Kanchenjunga Expedition,Nepal

Base Camp at Night 5700 meters. Nights like days in the camp were misty but one evening after dinner at i saw the tents glow in the moonlight. It took quite a while to adjust my tripod on the slope and take this slow shutter shot. (sanjay austa austa)

Base Camp at Night 5700 meters. Nights like days in the camp were misty but one evening after dinner at i saw the tents glow in the moonlight. It took quite a while to adjust my tripod on the slope and take this slow shutter shot.

(click on photos to go to gallery)

(In 2004 I  went on a two month Kanchenjunga expedition with the Indian army to document their climb in my journal and my camera. The following is  one of the travelogues I wrote for magazines.)

Testing Adrenaline on Kanchenjunga

“Are you sure you will be able to climb?’’, asked Lt Colonel Satish Sharma, leader of the Indian Army’s Kanchenjunga Expedition. I was not a city slicker, who had never seen a mountain before. I was born and brought up in a hill station and had trekked up small hillocks for picnics and walked in over two feet of snow in my Wellingtons on many a Shimla’s winter. But going up the world’s third highest mountain was a different ball game altogether. I looked at the satellite pictures of Kanchenjunga on the wall behind the Colonel and realized clearly where I was pushing myself. The picture taken from the mountain’s southwest side showed a broad white massif of the mountain, with leviathan glaciers running down its many ridges. I saw the progression of camps marked on the mountain and traced the Advanced Base Camp to a spot frighteningly close to the very summit! This was the point till where I had volunteered to accompany the Indian Army to record its expedition on camera and in my journal.

Would I be able to make it? Those who have climbed both Mount Everest and Kanchenjunga, say latter is a much more difficult mountain. It  demands great technical expertise from the mountaineer and unlike Everest which has now become every back-packers destination, Kanchenjunga is not on the itinerary of even the most seasoned of mountaineers. The route to the summit is virtually unknown. The dangers and pitfalls on the way undiscovered. In Everest there are avalanche experts called `ice-doctors’ who go ahead to the Khumbu Ice fall region and warn climbers if there  is  danger of  an avalanche there. No such luxury in Kanchenjunga. Avalanches, blizzards, falling rocks, and crevasses  have to be risked with the climb. There are no fixed ropes here and every expedition has to do its hard work.  One in every four climbers has died climbing this 8586-meter high mountain, making it arguably the most dangerous mountain in the world.

 

Sherpas apply sunscreen before setting out on the climb. The Sherpas are the unglorified climbers in the Himalayas. Every successful expedition that returns home to applause conveniently forgets to mention that these Sherpas led their way including fixing ropes for them to the very top. Without them the climb is impossible. Only few great climbers like Reinhold Messner fixed his own ropes on his climbs. (sanjay austa austa)

Sherpas apply sunscreen before setting out on the climb. The Sherpas are the unglorified climbers in the Himalayas. Every successful expedition that returns home to applause conveniently forgets to mention that these Sherpas led their way including fixing ropes for them to the very top. Without them the climb is impossible. Only few great climbers like Reinhold Messner fixed his own ropes on his climbs.

 

I was accompanying a team of hardened mountaineers of the Indian Army, mind you. Almost all the 22 members had been on more than half a dozen mountain expeditions before. Four of them had climbed Everest, besides other 8000 meter peaks of the world. Among them, Naib Subedar Neel Chand and Naib Subedar C N Bodh, were regarded as the best mountaineers in India. Even Gary Lamare the young zealous cameraman hired to make a film on the expedition was something of a precocious climber. A few years ago, he had climbed up to Camp 1-in Everest-and this time, he was determined to climb to the top of Kanchenjunga. Even the thought of walking in such company was intimidating. I thought of avalanches, frostbite, deep crevasses and death. Nonetheless, I nodded to the Colonel.

Within a week , my rucksack was ready and I was raring to go. I got my first 15-second view of Kanchenjunga from Darjeeling (where we went for a day before crossing over into Nepal) before a cloud enveloped it up again. It was the most tantalizing peek-a-boo one could ever have had. The Kanchenjunga massif loomed 40 kilometers into the distance. Yes, it looked so beautiful in the orange glow of the setting sun and all that. But it was a picture –postcard image to be savored by the Darjeeling tourist who, after a day or two of lolling in the hills, would head back to whatever city they had come up from. For us, Kanchenjunga was not a study in aesthetics. It was a question of adrenaline and how far it could take us. To me, it looked remote and inaccessible. It was a very surreal experience even though it was being experienced in the comfort of a tourist sun-spot in Darjeeling.

