LIFE IN THE FREEZER

Chilling Moments

STEVE BERRY

WE COULD NOT understand what had happened - the powerful drug of sleep had all but obliterated some vague sounds in the dead of night and now our two Zanskari porters and the horses had gone. The strange thing was they had left their lame excuse for a tent, a laughable few patches of canvas, and their food behind. Why had they gone, and were they coming back? Rob and I lay in the sun. Secretly I was glad of the rest. We had been walking for three weeks on our crossing of the greater Himalaya, passing through the strange kingdom of Zanskar, on our way to climb Stok Kangri (6153 m) and I for one was damn tired. Still it was odd, but the answer was not one of the possibilities we had toyed with. Tashi and Rinzing rode into camp around midday with the story that the horses had been spooked by a bear in the middle of the night and had galloped off back to their home village. The boys had given chase leaving camp at about 2.00 a.m., and had not caught up with them until arriving at their parents house - a day's march for Rob and I! Sure enough only a few yards above our dome tent were the clear and fresh imprints of a bear, and its droppings.

The point is it was this day that the idea of walking up the frozen Zanskar river came to me. With not enough time to reach the next half we spent a lazy day enjoying the utter peace and quiet of our mountain eerie. I talked to Tashi about his life, and he recounted the tale of how when the winter snows close the 4900 m passes leading into Zanskar the only way out is down the frozen river gorge, and that he had done it himself as a postman carrying letters from the capital of Ladakh, Leh, to Paduni, the main township in Zanskar. The gorge is impassable in summer as the river turns into a raging torrent. This sounded wild, hairy, straight out of 'Tintin in Tibet", and childish excitement welled up at the very thought of setting my teeth to the wind, braving blizzards, sleeping in caves, and sliding around on a lot of ice. That was it, I would definitely do it, may be not this year but soon.

Cover photos

That was in 1987, after leading the unsuccessful expedition to Gangkar Punsuni, the highest mountain in Bhutan. Rob and I climbed Stok Kangri, and I carried on back to Bhutan to settle the small matter of a bill for $25,000 for the helicopter evacuation of the team from base camp, again after winter snows closed the passes behind us. That's another story. Life, work and the need to make a living then got in the way and it was not until 1990 that my chance came again.

Funny but I couldn't interest any of my climbing friends in coming with me. Years of inventing excuses not to go climbing just because it was raining made it easy for them to deftly sidestep my most persuasive arguments. True I had, as usual, left it till the last moment. So I went on my own, and arriving in January in Leh I met a British couple who were as keen as I was, and we set out with seven Zanskari porters and my old and dear friend Dorji the cook, to try our luck on the Tchadur, the local name for the frozen river, meaning blanket.

It had not been a particularly cold winter and rumour had it that the river was not well frozen. They were right! There were sections that were completely iced up, but there were many places that were either very thin ice or no ice at all. Still we resolved to try our best. We took jeeps along the floor of the Indus valley, normally an arid region lying in the rain shadow of the Himalaya but now stunningly beautiful in its thin coating of winter snow, to the confluence with the Zanskar river. A spur road led a little way further on until a landslide blocked the way. It snowed slightly as we dropped down onto the ice for the first time. I had come equipped with walking crampons but there was no need - the ice had a crust formed by snow falling, melting, and re- freezing repeatedly and was usually easy to walk on. Our Zanskari friends wore Indian army Wellington boots which they swore by or at, I was never quite sure which.

The ice was thick on the edges of the river but in the centre it was 'mushy" or had just not formed, leaving a fast flowing stream of black water. One slip into this was sure death. One would be swept away and under the ice further down. In any case the temperature would kill you in minutes. After a time you got used to being on the ice, even blase about it, and there were places where the thick rim at the edge narrowed down and became a pavement no more than two feet wide. At these places the porters went first. What is it? - we travel through the valley of death fearing no evil? Sure, death is round the comer for all of us but we don't think about it, well not much. But day after day death flowed along just beside us, you could see it, there it was a few feet away, it made you careful with your feet.

At the end of the first day we came to the small village of Chilling, appropriately named, and put up our tent. This collection of flat topped, mud brick houses is unusual for one thing - it is one of the main centres for brass and ironware in Ladakh. We were reasonably confident of finding a fire to warm ourselves by.

