A Climb, a Cyclone, the Lockdown and a Mountain Thereafter

Anindya Mukherjee

It is apparent that Peter Greenaway’s outstanding 1989 film has an influence on the title of this essay of mine. But unlike the movie, this article is neither a weird tale of vengeance and reprisal, nor is it a lavish display of blood and gore, violence and compassion. It is, in all literal meanings, a story of struggle, survival and personal growth that followed ‘a climb’ after a series of ‘unexpected’ events unleashed on humanity on both a global and regional scale. In this essay I have tried to write about how a post-climb euphoria vanished with the suddenness of the Lockdown. While the Lockdown ruined me financially, volunteering in cyclone devastated villages in the southern tips of West Bengal seasoned me, matured me further and perhaps made me a better person who was then ready to go back to the mountains.

A Climb

On January 30, 2020, a university student from Wuhan returned to the state of Kerala and tested positive for COVID-19. This was the first instance of the disease to be reported in India. I arrived in Nairobi two days later, on February 2, 2020. Just the fact that I was able to return to Africa made me happy. My first trip to Africa was in 2005 to hike Mount Kilimanjaro. Back then, as a mountaineer, climbing Kilimanjaro seemed to me to be the obvious bridge between the Himalaya and Africa. Anyway, right after the climb, I was invited by a complete stranger to visit his newly built chapel in a remote village outside Arusha. “If you want to see the real Africa, come to my village,” he said, and I had followed him like a hypnotized human being. My love affair with Africa began that day, and I’ve been returning there ever since.

In 2012, I cycled from Nanyuki, Kenya to Walvis Bay, Namibia, covering 5000 km across five countries. This trip altered my outlook on life, and my love and understanding of Africa grew stronger. Since then, to me the true Africa has been its people. However, what is relevant here is that I first saw Mt. Kenya on this very bikepacking trip. In 2016, Martin Boner (Ireland), Chris Temboh Muriuki (Kenya) and I (India), tried to climb the North face of Batian (the highest of the Mt. Kenya group of peaks) by its standard route. Together we almost succeeded in our first alpine-big wall-rock climbing effort.

The very next year, 2017, I cycled across the Sahara by its Atlantic route to discover that the desert and the countries plotted on it, belonged to a very different Africa than what this continent as an unit, is generally and almost stereotypically seen as. I was however waiting for another opportunity to get back to Mt Kenya. In 2019, Dr. Jeremy Windsor, an accomplished climber, high altitude physiology expert and good friend, invited me to join his team to Mt. Kenya. While my heart was elated at the possibility, I had to drop out of the team at the last moment as I could not possibly pay for the travel and expedition logistics at that time.

My luck changed in early 2020, and I was finally able to get back to Mt. Kenya. My fascination for this mountain and its big walls originated from reading Eric Shipton and H.W. Tilman’s adventures in Africa. Recalling the first ever traverse of Nelion and Batian, Eric Shipton wrote in the Alpine Journal, “Taking pack-ponies and a few natives, H. W. Tilman and I left Nanyuki towards the end of July 1930. The journey to our top camp was uneventful save for a meeting with rhino and elephant… Our route was also up the S.E. face of Nelion but we traversed the latter and crossed over to Batian.” In February 2020, because Martin was unable to join us, instead of a second attempt on Batian’s north face, Chris and I decided to retrace the classic Shipton-Tilman route. At the very last moment of the trip, Chris invited his friend John Gule to join us.

Chris, John, and I arrived at the foot of Mt. Nelion’s southeast face at the crack of dawn on 8 February, 2020, after an hour of hiking on scree and moraines. It was still dark when we set out from the Austrian Hut, and all along our march, the soon-to-be-dead Lewis glacier remained deafeningly silent. We spent nearly nine exhilarating hours on the sun kissed ‘nepheline’ of the southeast face, covering 18 pitches to reach Nelion’s summit. We were all happy and healthy when we reached the top. The weather seemed favourable, giving us hope that we would be able to complete the traverse to Batian the following day. But as we crammed ourselves into the Howell Hut Bivi box, the wind turned into a jet stream that showed no signs of abating until the next morning. Partially dehydrated and wind beaten, we decided to abandon the traverse through ‘the gate of mists’ and return to safety. After 15 careful abseils on the windswept face and a few more hours of hiking, the three of us arrived at the Shipton’s camp just before sunset.

Next morning, we walked all the way up to the Sirimon gate and then drove to Nanyuki. On 11 February, I borrowed Chris’ bicycle and began pedalling back to Nairobi. It was the ideal way to cap off a rewarding climb for me. I imagined great things happening throughout the rest of the year as I cycled down the Kenyan highlands, stopping at tiny towns and villages for shelter and food. After all, the year had only just begun. At that moment, all I could think of were months full of climbing and other adventures.

