Climbing Stones in IT Heaven

The aromatic fragrance of chicken biryani wafted skywards into the cool night sky above the half complete concrete structure tucked away in one corner of Ibrahim's Farm, a short walk away from the slumbering town of Ramnagram on the Bangalore - Mysore highway. Moonlight filtered through the areca palm fronds, adequate enough to see by. We opened our dinner packets eagerly, unravelling the string that held together the delicious meal wrapped in banana leaves and old newspaper, bought a few hours earlier near the bus stand in Bangalore. Srinivas from The Climbers Club had fought his way into the crowded Kanakpura bus and we had followed in his wake. The bus was so packed that Faruk, Franklyn and I were relieved when we had to get off at Ramnagram.

As we tucked into the biryani, we could see a couple of dark animal shapes sauntering by less than fifty yards from us.

"Rather late for the cattle to be coming home", Franklyn remarked.

Srinivasan looked up from his dinner, glanced in the direction of the phantom shadows, jumped up like a jack in the box and leapt up to the flat roof of the one storey building in what rock climbers call a dynamic move.

"They are bears!" he yelled, "come on up here!"

Clutching our precious biryani, we followed suit. Fortunately for us the wind must have been blowing in the direction away from the bears and they continued on their nocturnal jaunt.

The really great thing about climbing is not the climbing itself, but the stories that one accumulates while pursuing this hobby.

The Bangalore affair was a case in point.

It had started off innocuosly enough. Harshavardhan Subbarao, whom I had accidentally met (see http://taccidental.blogspot.ca/2012/06/mayhem-at-mumbra.html ) while climbing at the Dudha slabs in Mumbra on the outskirts of Mumbai, had convinced his friends in The Climbers Club to host Faruk, Franklyn and I while we explored some of the rock climbing delights that Bangalore had to offer. Harsha's father preferred to call this pursuit "Climbing Stones" and I couldn't think of a better title for this blog post! The year was 1989 and rock climbing in India was still considered an esoteric indulgence pursued only by those who had been possessed by strange demons. Equipment and proper footwear were hard to come by and disposable incomes were meagre. These minor inconveniences were forgotten when one succeeded in making some improbable moves on tiny protuberances on some steep cliff and stood on a narrow ledge like an eagle, the sun warm on fingers frayed with the friction of granite, the wind drying off the sweat of nervousness and replacing it with a sense of euphoria appreciated only by the faithful.

We had arrived in Bangalore after a trying 24 hour bus journey from Mumbai, dozing upright throughout the night while the screeching soundtrack from B grade movies being shown on a monitor at the head of the cabin assaulted our senses.

After that journey, Ibrahim's Farm was a rural haven, with or without bears.

Faruk and I soon discovered that the holds here were rock solid as opposed to what we were used to in and around Mumbai. Franklyn, who had come along for the ride and to indulge in his hobby of bird watching, couldn't have cared less.

Bouldering at Turalli was a nice introduction to this superior quality medium that we were to find in our  little excursions.

Faruk bouldering at Turalli

A perfect crack!

From Ibrahim's Farm we made our way to Kabbal Durga, a hill sporting some attractive lines, but marred by approaches guarded by what our Bangalore friends called Tiger Thorns. The thorns did not stop us from putting up a new route on the cliff which Faruk christened DIM - an acronym for an obscene epithet! I could understand the sentiment which had gone into the christening because I had had the dubious privilege of belaying him on a protection-less runout where the rope dangled free for about 60 feet on extremely steep ground. We were so relieved to be alive after completing this line that we went back to the little tea shop where we were camped, bought a coconut and offered it to the gods in the local temple as a symbol of our gratitude.

L to R : Guruprasad, Faruk and Franklyn walk towards Kabbal Durga for another day of climbing.
The start of DIM was directly above the alphabet "a" in "Durga"

Faruk leading DIM

Rock climbing as a distinct sport was still developing slowly in India at that time. There were little groups of enthusiasts in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Calcutta who were keeping the spirit alive in spite of a lack of decent equipment. We had heard of a multi-pitch route on the cliffs of Savandurga named Deepavali by Mandip Singh Soin of Delhi who had made its first ascent with a couple of his friends a few years earlier. We turned our focus towards this and decided to do a variation of the route. The variation went up a dihedral and this proved to be an extremely satisfying climb.