Ladakh, and Zanskar in particular, has one of the coldest winters on earth. The village of Dras has apparently recorded nighttime temperatures of - 67 degrees centigrade and regularly the thermometer shows - 40 degree centigrade in Leh. Village people stay indoors a lot. Their animals live on the ground floor, the family on the first floor, and the roof is stacked up with firewood, yak dung and hay. Inside, pot bellied stoves and open hearths belch acrid smoke into the rooms and little wonder that ceilings are black with soot and Ladakhis suffer continual chest complaints. One night we sat drinking chang, an addictive form of potent barley beer, in a Zanskari house when it started to rain black drops from the ceiling. The minimal heat from the stove combined with steam from cooking was sufficient to thaw the frozen soot. The trick was not to get it into the chang.

After a night in Chilling we left all habitation behind and headed into the depths of the gorge itself. It is about ninety miles from the Indus river to Padum, starting at an altitude of 3200 m and finishing at 3580 m. Throughout its length the gorge squeezes between a crowd of mountains and at its heart the pressing throng constricts the wriggling river to a gap only 3 m wide. Always the journey is spectacular - cliffs rise thousands of feet into the rarified air, pointed peaks upwards of 5500 m stand guard at crucial junctions where other frozen streams seep in from unvisited valleys, frozen waterfalls hang waiting for the spring thaw, and occasional hot springs leak from subterranean passages. In fact it is proven that this very part of the Himalaya was the point of impact between the ancient continent of Gondwanaland and the tectonic plate of the Indian sub-continent. You can actually see the rock strata of one continent lying on top of the other. Geologically speaking this necklace of mountains is recent addition to the earth's charm box - a mere 20 - 40 million yeas old. Close by in neighbouring Spiti pre-historic ammonites show the form of creatures that lived in the Tethyan ocean all that time ago.

At first the going was easy, we made good time past the abandoned attempts by the Ladakhis to forge a permanent mule track up the gorge. It seemed clear to us that this was a waste of time and money, and years later engineers involved with the project admitted to me that it was a political expediency. The problem is that the only road of any description into Zanskar, open for only three or four months of the year, conies over the Pensi la from the Muslim controlled area of Kargil. The Tibetan Buddhist people of Zanskar would much rather have direct links with their close cousins in Ladakh - hence the futile attempt. The path, such as it ever was, is now mostly collapsed or covered in landslip.

Just beyond the junction with the Markha valley, snow eddying about us, gray clouds lowering overhead, we started to understand the problems of trying the Tchadur in a less than desperately cold winter. At a corner in the river the whole of the ice on our bank had been bitten away by the torrent. For the first of many times we were forced to climb up the mountainside, traverse a hundred feet or so above the water and descend to consolidated ice on the other side. Sometimes this was easy, sometimes it involved rock climbing across wet or snow coated slabs, precarious traverses along narrow ledges, and on two occasions we could only regain the ice by abseiling. Of course our Zanskari friends had no idea about abseiling and would happily have stood on a narrow ledge lowering their friends down on the rope, hand over hand, with no belay. Some of them, however, I am sure could have climbed HVS in their Indian army Wellington boots.

The first night's stop was a small cave next to the river. There was not enough room for us all to sleep in the cave and so we pitched our tent on the ice. It was cold, - 20 degrees, but not diabolically cold, and what you actually want is for it to be diabolically cold. The bigger the freeze, the safer the ice, but the colder it is the more difficult it is to tolerate - you can't win. The locals have an excellent story about a king and his servant who got trapped in a cave by the river ice melting away from the mouth of the cave. After seven days all the food had been eaten and the king said to his servant, 'I shall have to eat you next'. The servant prayed and a thin ice corridor formed overnight. The servant got across, but the ice broke for the king and he was drowned.

