Burphu Dhura - Part 2. A Fin Too Far

The snow began to fall silently in the night again and visibility was still not very good at around a quarter to six in the morning. The sun finally broke through almost an hour later and with it emerged a positively charged Divyesh - he stomped all around the camp, boisterous and cheerful, and quickly dismissed any ideas that I may have harboured of lazing around another day with Roald Dahl for company. After a quick breakfast of cornflakes and tea we set off to climb Burphu South.

Satya coming up Burphu South. The Kalabaland Glacier flows in a wide arc below.

Reaching the summit of Burphu South

Narinder, Bhupinder and Divyesh led off on one rope while Satya and I followed more sedately, taking photos and looking across at Burphu Dhura's defences, seeking a line of weakness. We reached the top in about two hours, from where we could look at the entire summit area of Burphu Dhura head on. In between scudding, fleeting clouds, we were rewarded with brief glimpses of the mountain. After the usual heroic poses we descended via a different route, thus completing a traverse of this little summit.

Our route on Burphu South

Divyesh on the summit of Burphu South

Our return to Camp 1 coincided with the arrival of Soop Singh and Laloo with two large gas cylinders. After a lunch of macaroni I slid down the the fixed rope in the gully and switched it with a shorter one as we would need all the length we could muster for what lay ahead.

Finding a viable route on Burphu Dhura entailed descending about 40 meters east from our camp into a snow basin to reach the bottom of a snow gully. Over the next couple of days we fixed ten rope lengths up this in indifferent weather and in somewhat trying conditions, to achieve a 350 meter height gain.

After six days at Camp 1, I wrote in my journal for 4th October : "One more involuntary Rest Day! Winds and snow all night put paid to our plans of shifting to our "summit camp" Lunch, tea, soup, dinner flowed in one seamless chronology with lots of dozing in between..... Just finished reading the 3rd Roald Dahl story - The Sound Machine. Satya regaled me with stories of his travels and wanderings in the mountains.... the tent fabric flaps intermittently like a live thing."

Driven more by a need to do something rather than a rational assessment of the conditions, five of us (Jinendra opted to stay back) set out the next day to establish and occupy what we optimistically hoped would be Camp II. The final part of the gully was very steep and by the time we had hacked out a totally inadequate ledge for one tent and a shallow snow cave for Narinder and Satya (they volunteered!) it was close to 8 pm. We were cold, exhausted, dehydrated, hungry.

Route detail

Traversing across to the base of the final rock gully to C2

Narinder, left, and Satya cheer themselves up with chai in their cave

Divyesh, Bhupinder and I squeezed into the 2 person Hellman bivouac tent. I was the one on the outside and we spent a fairly cramped and gymnastic night listening to the howling storm. That night was one of the very few that I have spent in the mountains absolutely petrified, expecting any moment to be blown clean off the mountain and hurled down unforgiving cliffs of rock, ice and snow. Things were no better in the morning. We tried in a half half hearted manner to push the route up further but by the afternoon the storm came back with renewed vigour. Bhupinder, Narinder and I decided to descend, leaving the more optimistic Satya and Divyesh to spend another storm wracked night in the tent.

I stand outside our partially collapsed Camp 2 tent

Narinder all set to go down

A harrowing descent through deep soft snow in poor visibility was made all the more dramatic when thunder reverberated all around us and the wind carried spindrift through our shell jackets to chill our bones.

My downward progress can best be described as undignified. I would look for a place to plant my feet down the slope, then venture the lower limb into what I hoped would be a firm step, and often collapse in a clumsy heap, thankful for the fixed rope that I was clipped into. Slab avalanches coming off the nearby slopes added to the fear factor. The little snow basin which led up back to the camp was the most difficult to negotiate: the deep and soft snow ensured that movement was agonisingly slow. Thunder, wind, and more snow welcomed us as we reached the safe haven of Camp 1. We did not envy Satya and Divyesh their precarious perch higher up on the mountain.

Balwant braved the storm to deliver a piping hot mug of tea from the kitchen shelter and once again I was grateful that we had our hardy Kumaoni friends as support staff. Our lives would have been ten times more difficult without their presence.