Kanchenjunga lies on the watershed between Sikkim in India and Eastern Nepal. It can be climbed from both the countries. But the Sikkimese regard Kanchenjunga as a holy mountain and deferring to the  local sentiment the Sikkim government  banned  expeditions from the Indian side. Therefore all expeditions to Kanchenjunga are organized from Nepal.

Moonrise on Mount Kabru seen from our Base Camp. Mt Kabru is a 7318mts mountain which was right across from our Base Camp. But we saw is rarely as the weather was never clear. I took this shot on a rare cloudless night just when the moon rose from behind the mountain. (sanjay austa austa)

Moonrise on Mount Kabru seen from our Base Camp. Mt Kabru is a 7318mts mountain which was right across from our Base Camp. But we saw is rarely as the weather was never clear. I took this shot on a rare cloudless night just when the moon rose from behind the mountain.

We crossed over into Nepal and headed on an excruciating 16 hour bus-journey to Tapleyjung a  remote town in the Eastern Nepal. Tapleyjung at 1800meters was the last road head in our expedition. The army used helicopters to land in Ramche at 4500 meters. Ramche with its emerald blue-lakes, its dwarf  rhododendron and juniper speckled hillsides, its gurgling streams set amidst the  snow-caped mountains is an  idyllic hideout. Yaks graze and grunt in this vast sylvan valley and if one is  lucky blue sheep  can  be seen hugging steep craggy hill-sides. It was to be our Administrative Base Camp and the first milestone on our mission to the Kanchenjunga summit.

However I got the taste of  what I had set myself against when I decided to walk up a steep hill-side near  our camp.. To my astonishment I found myself out of breath after just a few steps. I felt my heart pound hard in my rib-cage. Oxygen depletes rapidly after 3000 meters and at 4500 meters there was just half the Oxygen there is at sea level. `How will I reach the Advanced Base Camp( ABC) at 5600 meters?’, I wondered. The  route to ABC was through an undulating moraine full of small and big boulders that could topple on you or under you any time. And if one slipped and fell into pools of snot-green glacial water, one would be in an advanced stage of hypothermia before anyone could drag you out. The army climbers were already making bets on when the  `bloody civilians’ would crash out of the Kanchenjunga race.

Climbing a mountain takes a combination of mental and physical strength. How much I had of the latter, I did not know but I certainly steeled myself mentally to carry on. ” It is when you think you are too exhausted to go on that one has to make all the more effort to go on’’, Gary, the other `bloody civilian’ besides me reeled out the ultimate mountain conundrum, when I asked him if there were any tricks to climbing.

Yajung glacier and the Base Camp. The Yalung glacier was right below the big mound where we had our Base Camp. The sunlight reached our camp first in the mornings and in the shadow the Yalung Glacier looked deep blue (sanjay austa austa)

Yajung glacier and the Base Camp. The Yalung glacier was right below the big mound where we had our Base Camp. The sunlight reached our camp first in the mornings and in the shadow the Yalung Glacier looked deep blue

I kept that in mind when after a week at Ramche the climb began to the ABC. I not only exhausted quickly but was soon alone in the moraine. The seasoned Army climbers had gone on ahead, leaving me to bring up the rear.  It was a two day trek and was to be the toughest one of my life. My legs ached and my head felt heavy. I just wanted to lie somewhere and never get up. After hours of determined climbing I caught up with the army members. It was a relief to discover that they were as exhausted as me. But they would rather die than admit this  to a `civilian’. They said they were waiting for me. But when I  finally reached the ABC, (5600 meters) they shrugged off some of the contempt and  warmed up to me .