We carried on like this for two more days and then our luck ran out. We came to yet another bend in the river where the ice had been taken out but this time the near vertical cliffs on either side were impassable. We tried to climb up and around but the risks were too great - we turned back. Some of the porters knew a way of reaching a village called Lingshot, a few thousand feet above us and decided to go there and wait for a freeze, we could not afford the time. At this point the weather changed. Whereas it had been snowing on and off and our whole world had been whites, grays and the light browns of the cliffs. Now the sun came out and it was like walking forwards into a perfect chocolate box picture. The river, I remember, varied from jade green, turquoise, dark sapphire blue, aquamarine to deep cobalt blue. Only problem was though that the ice was melting, and places where we had walked only yesterday had now disappeared. We found ourselves forced more and more to climb above the river. Nearing the end of one of these traverses when only thirty feet above the, by now, thin strip of ice next to the water's edge, I gingerly stepped onto a snow covered slab and instantly my feet went from underneath me. I found myself sliding down the slabs at high speed towards the ice. I though 'OK prepare yourself, broken legs minimum", but I was lucky, I hit the ice in a heap with only a sore arse from bumping down the slabs for my mistake. We lowered the loads by rope down this section, along with most of the porters. Some managed the climb down without slipping.

Some of the time I liked walking on my own ahead of the group and on the day after setting back, early in the morning, I came across two sets of fresh snow leopard tracks. I had been following the sets of a solitary fox or wolf all morning but this was really exciting. Twenty minutes later, under a cliff next to the river I found the still warm body of a dead blue sheep. The snow leopards must have been chasing a small herd above the cliffs and this youngster must have fallen. I could feel the leopard's eyes watching me as I waited for the porters to arrive. I was all for leaving it for the notoriously shy cats but the men had other ideas. They proceeded to skin and cut up the animal. The meat was distributed, the best bits going to the elders. Someone had the skin and for some reason I'm not sure of, they burnt the head in a fire. They really knew what they were doing, quick and efficient, and knowing which pieces to keep and what not. Tough luck on the snow leopards!

Tough luck on us too, we had failed to make it all the way through to Zanskar but we thought we must have been quite close. There was no decent map and so we were not sure where we had got to, and it was difficult to communicate with our Zanskari friends on this point.

One of the main objects of trying to get through to Padum was to meet up again with Phuntshok Dawa, Gyalpo of Padum. The meaning of Gyalpo is 'precious ruler", but Phuntshok no longer has any power as his ancestors did. He lives the life of an ordinary man and is a school teacher. Rob and I had met him in "87 because one Dr. Henry Osmaston had given me a letter to deliver to him. Henry is the quintessential absentminded English professor, author, and explorer. I had first met him in 1981 in Zanskar when he was travelling on top of a lorry with some students from Bristol University to study yaks, but that is Henry - always doing something weird.

Phuntshok had been extremely friendly to Rob and I, and in fact had contracted Tashi, Rinzing and their truant horses for us. He told us all sorts of amazing stories about the history and way of life of Zanskar. Of how the head lama in Leh had hundreds of years ago given his family land and the duty to collect taxes, of how in the early eighteen hundreds the Kashmiris had invaded and destroyed their small palace on the hill above Padum, and of how after Indian independence any vestiges of power had been removed. I learnt for the first time from him that although four kings have ruled in succession in the kingdom of Bhutan, one thousand miles away on the eastern end of the Himalayan chain, the old reincarnate rulers, the Shabdrungs, still exist and that the present one lives in exile in Ladakh. In the early sixteen hundreds the first Shabdrung had been given lands by the king of Ladakh to build Drukpa monasteries, and it was to here that the recent Shabdrungs had been smuggled. The earlier kings of Bhutan had apparently sent agents to assassinate him but that the Shabdrung had used his powers of levitation when thrown off a cliff to save himself, and had turned poison into sweetness on a second attempt on his life. Phuntshok had a photograph of today's reincarnation and I was shocked at just how similar he looked to the original Shabdrung, whose painting is found in all Drukpa monasteries. He has an identical long pointed black beard, itself highly unusual in Bhutan.

The next opportunity to have a go at the frozen river did not materialise until this February, when I acted as guide for two hardy individuals. This time I was carrying two books, plus another letter from Henry. We had heard rumours that this winter had been the coldest in living memory in Ladakh, and sure enough from the time that we landed in Leh until our return to Delhi we were freezing! Also there were stories of heavy snowfall. I was slightly worried about the possibility of avalanche in the gorge but this, at least, turned out not to be a problem. We saw three or four powder avalanches on the mountainsides high above us but felt under no threat ourselves. I have heard though that a previous year were avalanches that reached the river and broke the ice.