The winds howled all night, driving snow up against the wall of my tent. I stared mesmerised at the logo of the manufacturer (Camp) of the rather flimsy shelter: the picture of the wolf was perhaps quite appropriate to the conditions we were experiencing but this was certainly not a tent suited for mountaineering. I longed for the more robust tents I had used in the past - like the  North Face VE25 or the Wild Country Mountain Quasar. (Please note that this is not a paid endorsement, it is my personal opinion based on my experiences!). I expected the poles to snap and the wind to tear the fabric to shreds any moment.

At the 8 am radio call on 7th October, Divyesh informed us that he and Satya were on their way down after a brutal night which he called "an epic for survival". We played cards in Narinder's tent while we waited for them. Duryodhan spotted them at around 11 am, descending the last of the fixed ropes to the snow basin. Narinder and Balwant immediately set out to relieve them of their loads and help them back to the tents. Both Divyesh and Satya had had a harrowing experience surviving the storm and were really glad to see Balwant and Narinder.

I watched (with a telephoto lens) Satya descend to the snow basin below Camp 1

Divyesh is all smiles as he reaches Camp 1

As if to mock us, the next day dawned clear and spotless, the rising sun in the east tinging the mountain silhouettes across the Kalabaland a tender pink. Perhaps the bad weather phase had come to an end and we were being presented with another opportunity. A thought occurred to me: we could try to climb all the way to the summit from Camp 1 and do away with the necessity of establishing an intermediate camp. The glorious morning encouraged such optimism and I voiced this aloud to Satya. We could wait out the day and if the weather held, make a go for the top on the morrow. He agreed, and so did Narinder and Divyesh.

We became transformed into peak paparazzi as the glorious weather engulfed us!

But we were short on rations, so Jinendra and Bhupinder magnanimously offered to go down. We called Advance Base on the radio to send up some sugar, dal and tea. Laloo and Soop Singh came up with those supplies and Duryodhan descended to organise porters for the return march.

Bhupinder and Jinendra bid farewell as they leave Camp 1

We spent the morning drying out, even managing to play a game of cards out in the open while soaking in the sun. Bhupinder and Jinendra left at 12:30 pm. The rest of us spent the afternoon putting our gear together and retired early for the night, hoping to make an early start.

I was awake at 12:40 am. The sky was clear and it was around -10 deg C inside my tent. That boded well for the day. After tossing and turning for about an hour I called out to Balwant (I could hear him talking to Soop Singh in their tent) to begin brewing the tea. This drink materialised around 2:10 am and was actually lightly flavoured coffee. At around 3 am they brought breakfast of "dalia". After wolfing this down I began to get dressed and I could hear the others moving around in their tents as well.

Himalayan climbing can be summarised as a series of embarrassing situations punctuated by brief moments of sheer ecstasy. As if to prove this theory, my bowels sent out excruciatingly painful signals just when I had completed zipping up my salopettes. I fumbled with the zips, swore under my breath, and dived out of the tent with partly laced boots and ran clumsily as far as I could in the freezing cold to find a spot where I  could safely stamp out a hole and deliver the contents of my stomach safely without contaminating the campsite! When I returned to the tent, I felt exhausted with the ordeal of dealing with my sudden loose motions. After regaining my breath, I continued the business of suiting up when Satya called out from the other tent. "Hey, Aloke, are you ready yet?"

"Give me another couple of minutes," I yelled back, struggling to strap on my crampons with fingers that felt like wood.

We left the camp at 4:45 am, Satya and I on one rope while Divyesh and Narinder shared the other. In spite of my down clothing and the Goretex jacket over it, I felt unreasonably cold. My headlamp kept slipping off my head and this made me increasingly irritated and frustrated with myself. We had barely begun ascending the first fixed rope above the basin when Satya began experiencing bile problems. He began to wretch and kept throwing up. After a while he said he thought that it was prudent of him to descend. I soldiered on upwards, still not finding a rhythm and still cold even an hour after the sun had risen. Divyesh and Narinder were moving well and fast and when I saw them becoming dots on the landscape I consoled myself by focusing on the gorgeous mountain views that were unfolding. If ever God had created the perfect day for climbing, this was surely one of them; I felt blessed just being able to soak in the magnificence.

