Keeper Of The Mountains

by Bernadette McDonald

  By February 1966 business was picking up for Tiger Tops; it was then that John Coapman asked Elizabeth to help out with lodge bookings from her home office in Kathmandu. The lodge only had eight rooms at the time, so she used a school copybook in which she ruled out lines for eight spaces for each day of the week. Although she was already working as a stringer for Time, Life and Reuters, and in her new job at Mountain Travel, she was happy to have the extra income. She answered telegrams, handled Coapman’s correspondence and answered questions from local hotels and travel agencies about Tiger Tops reservations. Within a year, this job began to take an inordinate amount of her time. But though the business was growing, the profits, strangely, were not.

  By 1971 the Texas backers of Tiger Tops were tiring of the logistical and administrative problems and questionable profits, although they remained convinced it was a good idea. They were used to making money, not losing it. Tiger Tops was not even able to pay its staff during this time, and Coapman had the unpleasant experience of a general strike. So he fled, not just from Tiger Tops but from Kathmandu altogether. This didn’t affect Elizabeth as much as it could have, because Coapman had fired her shortly before the company went bust. He had a terrific temper and Elizabeth’s strong and stubborn character had been too much for him.

  In the meantime, another Kathmandu resident and keen hunter, Jim Edwards, joined up with Chuck McDougal to start a hunting company in Nepal. Jim had had his eye on Tiger Tops, so when Coapman fled, Jim met with the Texans and was appointed manager of the company in 1972. He knew Elizabeth and wooed her back to the company, after which they set about trying to straighten out the mess John had left behind. There were unpaid salaries, dead elephants, staff on strike, no credit in Kathmandu and more. But within a short time they dramatically increased the business.

  With their newfound success, they even managed to coax Royal Nepal Airlines into offering daily flights to their lodge – not an easy task. Jim had worked for Pan Am in New York before he came to Nepal, and he was a successful salesperson, not only selling the lodge to tourists but also bringing in more investors. He was generally a charming man, but not always, and Elizabeth didn’t find him to be the easiest person to work for. She recalls that when he became angry with her he would rant and rave on the office intercom, but she knew how to turn the intercom off. He did not. So he would rant and she would go on with her work. It seemed to work for both of them.

  At the same time, Jim wanted to open a trekking agency. Elizabeth happened to know that Jimmy Roberts was getting bored with the management of Mountain Travel, so she introduced them to each other with a merger in mind. It worked. Jim continued to bring in new investors for the expanded company. Mountain Travel maintained its own name, as did Tiger Tops, and Jim then went on to open Himalayan River Exploration and two more jungle lodges. It was an exciting time for the travel industry: Mountain Travel was the first adventure travel company in Nepal and the world; Tiger Tops was the first jungle lodge in Nepal. Together they were not only successful, but they changed the way people thought of travel. The company eventually became known as Tiger Mountain.

  In 1975 a young British woman, Lisa van Greisen, now Lisa Choegyal, joined Tiger Tops and began to invite a number of high-profile customers to the company, building its international reputation and having some interesting times in the process. It was a parade of stars: Robert Redford, Henry Kissinger, Goldie Hawn and Jimmy Carter. Lisa remembers that for the most part they tried to steer the guests clear of Elizabeth, since she had a brusque manner that the guests did not find endearing. But perhaps Elizabeth was just selective – somehow she managed to sufficiently charm Jimmy Carter into lobbying on her behalf to the king when she had some problems with her journalist accreditation. It didn’t work but she appreciated his efforts. Carter found himself in a curious situation when his round-the-clock bodyguards, who accompanied him to Everest base camp, almost dropped dead from the combined effects of altitude and sheer exhaustion. Kissinger had his own problems down at the Tiger Tops lodge when he attempted to get on an elephant. He couldn’t bring himself to climb on – it turned out he suffered from vertigo. He ended up taking a Jeep tour instead, regaling Lisa Choegyal with stories of high-level intrigue and diplomacy.