Every year, whether it has been a hard winter or not, the ice forms long enough for Zanskaris to carry out some trading with Leh, the capital. Traditionally this has always been the yak butter produced in the summer in their high mountain kingdom, a proportion of which is taken down the gorge and exchanged for luxury items not available in Zanskar. This trade has been going on for centuries. Some of our porters had done at least thirty trips on the Tchadur, and some of them might to two journeys in a winter. I understand the market for yak butter is waning as cheaper alternatives are brought into Ladakh by lorry from India in the summer, however, trading is a way of life for these people and I'm sure they'll find other reasons for undertaking the journey. It is one of those things that as a Zanskari you're not a man until you've braved the Tchadur.

The first European to complete the trip down the gorge was James Crowden in 1977 and as far as I could tell we had been the second British party there in 1990, but by now the word had got around a bit and this winter there were no less than fifteen westerners on the ice, maybe more. When James Crowden was there the Zanskaris had not discovered Wellingtons and wore the traditional turned-up toe, knee length boot made from leather, felt and home spun yak hair. They carried their yak butter in sheep bladders or goatskins, and he estimated that three hundred Zanskaris make the journey each year. In those days, and probably to a lesser extent today as well, the men do not set off without first consulting an astrologer. An auspicious time is chosen for departure and a monk is called in to conduct a prayer ceremony or puja.

We set off on Wednesday 1 February 1995. The sky was clear blue and the temperature a touch below zero, though it had been freezing harder at night. We bounced along in the jeeps, past the confluence again, up the spur until a frozen stream flowing over the road had made an impassable bollard of ice. This time I felt full of confidence; the river was well and truly frozen. We had for company fourteen porters, but the best surprise was that here was my old friend Tashi who gave me the mad idea in the first place. Among the many burnt brown faces were also Lobsang and Thukjay, part of the 1990 crew; it was going to be some party. Promises were made of top quality chang in unlimited quantities once we reached their home village, Pidmu. Dorji the cook was there too. An interesting man, married to an oracle and a very devote Buddhist; his belief in compassion even extended once to wiping my nose when I had a stinking cold.

We made rapid progress but I was amazed to find that this year large stretches of the ice were silky smooth. Skates would have been possible but one would forever be taking them on and off. It was a dilemma - if you wore boots you inevitably slipped over from time to time, but if you wore crampons, again you would have to take them on and off whenever it became necessary to traverse above the river. There were two full days where the ice was so well formed that I wore crampons all day. The ice varied dramatically; in some places you could see it had formed when the river had been higher and as the water level had dropped so then the ice had collapsed and refrozen so that the surface became a jumble of contorted plates. Other places it was like flexy plastic where it was not really well frozen. The porters went ahead sounding the surface with their large staves and occasionally took off their loads and slid them in front of them to spread the load. There are no true rapids in the gorge but from time to time there are relatively fast bits of water and here there was no ice and we took to the rocks or climbed high above the river. Most of the time we crunched along on a corrugated surface or played sliding games on the smooth bits. Now and then the ice was clear and you could see through layers of bottle green to the boulder strewn river bed deep below.

Although conditions were as good as you could expect we still had our crises. Nawang Phuntsog one day went through the ice up to his waist in water and only the load on his back and his staff stopped him going under. We hauled him out and I lent him some spare trousers. He simply wrung out his socks and put them back on again. I have never met men as though as these Zanskaris - at the end of a day they sometimes washed their feet in the river, standing barefoot on the ice in a biting wind. At the end of the journey they even stripped right off for a good wash and cleaned their hair in the freezing water so they would look smart when they went into town. On another occasion a young porter called Sonam Mutup caught me up and told me with an impish grin that he had gone through the ice. He pointed to his trousers which had frozen solid and were like bits of cardboard on his legs, he just laughed and carried on. The men actually wear one or two gonchas, a wrap-around type of robe, dyed mauve, secured by a cloth belt and reaching below the knee. Under that they wore trousers.

Their strength was amazing. They each were carrying loads of around thirty kilos and kept up a constant pace all day long, and some of our days were nine or ten hours. At the end of the day when we weedy westerners were just about hanging in there the lads would be singing songs or chattering away nine to the dozen. Once we reached the cave in the evening their first job would be to go out and hunt for firewood. This involved searching the river banks for flotsam; wood washed down the river in the summer from higher ground. Then the cooking and drying process would begin and that would go on all evening. Mainly this consisted of endless bowls of salt/butter tea and tsampa, the later being finely ground barley. Socks and boots had to be dried every night; the socks made an unforgettable and quite revolting smell.

