Seven Years in Tibet

by Heinrich Harrer

  Since then, many years have passed, but I have never been able to cut loose from Asia. How all this came about, and what it led to, I shall try to describe in this book, and as I have no experience as an author, I shall content myself with the unadorned facts.

  1

  Internment

  By the end of August 1939, we had completed our reconnaissance. We had actually found a new way up the mountain and were now waiting in Karachi for the freighter that was to take us back to Europe. Our ship was long overdue, and the war clouds were growing even denser. Chicken, Lobenhoffer, and I accordingly made up our minds to extricate ourselves from the net that the secret police had already begun to lay for us and to slip away—wherever we found an opening. Only Aufschnaiter was for staying in Karachi. He had fought in the First World War and could not believe in a second.

  The rest of us planned to break through to Persia and find our way home from there. We had no difficulty in shaking off the man who was shadowing us, and after crossing a few hundred miles of desert in our ramshackle car, we managed to reach Las Bela, a little principality to the northwest of Karachi. But there fate overtook us, and we suddenly found ourselves taken in charge by eight soldiers, on the grounds that we needed personal protection. We were, in fact, under arrest, although Germany and the British Commonwealth were not yet at war.

  Soon we were back with our trusty escort in Karachi, where we found Peter Aufschnaiter. Two days later, England did declare war on Germany. After that, everything went like clockwork. A few minutes after the declaration of war, twenty-five Indian soldiers armed to the teeth marched into a restaurant garden where we were sitting, to fetch us away. We drove in a police car to an already prepared prison camp fenced with barbed wire. But that turned out to be merely a transit camp, and a fortnight later we were transferred to the great internment camp at Ahmednagar, near Bombay. There we were quartered in crowded tents and huts in the midst of a babel of conflicting opinions and excited talk. “No,” I thought, “this atmosphere is too different from the sunlit, lonely heights of the Himalayas. This is no life for freedom-loving men.” So I began to get busy looking for ways and means of escape.

  Of course, I was not the only one planning to get away. With the help of like-minded companions, I collected compasses, money, and maps, which had been smuggled past the controls. We even managed to get hold of leather gloves and a barbed-wire cutter, the loss of which from the stores provoked a strict but fruitless investigation.

  As we all believed that the war would soon be over, we kept postponing our plans for escape. But one day we were suddenly moved to another camp. We were loaded onto a convoy of trucks en route for Deolali. Eighteen of us internees sat in each truck with a single Indian soldier to guard us. The sentry’s rifle was made fast to his belt with a chain so that no one could snatch it away. At the head and at the tail of the column was a truck full of soldiers.

  While we were in the camp at Ahmednagar, Lobenhoffer and I had determined to make a getaway before being transferred to a new camp, where fresh difficulties might endanger our chances of escape. So now we took our seats at the back end of a truck. Luckily for us, the road was full of curves and we were often enveloped in thick clouds of dust—we saw that this gave us a chance of jumping off unnoticed and vanishing into the jungle. We did not expect the guard in the truck to spot us as he was obviously occupied in watching the truck in front. He only occasionally looked around at us. One way and another, it did not seem to us that it would be too difficult to escape, and we postponed an attempt until the latest possible moment, intending to get across into a neutral Portuguese enclave situated very near the route of our convoy.

  At last the moment came. We jumped off, and I ran twenty yards off the road and threw myself down in a little hollow behind a bush. Then to my horror, the whole convoy stopped—I heard whistles and shooting and then, seeing the guard running over to the far side of the road, I had no doubt what had happened. Lobenhoffer must have been discovered, and as he was carrying our rucksack with all our gear, there was nothing for me to do but to give up my hopes of escape as well. Fortunately, I succeeded, in the confusion, in getting back into my seat without being noticed by any of the soldiers. Only my comrades knew that I had got away, and, naturally, they said nothing.

  Then I saw Lobenhoffer: he was standing with his hands up, facing a line of bayonets. I felt broken with the deadly disappointment of our failure. But my friend was really not to blame for it. He was carrying our heavy rucksack in his hand when he jumped off, and it seems that it made a clatter, which was heard by the guard; so he was caught before he could gain the shelter of the jungle. We learned from this adventure a bitter but useful lesson, namely that in any combined plan of escape, each of the escapers must carry all that he needed with him.

  In the same year, we were moved once more to another camp. This time we were conveyed by rail to the greatest POW camp in India, a few miles outside the town of Dehra Dun. Above Dehra Dun was the hill station of Mussoorie, the summer residence of the British and rich Indians. Our camp consisted of seven great sections, each surrounded by a double fence of barbed wire. The whole camp was enclosed by two more lines of wire entanglement, between which patrols were constantly on the move.

  The conditions of our new camp altered the whole situation for us. As long as we were down below in the plain, we always aimed to escape into one of the neutral Portuguese territories. Up here, we had the Himalayas right in front of us. How attractive to a mountaineer was the thought of winning through to Tibet over the passes. As a final goal, one thought of the Japanese lines in Burma or China.