The hill of SavanDurga (photo courtesy mouthshut.com)

Faruk on Deepavali variation, Savan Durga

We spent a week climbing, then went on a trek along the Cauvery where we encountered a herd of wild elephants. This whetted our appetite, so we spent a couple of days at the Bandipur wildlife sanctuary and topped it off with a visit to the Ranganthittoo bird sanctuary as well!

In the mid nineteen nineties, on a brief visit to Bangalore, my dear friend Ajay Tambe (who was then based there) drove my wife Margaret, my son Sanal, his son Akshay and his wife Jayanti to some crag whose name I now forget and we managed to climb some line where surmounting the crux move gave me a heady, if brief sense of triumph; soon brought down to earth by the blistering hot sand on the trail we walked back barefoot in - it was the merry month of May and summer was in full swing!

A beautiful cliff with enormous hollows, near KabbalDurga

Guruprasad getting over the hump!

Guruprasad in a pensive mood as he belays Faruk on DIM

Srinivas climbing

Not surprisingly, Bangalore became the breeding ground of some of the best rock climbers India produced in the 1990s and the first decade of this century. The group of climbers which formed a cluster round K.S. Dinesh began to push the standards of Indian rock climbing quite a few notches upwards.

These guys were so into climbing that the normal way to enter Dinesh's upper floor suite was to climb on to the fence, grab a hold and vault into the open verandah of his house! On the one occasion that I visited him, I landed gasping for breath - I knew then that as far as this Stone Climbing business was concerned, I was a rank amateur!

Faruk

Basic Mountaineering Course, or How I Became a B Grade Climber!

Below the Bali Pass

I was pinned down by the weight of my backpack, sprawled in an inelegant heap on the trail, my nose inches away from the clear running water that washed over the black rock. Each time that I tried to get up, my feet, clad in soft canvas boots with the brand name "Hunter", would slip on the slithery surface and I would collapse into another embarrasing position. I could hear peals of laughter over the gentle trilling of the stream. My three companions - 2nd Lieut. Tapas Bandopadhyay, 2nd Lieut. K. K. Nair and 2nd Lieut. R. N. Ghosh Dastidar - finally took pity on my poor civilian soul and hauled me to my feet.

L to R : 2nd Lieut. Tapas Bandopadhyay, B Grade Climber, 2nd Lieut. K.K.Nair

I sat down on a convenient boulder to get my wind back. We were on the "approach march" to our Base Camp at Ruinsara Tal which would serve as the hub for the Snow & Ice Craft component of the Basic Mountaineering Course that I had signed up for. It was October 1978 and the culmination of a small goal I had set for myself more than 5 years earlier.

While in university in Calcutta I had borrowed Maurice Herzog's "Annapurna" - the classic tale of the first ascent of an 8000 meter peak in 1950 - from the Alliance Francaise. Even through the mutating filters of translation, the story was a gripping one of exploration, mystery and high adventure ending in a resounding triumph tinged with the tragedy of Maurice losing his fingers and toes to frostbite.

Like all impoverished students who could not afford to buy any books, I also enrolled in the British Council Library where I picked up the hard copy edition of Chris Bonnington's "Everest South West Face". The lavish colour illustrations brought an alien world to life for me as I constantly referred to the glossary of climbing jargon appended at the end to guide me through the vocabulary of this exotic world.

A visit to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling had further piqued my interest. But the mundane pursuits of attaining a Bachelor of Arts degree and the subsequent job hunting in the real world ensured that my little dream simmered on the back burner for a couple of years. For the record, I did put in a feeble request to my father to pay for the course in Basic Mountaineering.

"What?!" was his incredulous response. "You want Rs. 300 to learn to climb hills? You must be out of your mind!" I dropped the subject.

Finally the opportunity presented itself in 1978 when, after a year of what was known then as being "gainfully employed", I became eligible for my very first month of paid leave. I dashed off an application to the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering in Uttarkashi for the Basic Mountaineering Course in Oct - Nov of that year. Pat came the reply : "Sorry, but the course is fully booked. You will be placed on a waiting list." I sighed and prayed.