The tents at Camp 1 looked like little dots as I climbed higher

When I arrived at our intended Camp 2 site, I could see the tracks that Divyesh and Narinder had left. I followed and found myself sitting on a corniced ridge in a spectacular position, my feet dangling over the sheer drop into the Burphu Gad on the western side. The sharp ridge continued north towards the feature we had dubbed The Shark's Fin. I could see Divyesh and Narinder approaching its bottom. Once over the Shark's Fin, they would be in a fairly good position to continue on to the summit, as there did not seem to be any more significant obstacles. At least this is how it appeared from my perspective.

The upper section of Burphu Dhura as we had seen it from Burphu South

This is Divyesh's account :

"The route above the campsite required us to traverse the south ridge along its east face for 15m. We then broke through the cornice to get on top of the ridge till we reached a prominent shelf on the south ridge. This section was very tricky and Narinder did a fine lead. We fixed our last available rope on this section. The rope fell short of the shelf and we carefully belayed each other on the knife edged south ridge. The section took a long time to negotiate. We waited for Aloke at this point, hoping he would catch up with us soon. However he was not yet in sight and we had to make the decision to continue since we were now running out of time."

This same knife edge section now stopped me in my tracks. The snow stake that anchored the last rope to the ridge was now below me. From here onwards I would be on my own. I toyed with the idea of anchoring the rope that I carried in my rucksack to the stake and moving gingerly up the knife edged ridge. Then I ran a possible scenario through my mind: if I were to slip and plunge down the Burphu Gad side I would dangle helplessly, suspended by 50 metres of nylon and probably not be able to climb back up the overhanging face, assuming that I had not suffered any bodily harm during my fall. The thought sent shivers up my already cold spine. No, I told myself, that was not an option worth contemplating for a married man with a nine year old son. As far as I was concerned, The Shark's Fin was a Fin Too Far!

From my perch on the south ridge, I had this fantastic view of the Nanda Devi peaks (left) and the Hardeol group of peaks (centre)

Nanda Kot (left) and Nanda Devi (centre)

From left to right, Suitilla, Panch Chuli II, Chaudhara and Rajrambha were a feast for my eyes.

So I made myself comfortable on the ridge, took a couple of pictures and began my descent. My prayers went up for Divyesh and Narinder to reach the summit safely and return. But it was not to be. Divyesh takes up the story once again :

"Our next obstacle was the Shark's Fin, a steep icy feature on the ridge of about 150m. It dominated the route ahead. We soloed up the first 50m. The angle got steeper and the ice harder. We belayed each other up the next 100m till we were at the crest of the Shark's Fin. What lay ahead kept us gaping. A thin corniced ridge of about 150m snaked up towards the summit dome. This connecting ridge consisted of a shredded rock ridge covered by a few feet of snow and ice, plunging at several places and corniced alarmingly towards the east. To negotiate this patch would be a delicate affair and take considerable time. Since we had no fixed rope with us, it would also mean that we would have to spend as much time or perhaps more on our way back. We confronted the "mountaineer's dilemma". To advance or to withdraw, to overstep the fine boundary delineating courage from foolishness or to plunge forward heedless...... The summit was within touching distance, yet the time it would take to reach the top and come back to the safety of the fixed ropes might not be sufficient...... Finally I decided to be graceful in defeat and we retreated with reluctant steps.... We had missed our objective by a hair's breath..... Only 100m of vertical and about 200m of horizontal distance separated us from the summit."

Divyesh and Narinder on the Shark's Fin

The IMF launched another two expeditions the following year to woo the Burphu bride. They followed the same route that we had pioneered. The team that went to Burphu Dhura in Sept 2000 finally managed to climb the mountain.

Overall view of our route

On 27 September 2000, the summit was reached by Loveraj Dharmashaktu, Balwant Singh Kapkoti (the same Balwant who had accompanied us to Camp 1, his last name denotes the village of Kapkot where he hails from) and Ramesh. I sought a little comfort in the thought that they had reached the top on my 45th birthday!

Balwant Singh Kapkoti 

As we retraced our steps back down the valley, an autumn chill was in the air, the stream near Base Camp froze overnight and a solitary pika nibbled on the grass among the deserted stone houses of Ralam. Burphu Dhura and the Kalabaland would soon drape themselves in their winter garments and only privileged residents like the snow leopard and the lammergeier would have access to their splendour.

Pika at Ralam

Useful References:

1. "Mountain of Long Life" by Harish Kapadia. Himalayan Journal Vol. 36. Pg. 68. An account of the first    ascent of Chiring We.

