I do not profess to being a mountain climber. I have never been a particularly sporty person, and have no great head for heights. I did climb Mount Hikurangi a few years back with my friends Andrew and Colin. Mount Hikurangi is located near to the East Cape of New Zealand, about 20 kilometres inland from Ruatoria, and some 150 kilometres north of Gisborne, remote even by New Zealand standards. I remember it took us two days to climb to the summit of the 1,750 metre mountain, and down again. We stayed the night in a backpackers’ hut high up on the mountain. It was not a hard climb, not a climb at all really since we kept on our feet most of the time and didn’t require ropes. The only time we didn’t keep to our feet was when we slid down a scree slope. No, it was not really a mountain climb, more a wearying hike; but there was a sense of achievement at the end of it. This marked the pinnacle of my climbing career – my Everest if you like.
Every true mountain climber’s dream must be to climb Everest. Only a few hundred have ever achieved this, and only a few thousand Westerners can have been lucky enough to have even seen the mountain. My hope was to join them. In 1976 I was in India and determined to see the highest mountain on Earth.
I remember the train journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling. This was an experience and an adventure in itself. First of all, buying the ticket was a remarkable feat of endurance, second only to climbing the great mountain itself. To get a ticket in India, you have to queue up not once, but twice. If you think the British are great queuers, then you haven’t seen India! It has a lot to do with bureaucracy and giving people a job. This was before the computer age, of course, but I doubt things are any better now. Judging by what I read recently about the English cricketers’ tour of India, I’m quite sure they’re not. I forget now exactly why I had to queue twice, but I think once was to pay for the journey and the second time was to secure a reserved seat.
My journey to the railway station was memorable for the effect it had on all my senses. I travelled in one of those motorised tricycle taxis, called an auto rickshaw or tuk-tuk in some parts of the world. My eyes beheld the poor of Calcutta begging on the street side, and rich Indians in fine robes passing them by (just like the Priest and the Pharisee in the story of The Good Samaritan). My ears were subjected to a cacophony of horns blaring and shouts as cars, taxis, trucks, buses and rickshaws jostled for road space in a land where there appears to be no road code, and almost drowned out the voice of a street-corner speaker calling for the resignation of Mrs. Indira Ghandi. My nose savoured the rich aromas of spices from stores lining our route, mixed with the foul odours of excrement and of carbon monoxide belching from exhausts.
The next act of endurance was to actually get unmolested onto the train. The ticket hall and platform were crowded with passengers and what seemed like an equal number of coolies, all vying for the right to carry your bags for you. I was travelling light and saw no necessity to have my bags carried. I dug in my heels and refused on the grounds that I was quite capable of carrying them myself, thank you. Looking back in hindsight, it was very mean of me since a few rupees would have been nothing to me, but might have bought a meal for one of those coolies and his family.
I travelled second-class. This wasn’t so much because I couldn’t afford first-class – I could – but rather because of some ingrained idea that first-class was snobbish, and I wanted to mix with the ordinary people. How mistaken I was. Second-class meant that the wooden seats had no padding, and several people had to share the same compartment with me with little space to move. It wasn’t as bad a third-class, of course, or as bad as riding on the roof; but it was a little uncomfortable and, after several hours, more than a little so. I also had to grit my teeth and accept graciously a titbit of food generously offered by one of my Indian fellow travellers. I don’t recall what it was now, but it didn’t look very nourishing and the hand that offered it didn’t look very clean. But, so as not to offend my travelling companion, I accepted and ate the morsel. This could have led to a case of ‘Delhi belly’, but fortunately I suffered no ill consequences. The man had made this generous offer in order to engage me in conversation, either to impress me with the quality of his English, or to make me feel at home as he related what life had been like when India was still part of the Empire.
The train stopped at every station, and at every station hawkers hustled towards the open carriage windows trying to sell glasses of milky tea, lychees, or bottles of soft drink. I remember the words so well, repeated over and over: “Coca-Cola, Fanta, Limca, ice cold, very cheap”. As long as the ice was outside and not inside the drinks, they were very welcome in the stifling heat.
Those of us going on to Darjeeling had to change trains at New Jalpaiguri. The train from New Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling is the famous ‘toy train’, so called because it is smaller than conventional trains and runs on a narrower gauge track. It is pulled by a steam engine which slowly winds its way up the steep inclines towards the hill-town. The train was very crowded and we seemed to be crammed in like cattle. The 100 kilometre journey took about seven and a half hours, but it was so uncomfortable that it seemed like much longer. The views, however, were magnificent. As I looked out of the window back down the valley, I could see the rear carriages of the train rounding the bend that we had rounded a few moments earlier, like the tail of a snake following its body. Whenever we stopped to fill up the water tanks, crowds of people alighted from the carriages or from the rooftop, and scrambled around the embankment until it was time for the journey to recommence.
Darjeeling is built on the side of a hill and is dominated by the mountains of the Himalaya, predominantly by Kanchenjunga, at 8,586 metres the third highest mountain in the world. When I first raised my eyes in the direction of the mountain, I saw several peaks and mistakenly thought one of them was Kanchenjunga; but then I looked again and saw another peak high up above the clouds, seemingly suspended in the air, unbelievably magnificent and grand.
The town of Darjeeling is in the Indian state of West Bengal, but also visible from the hillside are the tiny kingdom of Bhutan to the east and Nepal to the west. In fact, Kanchenjunga is in Nepal. Although part of India, the people of Darjeeling are quite different from other Indians; they are more akin to the people of Nepal. The people are poor, but there is not the same sense of squalor as in Calcutta. At least there are signs on the side of the road saying: ‘Squatting in the road is prohibited’. The climate is moderate compared with the Indian sub-continent and there are no monsoons; instead it rains quite frequently owing to the proximity of the mountains.
Darjeeling is also famous for its tea. On the hillsides surrounding the town there are rows and rows of tea bushes. As I wandered around the area in the misty rain on my second day there, I recall seeing women picking the ripe tea leaves, which they deftly threw into baskets on their backs.
The following day, I was up at 3.15 a.m. and outside the hotel half an hour later waiting for a Landrover to pick me up to take me to Tiger Hill. Tiger Hill is about two hours’ drive away from Darjeeling, and from there Mount Everest can be viewed just as the sun’s first rays illuminate its peak. At any other time of the day it is very difficult to pick out the world’s highest mountain from amongst the other surrounding peaks, and also it is much more likely to be covered in cloud. I felt excited as I waited for the Landrover, but my excitement turned to disappointment when I realised that it wasn’t going to come – the driver had forgotten me.
Later in the morning, as soon as it was open, I visited the Tourist Office where I had booked the trip. I wanted to complain about my misfortune and get my money back. I booked to go with a different company the following morning.
I was up again soon after 3 a.m., and this time the Landrover came to pick me up as arranged. The journey to Tiger Hill in the dark was an uncomfortable one over very rough roads. One of my companions in the Landrover was a young Indian student who told me that he would soon be travelling to Glasgow to study for a Masters degree in Computing. The conversation with the intelligent young man helped to pass the time in the darkness of the early morning.
When we reached our vantage point and the sun was about to rise, our final disappointment was to discover that it was raining and that a blanket of cloud covered the Himalayas.
The following day I had to depart from Darjeeling, and I never fulfilled my dream of seeing Everest.