Once the sun retired from the gorge the big chill attacked in earnest. We shank into the inner recesses of the smoke blackened caves and huddled round the three or four fires, simultaneously trying to capture the heat and avoid the eye stinging, cough- causing wood smoke. You had also to be permanently watchful for flying sparks if you wanted to try and keep holes away from appearing in that nice new gortex jacket. Gonchas do not suffer this problem, but man made fibers melt in an instant. The worst part of the day, apart from emerging into the real world in the mornings, was getting from the fires into the two Rab sleeping bags, one inside the other. This meant going outside to the tent where it truly was diabolically cold, and where piss froze the instant it hit the ground. Kind hearted Dorji had brought with him water bottles for us lesser beings, and we quickly knew no shame in using them.

In the mornings we downed porridge, eggs and coffee begging the sun to get a move on and watching with interest what the porters would hide each time. They squirrel away all sorts of things at the caves, so that whatever it is will be there for use on the return journey. Food, kerosene and equipment will be buried, quite deeply, so that wild animals can't get at it. Next a lottery takes place for the loads. The loads are the same each day and each one has a number. The numbers are put in a hat and handed round amidst great hilarity - 'What! Have I got the kerosene again? Its been rigged', at least that's what I imagine was being said. Zanskaris have a quite unique way of handling the loads; they have evolved simple wooden frames in two parts. In between the two sits the load which is then tied securely in, and the wooden frame roped to the man's back.

On the fourth day we passed the place where we had been turned back last time, but we were to discover that we were still nowhere near the end of the gorge. In fact we were only now arriving at some of the most spectacular sections. Monolithic cliffs of contorted strata rising sheer out of river, so close to each other that our crashing footsteps produced almost simultaneous echoes. Frozen waterfalls that cried out to be climbed, twisting bends in the river that created frightening whirlpools, eagles mirroring the spinning motions hanging by their feathers to invisible thermals. For myself I can only say I felt humble and awestruck at the same time. I looked forward to each bend in the river, wondering what would come into view next.

Several small groups of blue sheep or ibex were spotted high up on the mountainsides. We learnt to spot them by looking first for their criss - cross tracks on the snow slopes. It is very gratifying to know that these beautiful animals have not been hunted to extinction and that the Indian government has put a ban on all hunting in the region. This was undoubtedly the reason that our porters were initially reluctant to talk about the Yeti, or Dredmo as they call it. However, one evening they told us two stories; the first I believe completely as it concerned their own village and many of them present had seen the creature themselves, but the second has probably become exaggerated in the retelling. I believe them also because having spent long periods of time in their company I have found them to be thoroughly trustworthy and honest. In fact I think Zanskaris are among the best people of any colour and creed I have ever met.

Ten years ago in the middle of the night one of these creatures came into their village and attacked some animals in an enclosure.

The men of the village banded together and chased it out, using sticks and stones. They described it as larger than a man, covered in long brown hair, with long nail - like claws and a face a bit like a man. The second story concerned a village several days march from them. During June/July last year a Dredmo had been killing their domestic animals and so some of the village men followed and shot the creature. Apparently when the creature was shot it could not understand where the attack was coming from and so it scrabbled at the earth to make a hole in which to hide. When the creature died the village men left the body where it was.

Now it has to be said that our friends did not speak much English and it was difficult to get absolutely clear answers to our questions. Couple this to an awareness that they might get their friends into trouble for hunting such an abominably valuable specimen and I conclude that the stories above are almost certainly inaccurate in some degree or other. However, I am convinced that there is something here to be explained. The other thing I found most fascinating is that these Zanskaris said that one of the traits of the animal is that it copies sounds. In Bhutan where there are numerous legends about the Yeti, again a recurrent theme is this belief that the Yeti is very good at copying sounds. I am sure that if we can't track down the Dartmoor pumas then in the remoteness of the high Himalaya there is infinite potential for the Yeti to avoid contact with us.