The Lockdown

“On the evening of 24 March 2020, the Government of India ordered a nationwide lockdown for 21 days, limiting movement of the entire 1.38 billion population of India as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 pandemic in India”.

Within the next two weeks it became apparent to one and all that the lockdown was here to stay. In the face of such restrictions, along with frequent reactive and poorly thought through government policy, human misery spread across India. A lockdown to avert a pandemic was turning into a humanitarian disaster. As it continued, it didn’t take long for me to realize that, like millions of others around the world, I had lost my job. I’ve made a living guiding mountaineering expeditions and treks across the Indian Himalaya for the past two decades. By early May 2020, the message was clear: no one would be visiting India for a climbing or hiking vacation anytime soon.

A friend once informed me that ‘algorithms’ make business models achieve their respective telos. He continued by claiming that if the algorithm ‘thing’ could be thoroughly analyzed, the major issues facing human civilization could be resolved. Well, in early May, 2020, perhaps as a result of such an algorithm, the foreign climbing and adventure channels that I had previously 'liked' or followed on social media made it a point to show me what the climbers in the West were doing each day during the lockdown. As could be seen, the situation failed miserably to stifle their sense of adventure. One could observe people chimneying up their apartment building’s walls, climbing their kitchen table and chairs, and ascending the stairs more than enough times to climb Mount Everest! And each time a similar story about the unstoppable Western adventurer appeared, the joyous fountain of social media netizens erupted into the Internet sky. Consider this: while I was wondering what to eat in June, someone across the phone screen was regularly able to share about their zealous dedication to their respective hobbies.

The entire circus then seemed to me to be a page from Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense. I reasoned that working out what to post on the internet would only increase my hunger. Then where would I get food for my now-hungrier family? How would I continue to pay for my children’s education? Would I be forced to borrow money at the end? Even if I got a loan and manage to survive the Lockdown and its aftermath, how would I repay the debt? Many such questions crowded my mind. I realized that with India’s rank in the Global Hunger Index, the death by starvation of a professional mountaineer and his family would go unnoticed even by the urban crows. However, rather than giving up hope, I devised survival strategies such as paid online lectures and self-publishing e-books. The plan appeared to be working at first. But then there was the cyclone. It was called the Super Cyclonic Storm Amphan.

A Cyclone

“Super Cyclonic Storm Amphan was a powerful and catastrophic tropical cyclone that caused widespread damage in Eastern India, specifically in West Bengal and Odisha, and in Bangladesh, in May 2020. It was the strongest tropical cyclone to strike the Ganges Delta since Sidr of the 2007 season and the first super cyclonic storm to have formed in the Bay of Bengal since the 1999 Odisha cyclone.”

On the night of 20 May, 2020, when the super cyclone Amphan battered, ravaged and tattered the south of Bengal, not everyone was hiding for their lives in the tiny village of Sandelerbil. As soon as the storm ceased—and once they were sure that their family and friends had survived—Prabir, Paltan, Kunal, Aniruddha, Biplab and few other friends went out of their homes in order to assess the damage in their neighbourhood. What they saw did not quite flabbergast them, for all of them had memories of the scars left by Cyclones Aila (2009), Fani and Bulbul (both in 2019). Perhaps the series of devastating storms (and that too within the span of a decade), had already seasoned them to atrocity; so that when they marched out with flashlights in their hands, they were a resilient band of brothers.

Growing up together has had its universal blessings for them. They had seen better days together. Friendship had made the simple joys of life manifold many a times in their lives before. That night, while witnessing the devastation around, the universal magic potion of friendship was active once again, and their loss and grief was divided. Then, something extraordinary happened: instead of submitting to the ambient dismay and fatalism, they decided to rise to the occasion in unison. One of them, Paltan Mandal, still had some juice left in his phone. He took it upon himself to document every villager’s plight and kept sending them to Sri Pulak Roy Chowdhury, the Headmaster of his village school--Kanaknagar Shrishtidhar Institution. From the very next day (May 21), they found a leader with a vision in Pulakbabu.

Around this time, I was introduced to Pulakbabu by Professor Sipra Mukherjee of the West Bengal State University. I got involved with the volunteer work almost immediately. What started as a spontaneous response to a natural calamity, within a week took shape of a systematic relief and restoration work. In our very first meeting, we realised that it was solely due to the vision, passion and leadership of Pulakbabu, that many of his ex-students, colleagues and villagers had come forward in a united mission to reach out to the cylone hit people of the region living in extreme despair. I also built a team of volunteers out of the community of mountaineers and trekkers of West Bengal. As envisioned already, we announced our allegiance and solidarity with Pulakbabu’s efforts and felt privileged to be a part of his army.

