Nanda Devi: Nanda Davi Exploration and Ascent Book 1

By Eric Shipton

'When a man is conscious of the urge to explore, not all the arduous journeyings, the troubles that will beset him and the lack of material gains from his investigations will stop him.'
Nanda Devi is one of the most inaccessible mountains in the Himalaya. It is surrounded by a huge ring of peaks, among them some of the highest mountains in the Indian Himalaya. For fifty years the finest mountaineers of the early twentieth century had repeatedly tried and failed to reach the foot of the mountain.
Then, in 1934, Eric Shipton and H. W. Tilman found a way in. Their 1934 expedition is regarded as the epitome of adventurous mountain exploration. With their three tough and enthusiastic Sherpa companions Angtharkay, Kusang and Pasang, they solved the problem of access to the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. They crossed difficult cols, made first ascents and explored remote, uninhabited valleys, all of which is recounted in Shipton's wonderfully vivid Nanda Devi - a true evocation of Shipton's enduring spirit of adventure and one of the most inspirational travel books ever written.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vertebrate Digital
• Release date: Oct 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781910240168

Eric Shipton

Eric Shipton (1907-1977) was one of the great mountain explorers of the 20th century, often known for his infamous climbing partnership with H.W. 'Bill' Tilman. He climbed extensively in the Alps in the 1920s, put up new routes on Mount Kenya in 1921, and in 1931, made the first ascent of Kamet with Frank Smythe - the highest peak climbed at that time. Shipton was involved with most of the Everest expeditions in the 1930s, reaching a high point of 28,000 feet in 1933. He went on to lead the 1951 expedition, which was the first to approach Everest from the north (Nepali) side through the Khumbu ice fall, and on which Edmund Hillary first set foot on the mountain.

Book preview

– PART 1 –

Innocents from Nepal – and London

– CHAPTER 1 –

In the exploration of a continent the mountainous areas are generally the last strongholds of mystery to fall before the onslaught of man, be that onslaught brutal, scientific or merely inquisitive. The difficulties of transport are so great; the physical hardships so heavy; the reward so small – for glacier regions are materially useless. For these reasons then the high places of the earth remain remote and inaccessible until man, having explored all fertile regions of a particular country, finds himself dwelling under the very shadow of the mountains and becomes aware of an overwhelming desire to conquer them. This feeling doubtless owes its force partly to the attraction of the unknown and partly to the natural beauty and sublime grandeur of mountainous districts; but I like to think that it goes deeper; that the wish to explore springs from a delight in the purely aesthetic nature of the quest.

When man is conscious of the urge to explore, not all the arduous journeyings, the troubles that will beset him and the lack of material gain from his investigations will stop him. As a famous Arctic explorer remarked many years ago: ‘The great majority of men who visit the Arctic do so because they want to, a large number do so for publicity, while it is possible that one or two have gone there for purely scientific purposes.’

The italics are mine. What was true of the Arctic then is equally true of the little-known mountain country of today, and of the Alps before they became ‘the playground of Europe’. To the early explorer fighting his way across the passes of Haute Savoie and to people who, like myself, have come under the spell of the high Himalaya the reason for exploration remains the same – we do so because we want to.

It was my good fortune to visit the mighty ranges of South Central Asia, which stretch from east to west without a break for over fifteen hundred miles, as a member of F. S. Smythe’s Kamet expedition in 1931. Then, for the first time, I saw mountains whose rugged splendour baffles description and whose complex structure probably renders them inaccessible even to the most advanced mountaineering technique. With this vision before me, surpassing all the wildest dreams of my early mountaineering apprenticeship, I welcomed the opportunity, some two years later, of joining the fourth expedition to Mount Everest, where I saw the harsher and less lovely aspect of the Tibetan side of the range.

The Kamet and Everest expeditions had, as their main objective, the climbing of a single lofty peak. In the one case we succeeded: in the other we failed. But on each occasion I had a mighty longing to detach myself from the big and cumbersome organisation which for some reason had been thought to be necessary for an attack on the more lofty summits of the earth, and to wander with a small, self-contained party through the labyrinth of unexplored valleys, forming our plans to suit the circumstances, climbing peaks when opportunity occurred, following up our own topographical clues and crossing passes into unknown territory. This desire held me captive even before I left the Everest base camp in July 1933, and I resolved to carry out some such scheme before age, marriage or other considerations made it impossible of accomplishment.

