Berry Straight Up

Himalayan Tales of the Unexpected
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-909461-11-6
Verlag: Vertebrate Digital
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten

Born in the foothills close to the Himalaya Steve Berry had from an early age an urge to become a traveller, an adventurer, an explorer, and until the age of thirty-eight years he tried hard to satisfy two opposing forces. Half of him wanted to find a satisfactory career path while the other half wanted to be free and specifically explore the Himalaya. In the end he found a compromise to satisfy both needs. In 1987 with his climbing friend Steve Bell he founded Himalayan Kingdoms, a travel company specialising in trekking and expedition holidays. This book is a collection of stories from his early expeditions to the Himalaya prior to 1987. There are tales of encounters with bears, escapes from avalanches, summit successes and failures, love stories mystical connections, Himalayan storms, near death accidents, raw travel across the Indian sub-continent, and grapples with bureaucracy. It is told warts and all. It starts with tales of youthful naivety in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, progresses to what Steve describes as his best ever adventure, the first British ascent of Nun, 7,135m/23,410ft, in Kashmir, and finishes with the truth of what happened on the failed attempt to climb Bhutan's highest peak, Gangkar Punsum, 7550m/24,770ft. Of Straight Up Steve says: 'I just really wanted people to enjoy reading of our adventures the way they were.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Berry, Steve

Leseproben

— Chapter 1 —

The Very First Time

The bear had gone through the only patch of snow where we could pitch a tent just a few hours before. We knew this for certain as it had snowed in the morning as Matt and I had laboured three thousand feet, with crucifying loads, from our last camp in the Solang Nala valley in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The bear prints were still crisp.

Before we set off Matt had given me a convincing impression of knowing where he was going, so I followed him out of the dripping, soggy forest, up through the snow line and over the glacial moraine. Descending a thousand feet we had found a level place for our tent, but the fresh snow was criss-crossed by bear tracks. We had no choice – we had had to camp there. It was the only place, and it would soon be dark. The bear’s imprint was almost as big as my mountaineering boot and you could clearly see the sharp claw marks. We were already two thousand feet above the snow line and were amazed to see the tracks leading off and up several thousand feet more above us. We concluded that it must have come this way heading north to cross the Tentu Pass, 16,000ft, which gives access into another valley system to the west.

Another thing that amazed us was that, after examining the tracks, it was clear that the bear walked for long distances upright. Evenly spaced prints, not two on the right followed by two on the left. We knew nothing about bears – did they walk long distances upright? Could it perhaps be a Yeti? The paw shape and the claw marks were perfectly visible. It had to be a bear.

We pitched our two-man tent on a stamped-out snow platform, cooked a frugal supper, and organised our climbing gear for the morning. Excitement, adrenalin and fear fought for space in our young heads. There we were, hoping to climb an 18,000ft/5,500 metre mountain, days from the nearest village, camped on the snow on the only level spot for miles, surrounded by bear tracks that could only have been made a few hours previously. We were trespassers, and not far away was an irresistibly powerful and savage animal with big teeth and sharp claws. Finally, we rationed ourselves to a few slugs from our small plastic bottle of whisky before making our preparations in case the bear came back. We wrapped the heads of our two ice axes with handkerchiefs, soaked them with some of our precious petrol, and propped them in the awning with matches nearby. We were laughing a lot by now.

This was India and we were just two young, fairly impoverished men far from home. We had only been able to afford the services of two porters, who carried our kit up to the end of the valley, and had then departed. We also knew for a fact that there were bears in the area as we had already had one encounter. At the end of the first day I had gone for a walk on my own above camp and seen two in a meadow about a quarter of a mile away. I had backed down the hill carefully without them spotting me. The local people in the town of Manali had told us several frightening stories about the ‘Lal Balu’, or red bear. Of how a local woman had been abducted by a male bear and had lived as its wife for several years before escaping. Of how people who had gone for a walk in the woods on their own had never been seen again – eaten by the bears it was said. To be honest we had counted on them not being above the snowline.

It was my father’s influence that had brought me to India. He had served there in the war and during his leave had ventured into the Himalaya. My brother and I grew up with stories of his adventures in those privileged days of the Raj when a young British officer could wangle the use of army trucks, lay his hands on expedition kit, and be entertained in grand style by local dignitaries. As children we had rummaged through tea trunks in our loft and pulled out his old expedition gear, pretending to be brave explorers. In his rather obsessive way there were excessively annotated maps, expedition reports, photo albums of his climbs and copies of the Himalayan Club Journal, with more copious notes in the margin. The romance had rubbed off on me, and from a very early age I had made a solemn promise to myself that one day I too would go exploring in the greatest mountain range on earth.