We strictly followed a system of field survey that comprised collection and analysis of data and identification of location-wise need. As a result, we could prepare a village to village list of the actual needy and their immediate requirements. Following this approach, by June 14, 2020, our team had been able to reach out to 5,300 people in distress and had catered them with not only essential humanitarian aids like, food, materials for basic survival, emergency medicine, but also addressed vital issues of local students and pregnant mothers, and conducted plastic cleaning and reforestation drives. Rebecca Solnit in her book ‘A Paradise Built in Hell’ wrote, “Disaster shocks us out of slumber, but only skillful effort keeps us awake.” Today I know how true Solnit’s words are.

A Mountain Thereafter

October 2020. We had worked in relief and restoration work in Hingalganj for almost eight months straight. We could see that people were finally coming back to their normal lives-every house was repaired, no one was hungry anymore. We were now setting sustainable goals for the people of Hingalganj. The days of emergency were behind us. It was a relief! Soon with the lockdown being eased and inter-state travel slowly opening up, it was time for me to head back to the mountains at the first opportunity. I quickly built a team of four members (Ashish Chanda, Aniket Mitra, Rivu Das and myself) out of the volunteers of Hingalganj and started preparing. “The only good reason to climb is to improve yourself”, said Yvon Chouinard. “Better we raise our skill than lower the climb”, said Royal Robbins. Bearing these simple yet profound messages in mind, a few of us decided to test ourselves with an alpine style, self supported climb on an Himalayan mountain in the middle of winter.

On 17 December, Aniket, Rivu and I started climbing the spur that leads one to the traditional camp 1 site of Baljuri. Ashish was forced to stay back as he had developed an acute tendon injury on the previous day. By now the spur was a mixture of frozen grass, mud and boulders under a thick and deceptive (and sometimes treacherous) blanket of soft new snow. The trio reached the traditional camp 1 area after six hours of climb and spent the night there. The camp 1 site (4160 m) itself was comparatively free of snow as it faces east and gets a lot of early morning sun.

On 18 December, we started pushing higher. Very soon we found ourselves in knee-deep to waist deep snow on a gradient that ranged between 35 to 45 degrees. The going became increasingly slow as a result and finally after five hours of trail breaking, step making, plodding, pushing and almost frustrating route finding through unconsolidated powder filled gully systems could climb only 500 m. In the hope that early morning hours would offer better snow conditions we decided to call it a day and dug a ledge on the north eastern face of point 4800 m located approximately 800 m south east of the Baljuri col and made a bivi there.

On 19 December, as we started climbing further up. To our surprise we found no change or improvement in snow conditions as hoped due to overnight freezing. We were getting very close (100 m) to reaching a comparatively easier angled névé of the Buria glacier and it was then we encountered slab formations big enough to sweep us clear off the face. We decided to turn back. No, we could not get to the summit of Baljuri, but our efforts were pure in the truest sense. But above all, after what we have been through, just to be able to return to the mountains was fulfilling enough.

Postscript

One thing abundantly clear during my time spent volunteering in the cyclone-devastated villages of Hingalganj was that is the power of the economically underprivileged was obviously less than the power of the economically rich in the given circumstances, but there was some power nevertheless. This learning was indeed empowering and reassuring for me.

Looking back, it seems surviving the Lockdown and devoting myself to volunteer work after a cyclone was the real adventure. The Lockdown has indeed made me jobless and as a result my meagre savings are now all gone. But my situation is in no way comparable to the loss suffered by the villagers due to the cyclone. During my field work, what I saw in the villages of Hingalganj is perhaps the true meaning of the human mind—moving on with life and not giving up hope. I saw people smiling even though their houses had just been washed away by a storm and in spite of being hungry for days they seemed to be happy that their lives had been spared. The only thing shining across those faces was the celebration of life.

Therefore, the Lockdown and a cyclone have indeed seasoned me, made me stronger and have reinforced my about this wide world that we share. The imaginations of adventurers, once executed, has a certain efficacy in causing realization, that little else in life can offer. The undaunted refusal to remain stagnant isn’t merely a prerequisite to knowledge, but also a channel of obtaining it. The way an eager mind assimilates wisdom is augmented when the beholder seeks to explore; for in his heart he has seen diversity, found bliss in uncertainty, and learnt to appreciate the wide, unearthly contrasts of life across a spectrum of lands and cultures. He is sensitive and academic, and his opinions bear the force of a conglomeration of a myriad of experiences. His perspective, amidst the wealth of our race’s cumulative knowledge, is what shall shape our collective future.

Summary

Anindya discusses the impact of the Lockdown on his guiding business and how he found redemption in joining the aid efforts in West Bengal after the devastation caused by Cyclone Amphan in May 2020.

 

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