2. "Breathless on Burphu" by Lt.Cmdr. Satyabrata Dam. Himalayan Journal Vol. 56. Pg. 81. The official account of the 1999 expedition to Burphu Dhura.

3. "The Kalabaland Expedition, 1982" by Amit Bhargava. Himalayan Journal Vol. 39 Pg. 177.

4. "Two IMF expeditions to peak Burphu Dhura in 2000". The Alpine Journal 2001. Pg. 250.

5. The Scottish Himalayan Expedition by W. H. Murray (published in 1951 by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. London). Pages 225 - 238 recount the crossing of the Yankchar pass and the Ralam Dhura from Ralam to the Lassar Yankti and down into the Darma valley. Murray is one of the finest writers in mountaineering literature and the book is a classic of almost unfettered exploration of parts of the Garhwal and Kumaon almost sixty five years ago - decades before Google Earth, GPS and satellite imagery took the wonder out of discovering new worlds!

Harsingh Sr. A veteran of countless Himalayan expeditions, he made sure we never went hungry. He was equally at home churning out dal bhat or dishing out delicacies like gulab jamun at Advance Base!

Duryodhan. He organised our porters.

Laloo.

Postscript :

Satya and Divyesh returned in 2002 to climb Suitilla. For Satya, Burphu Dhura was merely a minor bump in his quest for bigger challenges. He has since climbed Everest four times, skied both to the North and South poles, climbed on every continent on the planet, is part of the community of TED Fellows, and continues to inspire and regale audiences throughout the world with his talks. And yes, he did autograph for me a copy of his first collection of detective stories (Eyewitness), published in 2000.

For more on his exploits go to : http://satyabratadam.com/

For one of his more entertaining talks, see : www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgL1WnAVAeE

For a rather tame outing with him 13 years later see : http://thappyfeet.blogspot.ca/2013/09/a-dawdle-with-dog-and-dam.html

Suitilla from the Kalabaland Glacier

L to R : Divyesh Muni, Aloke Surin, Jinendra Maibam, Bhupinder Pant, Satyabrata Dam, Narinder Chouhan

She spins wool.....

.... while he gets to smoke!

Panch Chuli - Part II. Lessons in Humility.

"Bitter February, within and without. Mood to watch the weather; raw and overcast, near to freezing." Dick Francis might as well have been summarising our mental state, instead of launching into Chapter One of his book "Bolt".

I laid the paperback novel borrowed from Ravish down on my sleeping bag and peeked out of the tent door.   Overcast, certainly, but far removed from the jockey-author's world of racehorses and evil doings. The brilliant white glow of the Sona icefall was accentuated by the backdrop of dark grey clouds swirling among the seracs and fissures. The emerald green meadows swept up to the base of the glacier. A few stray yaks meandered high up on the slopes where their owners had left them weeks ago. Eventually, their human masters would come up from Son-Duktu and herd their precious charges down in preparation for their annual migration down the Darmaganga as winter descended from the eternal snows.

More than a week had gone by since we arrived at our first Base Camp. We had spent the subsequent days ferrying loads across the moraine of the Meola glacier to where our eventual Base Camp would be - this was exactly the same place where the Scots had pitched their Camp II in 1950. When I looked through the viewfinder of my camera, I was blown away by the similarity of the two camps, 38 years apart in time!

The Scottish camp - 1950
(Frontispiece, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition by W.H.Murray)

Our Base Camp, 1988

It was an exciting thing to be following in the footsteps of the pioneer explorers. I set aside Dick Francis' tale of dark deeds set in a faraway isle and thumbed through Murray's account :

"To each side of the summit great glaciers descended: on the left the Meola, on the right the Sona, each ending up in ice-falls four thousand feet high....Their lower halves were impossible; the upper halves, leading to the south and north summit ridges respectively, looked climbable......Between the two great glaciers a great rock ridge dropped from the summit five thousand feet eastwards. Below it, and still dividing the glaciers, stood a wide cliff. In its right hand half the cliff was three thousand feet high and towards the left two thousand.....We could see that a very steep grassy shelf slanted up the cliffs, starting just to the right of a prominent waterfall and then rising leftwards...."