The oxygen here was almost one-third of what it is at sea level and my head felt dizzy. The mountains, all of them above 7000 meters, hemmed in our campsite. Glaciers, the size of huge building blocks, hung on the mountain sides or lay in the valleys below with deep crevasses wide open on their surfaces. The avalanches took a lot of time getting used to. They crashed down the mountains every half-an hour. In the initial few days, I woke at night, shuddering in my sleeping bag to every big crash of an avalanche. With time one gets acclimatized to the lack of oxygen but it still takes a great deal of effort to do the smallest of tasks. Crawling out from my tent and walking down to the dinning-tent, a few yards below, left me as breathless as a marathon runner. Climbing beyond the ABC began. Till now we had been walking on solid ground and on the moraine but now there were ice-falls, snowfields and glaciers. That’s where the Sherpas came in. The Sherpas are truly indispensable in the big mountains of Nepal. Most climbers, except a few hardened ones, have to employ their services if they want to reach the summit.

The Indian army  also relied heavily on them. The Sherpas not only established four higher camps but also fixed the ropes all the way to the summit.  I was eager to capture the climbers  on camera on these snow-bound reaches of the mountain but I could not tell a crampon from a piton or a jumar from a snow stake. In one grueling session, I learnt the basics from two climbers and the next day, with my heart in my mouth, I was crawling up the first  steep ice-wall beyond ABC. For the next one month, I climbed a bit higher each day and had a series of adventures—from  losing my way in a crevasse filled snowfield to falling down a small snow-ledge. The day for the summit attempt arrived finally. Pempa  Ringzi Sherpa, an intrepid Sherpa, who had climbed Everest seven times, led the first party of India army climbers. He was just 200 meters from the  Kanchenjunga summit when the rope ran out. He was unanchored and risked a fall to death when he  straddled a sharp ridge and inched up with his ice-axes. But there was no way to move up without a rope. Everyone had to fall back to the ABC to recuperate and device another strategy. It was a great disappointment for everyone in the expedition especially Gary for the second summit attempt would include only the tried and tested mountaineers from the Indian Army.

Stopping to take breath. Mountain climbing is a slow activity. Its not a gallop but one step at a time where the slow and steady wins the race. (sanjay austa austa)

Stopping to take breath. Mountain climbing is a slow activity, Kanchenjunga

After a week, Pempa Sherpa led the way again and this time six army climbers and five Sherpas finally managed to reach the peak. The mission was accomplished. Within a week, we were trekking down to Ramche again. Going down was easy. Now I was sufficiently acclimatized to the lack of Oxygen. I did not tire out easily and reached Ramche along with the others. The Indian army climbers were in a celebratory mood and raring to return home where accolades awaited them. They unleashed a Bacchanalia of songs and dance and much drinking. However in the din of celebration it was sad to see how the contribution of the Sherpas was forgotten. Not a mention of them is made by any mountain expedition once it  returns home. An impression is given that the climbers climbed  unaided. It is just as well, for the mountains are now climbed more for glory, quick promotions and medals than for the sheer adventure.  However the Sherpas don’t mind being blanked out at all.  They are happy to get the money. And happy to get an opportunity to climb.

The next day a helicopter was awaited. It would fly us down to Tapleyjung . However the weather was cloudy and we weren’t sure if the Helicopter would show up. I secretly wished it wouldn’t. I had spent a whole two months on the mountain but still had not got enough of it. I wanted to be here even if for half a day more. But the weather played spoil sport. It cleared just when I thought it had worsened. Within half and hour I heard the distinct hum of the helicopter. I took the last few shots of the mountain and climbed in last with my ruck-sack.

5 Responses to “Kanchenjunga Expedition,Nepal”

  1. Ankit Sood says:

    Dear Sanjay,

    Greetings,

    You must be having faint memories of me as we studied together in Bishop cotton school. I was a little guy from Kullu…always fighting/naughty when Modi Mam , Egill was there with Brig Mukund. In any case it was great to read your articles and i look forward to meeting you on my way in and out of Sikkim where i am opening remote valleys for ecotourism ventures.

    Cheers

    Ankit

  2. Elisabeth Conzelmann says:

    This is jot a reply but a question: what kind of dhoes did the Sherpas wear (can’t see them on the picture)?
    And: ilike your way of looking at things
    E.

  3. Vitthal Patil says:

    Great to know that you have climbed the kanchanjunga too. Its really sad how all the climbers forget about the Sherpas but happy to know that they don’t mind this. and your photographs are great.

Leave a Reply to Vitthal Patil