  Years later, in 1995, one of the Tiger Tops celebrities was Hillary Clinton. Lisa came up with the idea of introducing Hillary to the other Hillary – the knighted one – who happened to be in town. Elizabeth and Lisa choreographed the event, which ended up taking place on the hot tarmac of the airport. Hillary Clinton was particularly enthusiastic, gushing about how excited she was, announcing that her mother had named her after Sir Edmund. Former president Bill Clinton’s bestselling biography of 2004, My Life, repeats the story of his wife being named after the man who first climbed Everest. There is only one problem with this anecdote: Sir Edmund Hillary did not reach the summit of Everest until May 29, 1953, when Hillary Clinton was already five years old. At the time of her birth, he was an obscure New Zealand beekeeper. Both Lisa and Elizabeth doubted her story at the time, but basked in the ink the event produced with headlines like “Hillary meets Hillary.”

  As the company matured, Jim created an executive committee, employing Elizabeth in that capacity. Then she became an executive advisor and finally more of a consultant, providing a monthly report that outlined the political, economic and major tourism news in the country.

  Elizabeth finally had an opportunity to see a part of Nepal she had frequently written about – the Khumbu, land of the Sherpas and jumping-off point for many important expeditions. It was a place she was eager to experience first-hand. In 1965 she and her friend Barbara Adams joined a small group of Americans living in Kathmandu to fly to Lukla and trek for a couple of weeks. In a letter informing her mother of her plans, Elizabeth reassured her in a postscript: “I won’t be doing any attempts at climbing, you understand – only trekking or hiking.” Back in Kathmandu, having trekked to Namche Bazaar, Thyangboche and Khumjung, she was tired, describing the experience to her mother: “This slogging up steep mountainsides and back down again for hours on end when one is not in training is bound to be tiring.” But she thought it was worth the struggle – for the scenery and to see where and how the Sherpas lived.

  March 9, 1967, was an exciting day for those living in Kathmandu, and the beginning of even greater exposure and business for Tiger Tops. A Boeing 707 landed at the Kathmandu airport, the first time an intercontinental jet had ever landed there. Experts had said it was impossible to land a jet on the short, 2103-metre runway in a small valley surrounded by tall mountains, but the Lufthansa jet did it in just 1067 metres. Only a test flight, it was expected to pave the way for more in the future, which is exactly what happened a few months later when the Nepal government opened the airport to Thai International flights direct from Bangkok twice a week. As the Thai flights became established, they became an important supplier of clients for Tiger Tops. But Royal Nepal Airlines wasn’t pleased with the competition and demanded that Thai International pay a substantial fee to keep operating in Nepal. Elizabeth became involved and arranged a meeting between the crown prince’s secretary and some of the senior Thai officials, resulting in a smoothing of relations and a free ticket for Elizabeth on Thai to an Asian city of her choice. By the beginning of June, yet another important transportation link had opened up – a paved road from Kathmandu to the Tibetan border. And in March, a casino opened in Kathmandu’s newest hotel. The owners were a mixed group: Bhutanese, Albanian and Anglo-Indian, and the manager was a former acting prime minister of Bhutan – a real “man about town,” according to Elizabeth. The secret of Nepal was leaking out.

  But even as the city became more accessible and cosmopolitan with each passing month, the political situation took a major setback in March 1968 when King Mahendra had a heart attack while hunting tigers in western Nepal. He took two months off to convalesce and made his first public speech in May, sounding perfectly normal. Perhaps it was his brush with mortali
ty that prompted the next momentous political event.

  To give the event some context, it is necessary to reflect back to 1960 when the prime minister of Nepal, B.P. Koirala, was arrested and his authority replaced by that of the king. Koirala had been in custody without a trial or in exile ever since. One morning near the end of January, Elizabeth received a call from Koirala’s former home minister, who had lived quietly in Kathmandu since his own release from prison seven years earlier. He invited her to come and have tea with Mrs. Koirala that evening at her home. Elizabeth knew something was up when she arrived to find several other journalists there as well. At about 8:00 p.m., a Russian Jeep belonging to the Nepalese army pulled up with two familiar faces: Koirala and his transport and communications minister, both of whom had been in jail or in exile all these years.