The answer to my prayers came in the guise of severe floods in Garhwal, especially in the Gangotri area where the course was traditionally held. Cancellations flooded in and I received a telegram informing me that a slot was available and could I please send a Money Order for Rs. 450/- to confirm my seat in the course.

A couple of weeks later I was on the bus from Rishikesh to Uttarkashi. There was a trudge across a landslide to another bus a little distance before Uttarkashi as the road had been washed away. Late in the evening I walked up to the Institute's campus, the fragrance of pine resin from the trees in the compound welcoming me with their delicious aroma.

There was a different kind of welcome waiting for me that night in the dormitory that I had been assigned to. My companions were all young officers from the Army who had either been co-opted to "volunteer" for the course or who had chosen it as a temporary respite from their regular duties on certain troubled borders of the country.

After they had got over their initial shock ("You must be nuts to actually pay for a month of hardship!", they all agreed), we moved on to topics more interesting to them. Once they learned that I worked for Air India, the national airline, they plied me with questions about the pretty stewardesses they had seen on publicity hoardings and magazine advertisements. Their fevered young hormones painted a picture of nubile maidens wafting through the pressurized passenger cabins of the Boeing 707s named after Himalayan peaks.

"Bed Tea" at dawn was delivered at the door to coax us to rub the sleep from our eyes, banish all the dreams, and head out the door for the morning assembly and ritual attendance. We were divided into "ropes" of eight trainees headed by a Rope Instructor and promptly made to jog down to the town and back through the morning chill. As my breath condensed in the cold air on the uphill grind back to the Institute premises, it took my mind back six years to the brief weeks I had spent at the National Defence Academy in Khadakvasla as a cadet.

A few days after learning the difference between a bowline and a bowline on the bight, we were transported to Tekhla, where some basic rock climbing skills were imparted to us. One of those - "stomach rappeling" - was something I never subsequently had to use ever!

2nd Lieut Bandopadhyay demonstrating "stomach rappelling"

Instructor Tashi Chewang (second from left in check shirt) poses with trainees at Tekhla

Our stomachs were well served, I must admit. The catering was lavish, considering the paltry sum that I had paid.

To ensure that we had an adequate supply of animal protein at our Base Camp the trainees were entrusted with a couple of goats to chaperone. To shepherd a recalcitrant beast up mountain trails for a couple of days is no mean task and there were countless instances when the hapless trainee assigned to the animal had to scramble breathlessly in pursuit of the fleet footed creature who would suddenly decide to race up a steep slope in search of some luscious tit bits.

Capt. J. J. Lall (left) and I with our Diwali dinner

The ten days that we spent camped at Ruinsara Tal were memorable. Though located at a modest altitude of around 11,000 feet, it proved high enough to plague a young trainee from Gujarat with the symptoms of acute mountain sickness. He had to be sent down the very next day.

Sketch map of area around Ruinsara Tal ( courtesy Himalayan Journal Vol 41,1983-1984)

We spent hours collecting juniper bushes for the daily campfires, sat shivering outdoors as soft snowflakes fell while the Officer-in-charge-Training, Sqn. Ldr. A.K.Bhattacharya, gave us a discourse on the nature and perils of glaciers, and stood in a long queue to have the delicious mutton curry ladled into our plates on the day of the festival of Diwali.

Base Camp at Ruinsara Tal

While one of us was assigned to dig a large snow bollard as an anchor, the rest stood around in the cold wind watching. The Squadron Leader took this opportunity to ask me if I knew Capt. M.S. Kohli. Kohli, an ex naval officer, had shot to national prominence in 1965 when he led the Indian expedition to Everest which put 9 climbers on the summit, a record which stood unbroken for many years. He had subsequently joined Air India in the Commercial department. I said, "No, I haven't met him. I work for a different department."