  Plans for escape in these conditions and with these objectives needed the most careful preparation. By now we had given up hope of a speedy ending to the war, and so there was nothing for it—if we wished to get away—but to organize systematically. Flight through the thickly populated regions of India was out of the question; for that one would need plenty of money and a perfect knowledge of English—and I had neither. So it is easy to imagine that my preference was for the empty spaces of Tibet. And I thought of being on the Himalayas—and felt that even if my plan failed, it would be worth having a spell of freedom in the high mountains.

  I now set to work to learn a little Hindustani, Tibetan, and Japanese, and devoured all sorts of travel books on Asia, which I found in the library, especially those dealing with the districts on my prospective route. I made extracts from these works and took copies of the most important maps. Peter Aufschnaiter, who had also landed in Dehra Dun, had various books and maps dealing with expeditions in Asia. He worked at these with tireless energy, and put all his notes and sketches at my disposal. I copied all of these in duplicate, keeping one copy to take with me when I escaped and the other as a reserve in case the originals were lost. It was just as important for me, in view of the route by which I proposed to escape, to keep myself physically as fit as possible. So every day I devoted hours to exercising in the open air, indifferent to bad and good weather alike, while at night I used to lie out and study the habits of the guards.

  My chief worry was that I had too little money, for although I had sold everything I could do without, my savings were quite insufficient to provide for the necessaries of life in Tibet, let alone for the bribes and presents which are the commonplaces of life in Asia. Nevertheless, I went on working systematically at my plan and received help from some friends, who themselves had no intention of escaping.

  I had originally intended to escape alone in order not to have to consider a companion, which might have prejudiced my chances. But one day my friend Rolf Magener told me that an Italian general had the same intentions as myself. I had previously heard of this man, and so one night Magener and I climbed through the wire fence into the neighboring wing, in which forty Italian generals were housed. My future companion was named Marchese and was in outward appearance a typical Italian. He was something over forty years of age, slim of figure, with agreeable manners, and distinctly well dre
ssed; I was particularly impressed by his physique. At the outset we had difficulties in understanding one another. He spoke no German, and I no Italian. We both knew only a minimum of English, so we conversed, with the help of a friend, in halting French. Marchese told me about the war in Abyssinia, and of an earlier attempt he had made to escape from a POW camp.

  Fortunately for him, he received the pay of an English general, and money was no problem. He was able to procure for our flight things that I could never have obtained. What he needed was a partner familiar with the Himalayas—so we very soon joined forces on the basis that I should be responsible for all the planning, and he for the money and equipment.

  Several times every week I used to crawl out to discuss details with Marchese, and by practice became an expert in penetrating barbed wire. Of course there were various possibilities for the escape, but the one that seemed to me the most promising was based on one important fact—that every eighty yards along the outer fence enclosing the whole camp was a steep, straw-thatched roof that had been put up to protect the sentries against the tropical sun. If we could climb over one of these roofs, we should have crossed the two lines of barbed wire at a single bound. In May 1943, we had completed our preparations. Money, provisions, compass, watches, shoes, and a small mountaineer’s tent were all ready.

  One night we decided to make the attempt. I climbed as usual through the fence into Marchese’s wing. There I found a ladder ready, which we had grabbed and hidden after a small fire in the camp. We leaned it against the wall of a hut and waited in the shadow. It was nearly midnight, and in ten minutes the guard would change. The sentries, waiting to come off duty, walked slackly up and down. A few minutes passed until they reached the point where we wanted them. Just then the moon came up over the tops of the tea plantation.

  There we were. It was now or never.

  Both the sentries had reached their farthest point from us. I got up from my crouching position and hurried to the fence with the ladder. I laid it against the overhanging top of the fence, climbed up, and cut the wires, which had been bunched together to prevent access to the thatch. Marchese pushed the thicket of wires to one side with a long, forked stick, enabling me to slip through onto the roof. It was agreed that the Italian should follow me immediately, while I held the wire apart with my hands, but he did not come. He lingered for a few ghastly seconds, thinking that it was too late and that the guards were already returning—and, indeed, I heard their steps. I left him no time for further reflection but caught him under the arms and pulled him onto the roof. He crept across and dropped heavily down into freedom.

  But all this had not happened in dead silence. The watch was alarmed, and they started shooting, but as their firing broke the stillness of the night, we were swallowed up by the jungle.

  The first thing that Marchese did, in expression of his warm southern temperament, was to embrace and kiss me, though this was hardly the moment to give vent to outbursts of joy. Rockets went up and whistles sounded near us, showing that pursuers were on our track. We ran for our lives and moved very fast, using short cuts which I had got to know very well during my outings from the camp. We made little use of the roads and skirted around the few villages we found on our way. At the outset we hardly noticed our packs, but later on they began to feel heavy.

  In one of the villages, the natives beat their drums, and we at once fancied they were sounding the alarm. That was one of the difficulties that anyone brought up among our exclusively white population can hardly imagine. In Asia, the sahib invariably travels with an escort of servants and never carries the smallest package himself—what would the natives think, therefore, when they saw two heavily laden Europeans plodding on foot through the countryside!