  Koirala looked thinner but healthy, despite his prison ordeal. Now some interesting times would unfold, she thought, as these two men, the king and the former prime minister, would once again have to figure out how they were going to join forces – or not – in running the country. She was disappointed when, instead of Koirala, a deputy prime minister who had been suddenly dropped from the cabinet the preceding year was appointed prime minister. Although Kirtinidhi Bista was a pleasant man, she doubted he had the experience and vision of Koirala.

  The political intrigue continued when a close political friend of Elizabeth’s, Rishikesh Shaha, who had been arrested three months before under a vague Security Act, was suddenly released on technical grounds. On his way home from court, he was re-arrested, this time with all the technicalities worked out. She concluded that the present government considered him to be a very real political threat and wanted him well and truly out of the way. Personally, it was a discouraging development, as he had always been a reliable source of inside information for her.

  With her beloved dog Sindhu showing signs of age, Elizabeth decided to get a nine-month-old Lhasa apso, a male bundle of brown, black and white fur with a face remarkably like an owl’s. He was sweet and affectionate and she named him Tigger. Sindhu wasn’t overjoyed by this new addition and was rather cool to Tigger. But Tigger didn’t notice and initiated endless play with Sindhu and Elizabeth or, if all else failed, with his ball, which he would chase around the apartment, leaping on it, letting it roll away, skidding to a stop to catch it, and sliding beyond it. He was excellent entertainment for Elizabeth, who described him as “so cute it almost hurts.” Sindhu eventually allowed himself the indignity of playing with Tigger, although he appeared to tire easily of the silliness. During an important Hindu festival that fall, poor neurotic Sindhu had to endure fireworks, loud bangs and strange light flashes that scared him half to death. Tigger slept through it all. Sindhu was beginning to show his age. Several of his front teeth had shifted position by 45 degrees and now pointed outward, giving him a bucktoothed effect. At least he could still chew.

  In the spring of 1969 a young Fortune researcher from New York, Elaine King, showed up on Elizabeth’s doorstep, stayed a while and eventually worked for her. For the first few days, Elaine explored the sights of Kathmandu. The evening before she left, Elizabeth invited her for a drink at the Annapurna Hotel and asked, “Well, what do you think?” Elaine responded, “I think it’s wonderful.” Then Elizabeth announced she had a job opening at Tiger Tops and offered it to Elaine. It was a foreign-correspondence position in charge of reservations for the company. Initially Elaine said no – she had a definite itinerary in mind for her travels and it didn’t include settling in Nepal. But the offer dangled in front of her and by the time she reached Iran she was seriously questioning her decision. “How many times in your life do you get the chance to run away from home?” she wondered. She had a strong desire to break from the mould and so, at the age of 24, she went back to Kathmandu.

  Unfortunately, she neglected to contact Elizabeth in advance. So when they met in Kathmandu, Elizabeth had to break the bad news that the job opening was gone. In the two weeks that had transpired, it had been farmed out to a travel agency. Elaine was devastated. But she “suspended her emotions” and decided she would cope. She obtained a few names from Elizabeth and started looking for work.

  She eventually found a position that combined teaching English and helping out with an English-language newsletter. Returning to Elizabeth to let her know, she learned that her friend had spoken to the travel agency and suggested that if they hadn’t found anyone to do the work, she might have just the person for them. Now Elaine had two offers. She weighed the difference between a position teaching English and a job that would give her an opportunity to ride an elephant on occasion. She chose the elephants.

  So she went to work for Tiger Tops in the same office as Elizabeth. It was exciting, with clients coming in from all over the world. Sir Edmund Hillary popped in frequently to see Elizabeth – Elaine remembers that she called him Ed.

  Elaine’s impression was that Elizabeth always adhered to her standards. She had two staff working for her, a cook and a bearer. “Elizabeth stayed Elizabeth – she didn’t become Nepali.” Although Elizabeth maintained a tough exterior, Elaine believes she was one of the few people allowed to see her softer side. They shared a similar sense of humour and enjoyed hilarious times together. Through Elizabeth, Elaine met a cross section of Kathmandu society, including politicians, royalty, climbers and writers.