My teeth might have been chattering with the cold while I spoke and this would later lead to a remark in the certificate which was mailed to me a couple of weeks later - "He finds it difficult to withstand extreme cold". I had just returned after a week in Moscow before joining the course and perhaps the good Squadron Leader might have taken into account the poor quality of the cold weather clothing that was issued to us as part of our mountaineering kit! In 1978, the canvas air mattresses that we slept on were a challenge to inflate, the "down" sleeping bags felt as if they were stuffed with chicken feathers, the heavy leather boots manufactured by an outfit in Delhi near Kashmiri Gate twisted my feet almost out of shape and the cotton anoraks which were supposed to repel both wind and rain/snow had become porous after years of being laundered.

The highlight of our stint at Ruinsara Tal was the en masse attempt up Ski Valley II to reach the Bali Pass which leads to Yamunotri. Due to the heavy snow accumulation, we had to stop short of the pass. Looking back across the valley we were rewarded with a grand view of the Swargarohini peaks.

While the course was a lot of fun where I made friends with some great young army officers, the B Grade that I attained closed the door effectively to any ambition I might have had to pursue the Advanced Course in Mountaineering. Later, I was to realize that this was a blessing in disguise. Due to the bureaucratic and expensive nature of Indian mountaineering all those years ago, I was compelled to explore climbing as a personal and fun activity with a group of close friends rather than a glory seeking mass enterprise. I like to think that in a modest way I've had my fair share of mountain adventures and I shall always credit the course at NIM for giving me confidence to widen my horizons in the hills.

Like everything else in life, there is always a silver lining to any setback. The trick is to recognize it!

The Accidental B Grade Climber

The lapel-pin ice axe awarded to me on graduation from the Basic Mountaineering Course. Scrubbed and polished with Brasso after 37 years!

Kang Yaze - Trekking Peak?

Sunrise on Kang Yaze

It took us some time to realize that we had been outwitted by the owner of the Nezer View Guest House, Leh. We had arrived in the town at 8 pm on 15 June 2001, after a gruelling 13 hour drive from Darcha in our overloaded blue Maruti Gypsy. As we cruised into town in the darkness, driving hesitantly in a place that was new to all of us, a white Gypsy passed us. In a flash, it had made a U turn and was now beside us, driving parallel.

A head poked out of the driver's side window. "Hotel? You looking for hotel?" a young slim lad shouted across at us. I was too tired to debate the point, having been the sole driver since we left Delhi 5 days earlier.

"Yes," I said.

"Follow me," the young man said.

The guest house was okay, but the ethics that its owners lived by was not. We had driven all the way to Choglamsar a day later in search of a man who lived in the Tibetan sector to arrange the mules and ponies we would need for the trek from Martselang to the base of Kang Yaze, the peak we had come to climb. The man in question was not at home, so we left word with his wife that he should see us the next morning in our guest house.

Stok Kangri, a very popular peak with trekkers, seen here from the terrace of the Nezer View Guest House.

The day dawned and there was no sign of the man. The owner had intercepted him and told him that there were no guests matching our description and turned him away.

When we questioned him later regarding this, he feigned ignorance and said that if it was mules and ponies that we needed, he knew just the man. We had already lost a day, so we agreed to meet Sonam, the muleteer that he sent us. If we had known at the time that the guest house owner was taking a  "commission" which amounted to more than 50% of what we were paying Sonam for his services, we would have re-considered the deal.

A view of Leh

A quick round of shopping for supplies in the market, followed by a walk up to the Leh Palace found me gasping for breath. I found this strange, having just spent time in the Bagini Glacier at over 15,000 feet only two weeks earlier ( http://accidentaltrekker.blogspot.ca/2014/04/bagini-bouquet.html ). My other two companions, Franklyn Silveira and Ravi Wadaskar, who had joined me at Delhi directly from Mumbai, should have been the ones feeling the altitude of Leh. Franco Linhares whom we had picked up from Solang before driving over the Rohtang Pass seemed unaffected as well! I put it down to the bout of Delhi Belly (diarrhoea) I had suffered from on my return to the capital city from the cool climes of Garhwal.

Leh Palace

The guest house owner had one more ace up his sleeve. He offered to have our Gypsy in "safe" parking in the compound of the Hotel Horizon. He would transport us and our gear, for an appropriate (in his eyes) fee to Martselang in his white Gypsy. Sonam would rendezvous with us at Hemis, load up the ponies, while we would drive another short distance to start our walk.

