When mountains become a mundane monotony
In the last episode of my blog
(Prologue to Africa Part IV: Blanks on the map) I had talked about the
exploratory trips that I had undertaken in 2011. But surely there were more to
2011 than just those three.
In July 2011, my old friend Martin
Muecke and I dreamt of climbing Mount Satopanth (7075m). Michael Kohler joined
in and the team became threesome.
Together with our Sherpa support team
we were only 6 people ( Martin, Michael, Thendup, Lakpa, Mingma and myself)
trying to get our way up the summit of Satopanth in a lightweight style and
everything went well till the summit day.
After pitching our base camp in Vasuki
Tal; we had set up an ABC and two further and higher camps putting us
strategically located for the summit bid. On the summit day heavy smog engulfed
us and the forecast ahead was of long, heavy snow days. We decided to turn back
within 100m of the summit with not so happy faces.
Satopanth had other surprises in
store.
While working our way up the mountain,
on one of the load ferry days to the Advanced Base; Martin and I spotted
something odd at the bottom of a moraine slope. When we got closer it was evident
that we had stumbled upon an accident site.
It was a crushed, collapsed tent and
from its torn areas emerged human body parts. I decided to get a closer look as
I knew this could be the unfortunate lost trekkers (2010) of Kalindi Khal. Soon
I was close and decided to open one of the backpacks in order to find some sort
of identification. I requested Martin to take photographs as I opened one of
the backpacks. Out came a plastic bag in which I soon found out an Indian flag
along with a certain club flag (HDMLA). I was now sure that these 'were' the lost
trekkers of kalindi.
Here is a link to that story as unfolded by the Indian media. They got my name wrong of course but close though! They called me "Alind Mukherjee"! They could have easily written " A blind Mukherjee" and later call it a typo! I like that!
It was a heavy feeling. I remember
both me and Martin were in tears at the first shocking sight and for many
nights after that whenever I closed my eyes the unfortunate and the dead
visited.
I made sure that the news of sighting
of their bodies reaches Kolkata as fast as possible hoping to start a process
of recovery of the dead bodies for the last rights.
Much later, after the expedition to
Satopanth was over and I had reached home myself; I saw a race (by a handful of
West Bengal mountaineers) to claim publicity over the sad affair. Everyone was
trying to present their case in a fashion that the credit of finding the poor
souls belonged to them alone.
To those friends of mine I would like
to say, I never seek any credit or glory in stumbling upon the unfortunate
souls. I rather feel warned like a soft, yet cold deadly whisper; that I could
be next. (I have intentionally not added any photographs of the lost trekkers here.)
The mountains and these relentless
theatricals of climbing them were quickly becoming a mundane monotony for me and
I wished for an escape.
The opportunity of getting away from the Indian Himalaya came in August 2011 as
Rajeev Ranjan wanted to climb Mont Blanc and decided to take me along as his
guide. Rajeev’s friend Bhavin Gandhi joined the party and soon we met in
Chamonix.
We attempted Mont Blanc by the Gouter
route. High wind stopped us from reaching its summit. Rajeev and me turned back
from the Valot refuge. After a couple of days I climbed Mont Blanc du Tacul, a
beautiful climb from the Aigle du Midi. That is another story but it was still not the escape I was longing for.
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