  But when Tiger Tops went through its darkest hour and Coapman fled, there was no money left to pay staff, so Elaine was let go. She hated to leave and it was a sad day for both of them when Elaine left Kathmandu. Over the years they remained in touch, partially through the “newsy” Christmas letters that Elizabeth claims to send. Elaine laughingly describes them as more “cryptic” than “newsy.”

  In addition to Elizabeth’s work in the travel industry, she was still a reporter. One of her dispatches was on an important American delegation in Kathmandu, led by U.S. Vice-president Spiro Agnew. She actually dreaded the event because, in her opinion, “the man involved doesn’t deserve all this attention.” But she was expected to be intimately involved with the advance arrangements, as well as the visit itself. There were rumours of impending student demonstrations and hippie protests, but they didn’t come to pass and the visit came off quite well. “He put his foot in his mouth only once,” she reported to her mother, and then it wasn’t that important. He referred to Nepal as India, a common occurrence for visiting dignitaries. His speechwriters had prepared him well and the visit was mercifully short.

  Elizabeth was beginning to realize that mountaineering news was an important part of reporting for an international wire service correspondent in Nepal. In those pioneering days of first ascents and mountain exploration, there was a lot of media interest in expeditions, much more so than now. So she began meeting all the expeditions coming into Kathmandu and keeping files on them. This work, and the personalities involved, became a bigger part of her life each year, consuming a huge amount of time. Her life became devoted to mountaineering and it became increasingly difficult to separate Elizabeth Hawley from mountaineering in Nepal.

  Her education in history and her experience as a researcher in New York prepared her for precise data collection, and statistics appealed to her. Her Reuters stories were objective, but her real opinions often came through when writing to her mother about the various expeditions and personalities. In the spring of 1969 she told her mother about an American expedition tackling Dhaulagiri I, on the western side of the Kali Gandaki Valley in the Central Himalaya. The leader was Boyd Everett, a securities analyst when he wasn’t climbing. She described him as “the coldest person in a body that’s still alive whom I’ve ever met.” She thought he would have been more at home among his stocks and bonds than in the mountains of Nepal. News began to trickle out from the expedition that things had gone disastrously wrong: an ice cliff high on the mountain had collapsed on seven climbers, sending them all to their deaths. As climber Al Read recounted in his report for the American Alpine Journal, “
Death is not uncommon in mountaineering. Its cold fingers follow you into the rotton [sic] couloir. You see it above as you traverse below the cornice.… Most certainly it stalks in the incessant animation of an active Himalayan glacier.” But on Dhaulagiri he saw something on another scale. “This was annihilation.”

  Elizabeth was thoroughly involved in this tragedy. She arranged rescue flights, filed news reports and made arrangements with the next of kin. She saw a great deal of the expedition members, both before and after, and, except for the leader, thought they were a pleasant bunch of men. She was convinced they hadn’t fully understood the immensity of the mountain before they tackled it.

  By this time Mountain Travel was handling all climbing expeditions’ logistical needs in Kathmandu, and Jimmy Roberts sent much of the work in Elizabeth’s direction. They worked as a team. She credits him as an important influence, helping her in the early days of mountaineering reporting and giving her important archival materials. He explained the significance of certain expeditions and gave her a solid grounding in the history of Himalayan climbing.

  It was he who told her about how Nepal had opened its doors to climbing in 1950, and of the early expeditions with climbers and explorers like Maurice Herzog on Annapurna and Charles Houston and Bill Tilman, and later Raymond Lambert, on Everest. She didn’t arrive in Nepal an expert on mountaineering; she became one, largely with the help of Jimmy Roberts.

  While she was still learning the ropes from Roberts, it was Mike Cheney who did most of the actual reporting to the various alpine journals. Elizabeth gave him the basic information from her meetings with the climbers and he crafted it into a report. She found Cheney to be a peculiar gentleman. He was an ex-Gurkha like Roberts, but she didn’t consider his climbing background to be impressive and thought he misrepresented himself as an expert in his reports.