When we arrived at Hemis on the morning of the 19th, there was no sign of Sonam and his four legged companions. We ate breakfast, toured the monastery, and fortuitously bumped into a ponywallah who told us he had seen someone called Sonam at Martselang, waiting for us. The mystery having been cleared up, we motored onwards to Martselang.

Franco's backpack gets a ride

Sonam strapped our luggage on to his pack animals and then relieved us of our heavy backpacks and threw them onto the poor beasts as well! This mode of trekking - carrying only a small daypack with water, a few snacks and a camera - was new to all of us who had grown up in the old school of You Must Learn To Be Beasts of Burden If You Want To Climb Mountains! We did not argue with Sonam and enjoyed the luxury of a level and leisurely two hour walk along the Shang nala on a road of gravel and stones which led us into the little oasis of Shang Sumdo. We pitched our tents on grass in a "pay and camp" facility in the compound of a house, with a convenient little stream running through it. This was my first trip to Ladakh and already I was beginning to fall in love with it!

Children of Shang Sumdo. The girl in the middle wears a shirt which reads :"Spirit of America. Forever true to our club."

The evening found us walking up to the monastery a short distance away to seek the blessings of the resident lama and as we walked back at dusk we could see a couple of bharal silhouetted against a salmon pink sky, high up on a surrounding ridge. It seemed like a good omen.

Shang Sumdo is an oasis of green set in a rugged landscape

Passing Chokdo and the campground of Chukirmo the next day, the trail crisscrossed the riverbed many times, keeping us hopping from stone to stone in an effort to stay dry. The terrain was extremely rugged with the cliffs and rocks painted in intense earth colors, the clarity in the air enhancing the brilliance of the landscape. A couple of healthy looking partridges with extremely attractive feathers and a black ring round their necks scuttled out of the bushes lining the trail, reinforcing our belief that life did somehow flourish in the apparently barren surroundings. Wild rose bushes and clumps of brilliant yellow flowers helped balance the aesthetics.

Child at Chokdo watches us go by....

Wild flowers cling tenaciously to a cliff

Sketch map of area in Himalayan Journal Vol 45

The European girl who was tottering down the sheet of ice which covered the riverbed as it narrowed into a gorge was obviously having a problem maintaining her balance! Sonam found out from the ponywallah who was accompanying her and her companion down from the Kongmaru La that she had had a generous helping of chang the night before at Nimaling and was now still hung over.

Camp below the Kongmaru La

We camped about 500 metres below the Kongmaru La and Ravi took over the cooking. Ravi was a consummate artist and had persuaded his wife Sunita to equip him with a comprehensive range of spices packed neatly into little plastic containers. He would whip these out at the appropriate time and sprinkle the finely powdered ingredients into the pan.

The Kongmaru La. 

Thus well rested and well fortified we climbed up to the Kongmaru La the next morning and were immediately confronted with the object of our desire right before us, across the Nimaling Plains. We eased ourselves down into the broad and welcoming valley and pitched our tents close to a stream where grazing yaks occasionally came down for a drink and to cool off in the water. I guess we could have crossed the next hump and gone directly to camp right below Kang Yaze, but since Sonam was being paid for four stages to Base Camp, we took this opportunity to laze around in the sun reading and dozing and postponed the move to the next day. The weather was perfect and it seemed such a shame to waste it by hurrying along!

Franco reads in the sun at Nimaling camp

FRIDAY, 22 JUNE 2001. KANG YAZE BASE CAMP. 4900 M. 8:41 PM (Excerpt from my diary):

"The musical sounds of the ponies' bells complement the gentle murmur of the stream to our right. We are camped on a flat green patch next to the shallow nala that is fed by Kang Yaze's northern glacier and another glacial valley at the head........ There are lots of big, plump marmots around here and also many "pika" or mouse hare. On our way up this afternoon we even saw a large partridge-like bird walking across the stony slopes. There was some dramatic light in the evening."

There was more drama to come at this idyllic spot - it snowed for three days which forced Sonam to descend with his ponies to more hospitable realms towards the Markha valley. We used the time to indulge ourselves with plenty of food and chai and seized the opportunity in the few clear spells to walk around and hike up the surrounding slopes to get a better idea of the terrain and to dump some loads at about 5100 m where we hoped to spend a night before our climb to the summit.

