-flakes. A monsoon storm in all its intensity at over 21,000 feet is not to be argued with, and we turned unanimously and moved down, chased by a million hurtling trolls from Peer Gynt's chorus.

We had tried something we knew to be difficult and though we nearly made it, the failure had no poignancy. We had wanted to see another facet of the hills, when they were ⁴ no longer angry and this we had done. We almost ran down, nothing with wry amusement that the storm came over the hills to abate progressively. The light grew in the east and the west, turning all the hungry-seeming clouds to mackerel patterns and alto-cirrus, which first retreated to a corner of the sky, and then spread ambitiously outwards from a focus in Kumaun, covering a dark sea where the mountains toppled unseen.

A muted stage-whisper of mystery escorted us down the slopes. I felt then, as often in the hills, that I wanted the world to stop, time not to flow, the sun not to rise and the moon sinking behind Dunagiri not to sink, but the chorus of dawn killed it with applause that made the modest cirrus glow and radiate outwards to the magenta shades of the Tibetan sky, where shafts of light played a bizarre opera. Where Dunagiri quietly bowed under the harsh light of the sun, and Nanda Devi rose stark strung out as on a clothes-line of cloud were the ultimate mountains of the world; Hanuman, Changabang, Kalanka, Hadeol, Trisuli, unnamed peaks and the suspicion of further giants; Kamet merging into the Rataban group, into Chaukhamba, mountains everywhere,

^‘Mountains toppling evermore,
into seas without a shore'

The light transformed the mountains into an orange crystal in which we saw everything: the future, the past, our lives and their short duration; we were four in a universe of lasting lifelessness of which we would one day be part. This, my old plaint against life, no longer seemed a bitter prospect, and we rattled down to collapse into sleeping-bags by 10 a.m. ⁶ to earn the rest that is given to all whom the mountains know'. As Thadani returned, and the Sherpas set about collapsing the tents about us, I listened quietly to the murmur of the heart, exhausted, yet proud in a way at having brought the hills so close, proud, too, at having been happy, at having been blessed with another bead for the necklace made up of such memories which mountaineers often wear to ^c tell' like a rosary when age withers the limbs and hardens the lungs. Physical exhaustion in happy effort induces a euphoria in which we descended to camp in flowers, happy to live, to be, and then speak no more. We seemed to have become part of the picture, the highest and lowest common factors of the scene, for one does not ask a musk-deer why he roves the snows, or why Primula involucrata grows in one particular ravine near Bethartoli and not in others.

For the rest, the return from Nanda Devi is always sad but the clouds lend a softness by their discretion and hide the mountains, giving us the Grace of forgetting that we might never go there again. ^‘"Tis a consummation devoutly to be wishedto be able to say before taking that last step:

and are these not, with a thousand similar fragments of mountain-days, every bit as much a part of the summit of Nanda Devi and all the other mountains, as the summit itself which we did not reach ?

The expedition was sponsored by The Statesman, Mount Everest Foundation, London, and Indian Mountaineering Foundation. Its total cost was Rs.20,000 for a period of ten weeks ex-Dehra Dun.—Editor.

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