For a long time normal life interfered with this ambition. I had to study, find a job, buy a house, but with no wife in prospect at the age of twenty eight, and with rents to cover my mortgage, I decided it was now or never. Unfortunately my friends in the Bristol rock- climbing circle were all out of funds, or tied down, except one – my regular climbing partner, Matt Peacock. Although his appearance was utterly conventional Matt led a very different life to most. He had rebelled against his father’s desire that he become a bank manager, and instead had followed a life of working night shifts in a bakery, six months at a stretch, and having saved enough he would then travel alone throughout India. Six months work, six months travel in India – that’s how he had been living for some years now. He would be my Indian guru; he knew stuff that would see us out of tight corners. He knew all the scams conmen would try to pull on us, and his knowledge of backstreets and bazaars, the workings of Indian road and rail, and how to bargain with rickshaw drivers was an added bonus. Besides which I knew that in Matt’s company I would live high on laughter. Behind National Health glasses was a mystic, a madman, a prankster and a very talented climber.

Anyway Matt had persuaded me that he knew a couple of ‘easy’ peaks just north of Manali, that shambolic Indian hill station popular with hippies, which is surrounded by forests, terraced hillsides and pretty villages, and a stone’s throw from the mountains of my father’s black and white photographs. That place I had so long wanted to reach. I had handed in my notice to Hartnell Taylor and Cook, a fine upstanding firm of surveyors, purchased a ticket on Iraqi Air from a decidedly shady bucket shop, and told my tenants I would be back, God willing, in three months. I had made a will which stated that in the event of my untimely demise, my friends would have to perform a variety of outrageous tasks to get a share of my meagre estate. I had said fond farewells to my despairing and worried parents, and arranged to meet Matt in Delhi. He was as usual mid way through another huge tour of his beloved India.

Iraqi Air had taken off, landed with a technical fault, taken off again and not worsened the airline’s safety record by making it all the way to Delhi, via Baghdad where the airport was being repaired after a bomb blast. I disembarked with an Indian gentleman who was smuggling in watches by wearing scores of them under his clothes, on both arms and legs. This was 1977 long before metal detectors had become the bain of air travel. Leaving the Jumbo the heat hit me with the force akin to opening an oven door. India is a shock from the word go.

Here is how it was – we had very little money between us and so every rupee seemed important. We argued with the rickshaw boys until sometimes they would drive off in disgust, we stayed in hotels where rats ran across the end of the room, we got bitten by bed bugs, and we ate our food from street vendors. Matt was an old India hand and well-acclimatised, but within forty eight hours I was curled up in a foetal position wishing I had not been tempted by the sweet cakes in the market. However, the train tickets to Chandigarh were already bought and Matt shepherded me through the heat and the crowds and onto a steam train heading north. I literally rolled off the train at Chandigarh where an old Indian gentleman befriended us and guided us to the First Class Waiting Room, while he found us a taxi and took us to a hotel. Soon I was tucked up in bed feeling like death. I lay there for two days, in between all too frequent visits to the bathroom, and our old Indian friend came in each day bringing us bananas. We found he could quote from memory huge chunks of Shakespeare. While serving in the Indian Army he had joined the Drama Society and had acted in King Lear. Having studied the play at school I knew his renditions were word perfect. Finally, having expertly made us his friend for life he made his pitch for a handout. How could we refuse. From the sweltering plains we had then travelled twelve hours through the foothills on a public bus to Manali. There had been punctures and landslides on the way, but the most serious equipment failure of the battered, vomit-covered bus was the silencing of the Italian triple air horns. As these were in constant use it was rather important that they were fixed!

Arrive in Manali we eventually did and, after one flea bitten hotel, we shifted to the local Youth Hostel, next to a small shanty town of Tibetan refugees, whose dogs frequently harassed us. There we settled for eleven days and, in between bouts of bad weather and illness, we prepared our lazy bodies for our first high altitude climb of an 18,000 ft mountain called Ladakhi Peak, by suitably punishing day walks in the foothills. Finally though we had to tear ourselves away from the flesh pots, and having hired two porters to help carry to the snowline, set off on our first Himalayan climb.

The night was dark, extremely dark, and not a breath of wind even rustled the tent. Altitude, whisky and childish humour had meant we had laughed ourselves to a standstill. We had used our two favourite camp games. The first was taking it in turns to invent more and more ridiculous ways of crossing the Sahara desert, while the other was to describe in as much detail as possible our own favourite food dishes. When you are starving on a diet of rehydrated food and powdered mash, and have been away from home for some weeks, this is...