An umbrella is essential equipment when venturing out to answer nature's call on a snowy day!

The 27th of June dawned bright and clear, the sunlight seeped through the tent fabric at precisely 5:57 am and we knew in our hearts that we had our window of opportunity! Leaving Franklyn behind at Base Camp, the three of us toiled up to our proposed high camp site and by mid day were well settled in on a patch of stony ground we had levelled for the tent. We packed our rucksacks for the climb and Franco and I sheltered in the tent whilst Ravi chose to sleep under the stars in a bivouac sack.

Our camp for the summit climb

Diary excerpt : "The sunset was magnificent this evening, a crescent moon hanging above a golden hued Kang Yaze against a darkening sky. It has been the clearest, most perfect evening so far, the wind too has died down....."

I started brewing up at 2:30 am on Thursday, 28 June after being awake from 11:30 pm the night before. We began to climb at 4 am on a crisp and cold morning. The wind howled out of Tibet as we walked up the broad saddle to the foot of the north west face. A quick gulp of tea from my small flask made the task of attaching my crampons here a little more bearable and soon we were crunching up the snow. After a couple of hours we were on the western side of the mountain where we took another break, perched on some stones jutting out from the face. The Nun Kun massif dominated the horizon and there was a sea of peaks all around. The sun was taking a toll on the snow and it was becoming softer by the minute. Inexplicably, Ravi began to vomit and thereafter he was not his normal self. He became listless and weak and a few vertical meters later I had to ask him to stop and wait for us to come back. He did not argue, just nodded his head and sat down in the snow. We talked to him for some time, made sure that he could look after himself, that he had water and snacks with him. We suggested he start descending as soon as he felt himself capable. The terrain was not very technical and I knew that he could handle it, especially since we had left deep and huge footprints in the snow which he could easily follow and the weather did not pose a threat. I had climbed with Ravi three years earlier ( http://taccidental.blogspot.ca/2014/02/the-chango-chronicles-1998-third-time.html ) and knew he was a hardy soul and I did not feel guilty as Franco and I kept plunging up to our knees as we soldiered on upwards.

Ravi follows in Franco's footsteps

Friends in high places! Ravi (left) and Franco at our rest spot.

Many hours later, and only 35 vertical meters below the corniced summit, Franco said he was too exhausted to continue. In 1988 Franco had climbed to around 26,000 feet on Kanchenjunga during the first Indian civilian expedition to the third highest peak in the world and I felt sad that he was stopping within reach of the summit! I could understand his condition : the deep soft snow and the intense heat of the sun had combined to extract every ounce of energy from our bodies. I looked longingly at the summit and decided that I was not going to let this one slip through my fingers - in a few weeks' time I would be emigrating to Canada and the opportunity to stand on the summit of a Himalayan peak, however modest, was not going to come along in a hurry!

Franco took this photo of me near the summit with the 300 mm lens I had left with him.

We unroped and I continued up the ridge, making sure I was a safe distance from the cornice on my left. A combination of fatigue and deep soft snow made my progress agonizingly slow. I would take 10 to 15 steps at a time and then stop, constantly knocking off the huge clumps of snow that would accumulate around the points of my crampons with my axe. I would stop, gasp for breath like an underwater swimmer just surfacing after a prolonged period, then repeat the process again. It took me almost an hour to cover the distance. Finally, I hoisted myself on to the summit boulder where someone had left some prayer flags. I contributed two Nestle eclair candies to the sacred pile and looked around with a glow of satisfaction.

The horizon was crystal clear in every direction. A sharp connecting ridge led in an intricate ribbon to the top of Kang Yaze's main peak, which had seen very few ascents. I stood on the summit of what can be called Kang Yaze II which is where most trekkers end up.