Sketch map by Robert Anderson in Murray's book

Murray's original sketch enhanced by Rajesh Bathija

Our plan was to go up the slanting grass shelf and establish a camp above it. From here, our paths would separate: while the Scotsmen had explored the Sona glacier to gain access to the north col of the mountain, we were hoping to skirt the upper Meola icefall on its right hand side and find our way to the base of the southeast face. If that was possible, we would attempt one of the systems of buttresses and gullies which dropped steeply from the north ridge of Panch Chuli II.

The Scottish approach via the Sona glacier

However, man proposes, and the weather disposes. As soon as we had finished ferrying all our loads across the moraine of the Meola to what was to become our final Base Camp, the heavens opened up and the rain came down in sheets. After a couple of days of being incarcerated in our soggy tents, we decided to retreat to the relative comfort of the dilapidated schoolhouse in Duktu, to dry out. Our arrival coincided with the return of the trekking party from Sipu and the demise of a sheep which had fallen off a cliff. The owner sold us about 2 kilos of the meat and the whole team, with the exception of Jayant and Raghu who were vegetarians, feasted on this flesh over 2 meals.

When the trekkers began their journey back to Tawaghat, I decided to accompany them to Nagling to divert my mind - and to spend a few more hours with Margaret! After getting over one more farewell, I marched back to Duktu with an SPF (Special Police Force) officer and his batman. He offered me chai at their post in Baling, we exchanged names and addresses, and he invited the entire team to the SPF camp at Goh, just beyond Duktu. In the event, we never really took up his invitation.

Taking advantage of a brief spell of clear weather we hurried back to Base Camp and over the next three days had managed to find our way up over the grass shelf to a potential site for a camp at the base of the big rocky cliff which drops down from the mountain and separates the upper Meola from the upper Sona. There were faint shepherd tracks which we followed all the way to some broad gently sloping pastures which housed a rudimentary stone enclosure for sheep. The initial climb was steep but worth every gasp of breath: as we crested the last rise, stupendous views of Panch Chuli V and IV took our breath away. A little further up and Panch Chuli III came into view. Looking back to the east, the valley of the Sona dropped away to the little dots that were the twin villages of Son-Duktu, and beyond rose an impressive array of unnamed and unclimbed peaks.

The first view of Panch Chuli V as we topped out onto the first grass shelf

A little later, Panch Chuli IV (right) crept into view

Panch Chuli IV

As we ascended a rocky ramp at the edge of the Meola, Panch Chuli III was the last one to appear

Looking east we could see the ripening fields of millet and barley around the villages of Son-Duktu

Kum Kum leads the way up some ropes that we fixed to secure our route to Camp  I

The weather window proved to be short lived. Soon the rain clouds began to mobilise and we were trapped in our nylon shelters at Base Camp once again. One more week went by in a constant barrage of rain; sometimes it would be mixed with sleet. There were ominous sounds emanating from both the Meola and the Sona icefalls as masses of ice shifted and towers collapsed. One day there was  a frightening volley of rocks shooting down the grass ledges as the ridges above became unstable. Our time was spent cooking, eating, dozing, reading, and once every afternoon, at precisely 4:55 pm, listening to a special weather bulletin broadcast by All India Radio for us. We laughed when the announcer said, "....and now for a special weather bulletin for Expedition Beauty (for some unfathomable reason, this was the code name assigned to us by the Indian Mountaineering Foundation who had arranged for this special weather report)......" The report only served to confirm our miserably wet and cold state.

As I sat in my tent and listened to the patter of the rain on the tent fly, I could not help contrast this trip with my first Himalayan climb. In 1985, exactly three years ago, I had left Mumbai on the15th of August and was standing atop my first summit two weeks later, at 20,000 feet! Perhaps that was sheer beginner's luck...

We decided to retreat to Duktu once again!

Finally, on the 26th of Sept., a full month since our departure from Mumbai, Ravish and I reoccupied Base Camp. The Khadalia couple would come up a day later as Kum Kum (who is a doctor) had to attend to an old lady she had treated for a cut a few weeks earlier.

The next day, Ravish and I set off to establish and occupy our Camp I. We re-tensioned some of the ropes that we had fixed up the rock / grass gully. We were grateful for the security of the ropes as the constant rain and snow had made ascending the gully a bit of a challenge.The grass slopes at our proposed camp site were now under more than a foot of snow. We pitched one tent and hurriedly ate dinner, followed by some chocolate fudge (which Margaret had especially made back in Mumbai) to celebrate my birthday up here!

