Soliloquy of a Wandering Pilgrim

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. Sato...

Blanks on the map 2011 has been a special year for me. The year was special because it had given me opportunities to focus on a few blanks on the map around great mountains such as Nanda Devi and Kangchenjunga. It had given me opportunities to concentrate on solving exploratory problems that existed in the mountains near me. My first objective was to force a route through the Rukel- Rongyoung gorge systems of North Sikkim (March 2011).  J Claude White, the first British political officer to Sikkim had pioneered this route back in 1890. After White, the same route was repeated by Harold Raeburn (1920) and Bill Tilman(1936). In March 2011, we wanted to do their route in reverse and thus rediscovering (and taking first ever photographs) the Rukel- Rongyoung river and valley systems. It was a great success and a stepping stone for our successive expeditions later that year (November and December) to the elusive Zemu Gap (a long standing problem on the great east spur of...