Kang Yaze I from the summit of KY II

After spending ten minutes on the top I made my way carefully back to where Franco waited patiently. He congratulated me graciously, we sat on the snow and nibbled on some chocolates, sipped a little water and began to descend. It was 4:15 pm. An hour later we caught up with Ravi who was getting a little worried. It was almost 8:30 pm by the time we reached the tent and after a round of chai and soup, we ate some Wai Wai noodles for dinner and I settled down in my bivouac sack to sleep under  a starry sky while Ravi moved into the tent with Franco.

On our return to Base Camp the next day we were welcomed by Franklyn with steaming hot mugs of chai. He had followed our climb with his binoculars the previous day and was glad to see us safe and sound. Eight Austrian trekkers had also arrived with their 15 horses and Thondup, their guide. Thondup later dropped in to say hello and also to ask if he could borrow a pair of crampons from us as one of his group who initially had no intentions of climbing had now changed his mind and they were short of one pair! I loaned him my pair and Thondup said he would return it when they caught up with us at Shang Sumdo.

The walk back to Shang Sumdo was a sheer delight; we were buoyed up by our successful  climb. As we took a break on the Kongmaru La, we could see the Austrians right across the valley on Kang Yaze following the tracks we had stamped out. They had made a 2 am start and climbed the peak from Base Camp. Even allowing for the fact that a ready made trail made their progress faster, I was quite impressed - their group was made up mostly of seniors over 60 years old, except for the thirty something lad who had borrowed my crampons!

Telephoto taken from Kongmaru La of the Austrian group climbing Kang Yaze

We were joined on our return walk by a cute little black puppy who appeared out of nowhere and attached himself to us for two days and then, just as mysteriously, vanished! We fed him and I let him sleep in comfort on top of my down sleeping bag. As if to reward us for our generosity, we were privileged to watch a herd of bharal, numbering 13, cross the Shang river and clamber up the sheer scree slopes on the other side to graze in what appeared to be extremely precarious perches.

Puppy gets a little TLC from me..... while Ravi looks on.

As a Farewell to the Himalaya trip, Kang Yaze and Ladakh will be etched in my memory forever as one of the most enjoyable excursions to the mountains I have ever made and will ensure that I shall return some day.....!


A NOTE ON "TREKKING" PEAKS

In these days of mass adventure tourism, many experiences have been devalued and downgraded due to the proliferation of extensive information and knowledge and their conversion to "soft" adventure. Thus a whole new world has been opened up to millions of people who would otherwise have not even considered the idea of taking the risks involved on their own. Climbs to Island Peak in Nepal and Stok Kangri in Ladakh are good examples of this. For people with deeper pockets and a willingness to devote more time, even some of the highest peaks in the world are now accessible via their normal routes. However, climbing these peaks without guides or fixed ropes and the safety net provided by a good trekking agency, is still fairly challenging for most people.

One should however not belittle these efforts: like all things in life, what is a relatively easy thing to one person may be someone else's personal Everest! A toddler in diapers scrambling to the top of a three foot high boulder perhaps experiences the same euphoria as a seasoned alpinist on a new route on the north face of K2!

More importantly, "trekkking" peaks also have the same ability to dish out death and disability under certain conditions. A wise person never underestimates the power of the mountains, however insignificant or innocuous they might appear to be in the media.

For an interesting discussion on this topic, see : http://www.markhorrell.com/blog/2011/when-does-trekking-become-mountaineering/#comment-276810

MORE THINGS YOU DON'T REALLY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT KANG YAZE!

The main summit of Kang Yaze is almost 300 meters higher than the "trekking" summit. Parties which have climbed it have done so via the north and east ridges - you need to be experienced and competent to take on this climb.

Illustration from Himalayan Journal Vol 52 (1996), Plate 39.

M .Ratty had proposed to add two more summits in the group and call them Kang Yaze III and Kang Yaze IV. (Himalayan Journal Vol 52)

Kang Yaze III from the summit of KY II

A comprehensive history of climbs on Kang Yaze (Kang Yissay) upto 1988 was compiled by Dhiren Pania and can be found on page 205 of Himalayan Journal Vol. 45 (1987-1988).

View north west

Franco (circled) waits 

View west towards the Karakoram

Stok Kangri

Ravi doing what he loves at Shang on the return

Marmot frolics in the snow at Base Camp

Looking towards the Markha Valley from Base Camp

Wild rose