On the sixth day we began to leave the gorge proper. The rock walls fell back and we found ourselves in a broader based valley, backed by elegant peaks. Bizarre clouds striped the sky and the snow lay several feet deep. We followed a path on the edge of the partly iced river. The bare water steamed slightly and green algae grew on the exposed boulders, evidence of more hot springs. Our porters were pushing ahead now, excited to see their families again after many weeks absence. However, we had a problem. Bill Bailey, the oldest member of our party at 66 years, complained of a painful thigh joint and his progress slowed to a crawl. A fit man for his years Bill had climbed Stok Kangri himself only two years ago but now was suffering. I wondered what to do.

The following day Bill took me to one side and asked if I could arrange a helicopter. We had heard that they were available and rumours as to their cost ranged from 900 to 32,000 rupees per hour. I hoped that via my contacts in Padum it might be arranged. Besides Phuntshok, I also had an introduction to the other king of Zanskar, Mr. Nima as he was referred to. He had a small palace in a village called Zangla, but we knew that he was in the main Padum area on a visit to the annual festival at the monastery of Karsha. He had a government post, and people loosely called him the development officer. We decided therefore to head for Karsha instead of Padum with the twin ideas of hopefully catching the tail end of the festival and of meeting Mr. Nima.

As we approached Karsha the sky became completely overcast, nature holding her breath, trying to decide whether to lash us with a storm or bring back the sun to melt the icicles from our beards. The sight in silhouette of the large rambling monastery ranks among some of my strongest visual images. To begin with it is built stepped up a mountainside that no self respecting property developer would ever contemplate. Its size and the impossibility of its position emphasise its mystical dominance of the wide Zanskar valley below, and it seemed forever to be no nearer as we walked through the snow towards it.

It was an exhausting, painful trial for Bill and in the morning we set the not inconsiderable number of bureaucratic wheels in motion. This started with a meeting with the Tourist Officer. Tundup Namgyal luckily for us lives in Karsha and his official duties are usually restricted to the summer months when adventurous souls trek over the high passes from India. As we sat drinking butter/salt tea the gyalpo of Zangla arrived. A radio message had been passed to him that we were venturing the Tchadur and he had kindly come in search to make us welcome. I've noticed when meeting other powerful people that often they have larger heads than the rest of us, Mr. Nima was no exception. He was a good looking man in his late fifties I would say, and his physical and metaphorical presence filled the room. He could not have been more friendly and promised to help all he could. We also had another conversation about the Shabdrung and Namgyal gave me the ironical piece of information that he is now running a trekking company based in Manali, an Indian town south of the main chain of mountains.

Forms, letters, and statements had to be made, and when we later returned to the village house where we were staying a messenger was sent after us to say that we had forgotten to give the occupation of Bill's great grandfather and did we know whether he was a Catholic or Presbyterian. I exaggerate only for effect. The fact is, forms or no forms, the convoluted system works and the helicopter came and lifted Bill out just a few days later. Unfortunately for the rest of us we could only afford one day's rest in Karsha if we were going to have enough time to catch our flight back to Delhi. For us the return trip down the ice beckoned in worsening weather. Again there was no time to see my old friend Phuntshok Dawa and all I could do was pass the two books to him via Bill, who had to walk the last two and a half hours across the valley to Padum to catch the helicopter.

By sheer good fortune only six inches of snow had fallen by the time we reached the entrance to the gorge. The weather now felt 'warm'. This was because the cloud cover meant there was no deep freeze at nights, and as a result the water level began to rise. Now we were forced to wade many sections up to our knees where the melt water had risen over the top of the ice. We tried tying spare boot laces tightly to keep cold water out.

The Zanskaris knew that there was one place that was make or break. It was a canyon with vertical rock walls both sides. If the ice had been swept away here or the water was too deep over the ice we would have to turn back. It indeed proved to be the crux. Only one or two feet of mushy ice remained glued to the rock on one side of the river. Unasked the lightest man went forward with his stave. He disappeared out of sight and after an age, faint shouting could be heard; we followed and I believe it was only our faith that kept the ice fringe in place.

Once through we made our rapid escape through the heart of the gorge. A place where I felt like a tiny speck at the bottom of some amazingly ancient chasm, where time had stood still for millions of years, where clouds wreathed the upper parts of the cliffs and where the sun could dimly be seen through high mist like a 100 Watt bulb. I would love to go back but maybe that would be tempting fate too far.

SUMMARY

Treks in the Zanskar in winters of 1990 and 1995.

 

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