Camp I

Brahma Kamal - the Lotus of God, growing at Camp I

The Pandavas may have stopped here to cook their divine meal; as far as we were concerned, our menu was in the slow cooker and the ingredients consisted of more rain, snow, and sleet. Days went by: we managed to put in another camp and set off on a couple of reconnaissances. The prospect of actually descending into the chaos of the upper Meola to gain the col between peaks II and III was totally unattractive, to say the least. It was ridden with crevasses and behaved in an extremely fickle manner during the period of our stay. We unanimously agreed that we were not going to risk life and limb in the midst of its ice towers and crevasses. We were firm believers in the dictum : There are Bold Climbers and there are Old Climbers; but there are no Old Bold Climbers!

Camp II

We cast around to see if we could traverse on the lower slopes of the east ridge and then drop down towards the col. A brief foray revealed that the obstacles were considerable: steep rocky ridges barred the way. Our little expedition was just not geared to tackle terrain of that nature. We spent 12 days in increasingly cold and unpredictable weather and finally had to accept the fact that this approach was not practical for us. Time, and our supplies, was also running out. The last of the summer inhabitants of the Darma valley would soon be heading down to more amenable environments and we would be hard pressed to find pack animals for the trek down to Tawaghat.

Upper Meola icefall leading to the col below Panch Chuli III ( left) and II (south ridge just visible)

Ravish and I set off on one last sortie, climbing above our Camp II to see if we could traverse the steep rock  and find a viable route so we could drop down on to the relatively flat ground of the saddle between Panch Chuli II and III where a camp site looked feasible. After a couple of hours we were convinced that the climbing would be too technical for our modest talents and the route would be very strung out. As if to compensate for our disappointment, the day brought us some fantastic photo opportunities and I was glad to keep turning the film advance lever of my trusty Olympus OM1 SLR camera.

Ravish poses with the icy splendour of Panch Chuli III serving as a gorgeous backdrop

The col between the south ridge (right) of Panch Chuli II and Panch Chuli III (left)

Panch Chuli IV

Panch Chuli V

With a mixture of relief and sadness, we turned back and hurried down to camp. Our minds were now focused on the business of getting down safely to Base Camp with all our stuff. A lammergeier spotted our small and futile human movements and swooped down low, gliding a few feet above us. The wind rushing through its feathers sounded surreal. It was a magnificent bird, and the bright cold sunlight split into shafts of dynamic rays as it filtered through the massive wingspan. I think it was telling us that we did not belong, that our fragile existence was better served if we stayed down in the valleys and the plains!

Above Camp II

The view east

We were back in Duktu on the 12th October. The whole village was bustling with activity, families packing up to go down the valley, making sure their houses were locked for the winter, their harvests of millet stored in deep excavations in the ground and covered with branches and leaves and straw. Winter would soon descend onto this small hamlet and everything would be buried under the snow. When the families returned after the spring thaw they would uncover their precious cargo. By tradition, one family would stay back and keep an eye on things during the cold winter months. And the next year another family would stay behind and so the responsibility would be passed on...It was wonderful to witness this age old custom of community co-operation high in the Himalaya.

Autumn creeps down the slopes to Duktu

Because demand for pack animals was now so high, we barely managed to get some for our own move back to Tawaghat. In the end, though, everything worked out and we joined the caravan of Bhotia families: men, women, children, goats all walking down the mountain trails with ceaseless chatter and the tinkling of the bells round the necks of the mules and donkeys carrying the luggage. With our little transistor radio, we caught up with happenings in the rest of the world. The bad weather that had plagued us was not exclusive to our little area; rain and snow storms had swept all across the Himalaya that September, from east to west. One unfortunate party of 6 trekkers had even perished on a pass in the Lahul / Zanskar region. We were lucky to have been out of harm's way during that period.

The elegant form of Panch Chuli V bids us adieu as we descend down the Darmaganga

When the shadows in the steep valleys lengthened, the caravan would halt and wood smoke from the many fires would waft around the camp. The glow from the little hearths had a warm, human touch reflected in the weather beaten faces of the mountain folk huddled around them. Even though the light could not compare with the ethereal luminescence of the Pandavas' fires on the Chulis, it was a timely reminder that as mere mortals we had been privileged to spend a few weeks in some of the most gorgeous mountain landscapes in the world. And for that we were grateful.