  We decided to march by night, knowing that the Indians are afraid to go through the jungle in darkness on account of the wild beasts. We did not enjoy the prospect particularly ourselves, having often read stories in the newspapers available in the camp of man-eating tigers and leopards.

  When day dawned we hid ourselves, exhausted, in a wadi, and spent the whole day there, sleeping and eating in the burning heat. We saw only one person during the day, a cowherd; fortunately, he did not see us. The worst thing was that we each of us had only a single water bottle, which had to suffice for the whole day. It was no wonder that when evening came, after a day spent in keeping quiet, we could hardly control our nerves. We wanted to get on as quickly as possible, and the nights seemed far too short for our progress. We had to find the shortest way through the Himalayas to Tibet, and that would mean weeks of strenuous marching before we could feel ourselves in safety.

  We crossed the first ridge on the evening after our escape. At the top, we rested for a while and saw 3,000 feet below us the countless twinkling lights of the internment camp. At eleven o’clock, the lights all went out together, and only the searchlights around the camp gave an idea of its enormous extent.

  This was the first time in my life that I really understood what it meant to be free. We enjoyed this glorious feeling and thought with sympathy of the two thousand POWs forced to live down there behind the wall of wire.

  But we had not much time for meditation. We had to find our way down to the valley of the Jumna, which was completely unknown to us. In one of the smaller valleys, we walked into a cleft so narrow that we could not get on, and had to wait till morning. The place was so lonely and sheltered that I could without misgiving take the opportunity to dye my blond hair and beard black. I also stained my face and hands with a mixture of permanganate, brown paint, and grease, which produced a dark shade. By this means, I acquired some resemblance to an Indian; that was important, as we had decided, if we were challenged, to say that we were on a pilgrimage to the sacred Ganges. As for my companion, he was dark enough not to be noticeable at a distance. Naturally, we did not mean to court close inspection.

  On this evening we set out before it was dark, but soon had to rue our haste, for crossing a slope, we found ourselves in the presence of a number of peasants planting rice. They were wading half-naked in the muddy water and stared in astonishment at the sight of two men carrying packs on their backs. They pointed to the slope high up on which one could see a village, which seemed to mean that this was the only way out of the ravine. To avoid awkward questions, we walked straight on, as fast as possible in the direction indicated. After hours of climbing and descending, we at last reached the river Jumna.

  Meanwhile, night had fallen. Our plan was to follow the course of the Jumna until we reached one of its tributaries, the Aglar, and then to follow this stream till we came to the watershed. It could not be far from there to the Ganges, which would lead us to the great Himalayan chain. Most of our route up to this point had been across country, and only here and there along water courses had we found paths used by fishermen. On this morning, Marchese was very much exhausted. I prepared cornflakes for him with sugar and water, and on my insisting, he ate a little. Unfortunately, the place where we found ourselves was most unsuitable for camping. It was swarming with large ants that bit deeply into one’s skin, and we could not sleep because of them. The day seemed endless.

  Toward evening my companion’s restlessness increased, and I began to hope that his physical condition might have improved. He, too, was full of confidence that he would be able to cope with the fatigue of the next night. However, soon after midnight, he was through. He simply was not up to the enormous physical effort needed of us. My hard training and condition proved a godsend to us both—I often used to carry his pack strapped over my own. I should say that we had covered our rucksacks with Indian jute sacking to avoid arousing suspicion.

  During the next two nights, we wandered upstream, frequently having to wade through the Aglar when our way along the bank was blocked by jungle or rocks. Once as we were resting in the bed of the stream between two rocky walls, some fishermen came by without noticing us. Another time, when we stumbled upon some fishermen whom we could not avoid, we asked in our
broken Hindustani for some trout. Our disguise seemed to be convincing enough, as the men sold us the fish without showing mistrust of us—indeed, they cooked them for us—while conversing and smoking those small Indian cigarettes that Europeans find so distasteful. Marchese (who before our getaway had been a great smoker) could not resist the temptation of asking for one, but he had taken barely a couple of puffs when he fell unconscious, as if he had been poleaxed! Luckily, he soon recovered, and we were able to continue our journey.

  Later on we met some peasants carrying butter to the town. We were meanwhile becoming more confident and asked them to sell us some. One of them agreed to do so, but as he ladled the almost melting butter, with his dark, dirty hands, from his pot into ours, we both of us nearly vomited with disgust.

  At last the valley broadened out, and our way lay through rice and cornfields. It became more and more difficult to find a good hideout for the daytime. Once we were discovered during the morning, and as the peasants kept asking us all manner of indiscreet questions, we packed up our traps and hurried onward. We had not yet found a new hiding place when we met eight men, who shouted to us to stop. Our luck seemed at last to have deserted us. They asked us innumerable questions, and I kept on giving the same answer, namely that we were pilgrims from a distant province. To our great astonishment, we seemed somehow to have stood the test, for after a while they let us go on our way. We could hardly believe that we had done with them, and long after we had moved on, we thought we heard pursuing footsteps.

  That day everything seemed to be bewitched, and we had constant upsets. Finally we had to come to the discouraging conclusion that we had indeed crossed a watershed but were still in the valley of the Jumna—which implied that we were at least two days behind our timetable.