During the winter of 1933-34 I began to form plans. The primary choice of district was not difficult. There can be few regions of the Himalaya providing topographical problems of more absorbing interest than that lying in the Almora and Garhwal districts of the United Provinces. Here there are no political obstacles (the bugbear of the Asiatic explorer) to be overcome as the region lies almost entirely in British India. Moreover, the transport of supplies and equipment to a suitable base is a simple matter, the organisation of which does not require any vast experience of the country or knowledge of the language. Brief acquaintance, while with the Kamet expedition, had given me some first-hand information on a number of problems and I felt confident that, with the modest resources at my disposal, I should be able to carry out my proposed campaign with some fair chance of achieving useful results. Therefore I plumped for Almora and Garhwal.

The question of companionship did not worry me. There were a number of people who would be quite prepared – and suitably qualified – to take part in such an enterprise, and my association with the Nepalese and Tibetan porters of the 1933 Everest expedition had convinced me that their natural, if undeveloped, mountaineering ability, their constant cheerfulness and their wonderful sense of loyalty, would make them ideal comrades. So I got into touch with Karma Paul, the Tibetan interpreter to the Everest expeditions, and requested him to send word to Angtharkay, Pasang Bhotia, and Rinzing, three men for whom I felt particular liking since they were among the eight porters who had placed our Camp VI at the enormous altitude of 27,400 feet the previous summer. Rinzing, however, was not available, and at the last moment Angtharkay brought forward his cousin, Kusang Namgir, a man of extraordinary toughness and ability.

In January ‘34 I had my best stroke of luck, in a letter from my old friend H. W. Tilman, who had been my companion on three expeditions to the mountains of east and central Africa. This letter announced that, since he had long leave from Kenya, he had bought a second-hand bicycle and had ridden it across the continent alone, through Uganda, Belgian Congo and French Equatorial Territory, finally emerging on the west coast where he sold the bicycle and boarded a cargo steamer bound for England. The letter said further that this had proved a most cheap and efficacious method of reaching home and that the writer, during his cycling travels, had existed entirely on native food, keeping pretty fit except for a few bouts of fever.

Here indeed was a kindred spirit. When I told him of my plans he at once offered to put up his share of the expenses. This, I estimated, would amount to £150 all told: that is, the whole expedition would not cost more than £300. Actually, we managed on less than that.

Our party was now complete and numbered four besides myself: Tilman, Angtharkay, Pasang and Kusang. Nobody could have had four more loyal, determined and unselfish comrades and there remained now only the choice of a main objective.

Now, nobody attempting mountain exploration in the Himalaya (or anywhere else, for that matter) can afford to miss an opportunity of discussing his plans with Dr T. G. Longstaff. When he gave me that opportunity, therefore, I accepted with alacrity and, as a result of long discussions with him, I determined to make an attempt to force the hitherto inviolate sanctuary of the Nanda Devi Basin.

At first this seemed as if we were flying too high. Here was a mountain whose summit was the highest in the British Empire. For centuries it had inspired worship and propitiatory sacrifice as the ‘Blessed Goddess’ of Hindu philosophers and scribes. For more than fifty years it had been the inaccessible goal of explorers who, attracted by the impregnability of its surroundings, had failed in repeated attempts to reach even its foot, the reason being that around the 25,660-foot mountain itself stretched a huge ring of peaks, more than thirty of them over 21,000 feet high, that constituted themselves unrelenting guardians of the great mountain and defeated any penetration.

And we, with light equipment, few stores, and a joint capital of £300, were setting forth to reach this goal. That we eventually succeeded was largely due to the unremitting labour of those who preceded us. To explorers in general and to mountaineers in particular, it is a well-known fact that each successive attempt at the solving of a problem makes that problem easier of solution. Few great mountains have been climbed, and few passes crossed, at first, second or even third essay. The man who eventually reaches the summit of Mount Everest will have done so, not by his own efforts alone, but over the shoulders of the pioneers – Mallory, Norton, Somervell – without whose hard-won experience he would have stood no chance. So with our own – seemingly fantastic – expedition. That measure of success met with in our enterprise, we owe primarily to those who went before us.

The days went on, passed swiftly in discussion of our base, our transport, our food – enthralling, this business of arranging an expedition that might well have been formulated on that classic statement of the great Duke of Wellington when comparing the organisation of the French tactical scheme in the Peninsular War with that of his own. Of Napoleon’s generals he said that their plans were laid with such thoroughness that, at a single slight hitch, their whole structure was liable to collapse; whereas, if anything went wrong with his (Wellington’s) less complex arrangements, all he had to do was ‘to tie it up with string’ and so carry on … a moral that applies to exploration as well as to war, and is probably the reason why a small expedition, such as our own, almost invariably achieves far more than does a large and elaborate one when proportionate costs are taken into