by Jan Morris
I hammered it out on my typewriter in the morning sunshine, from the notes I had scribbled at Camp IV the day before. It all came quickly and easily, so fresh and vivid was the experience, so glittering the news, and so excited was I by what I had seen. Yesterday, high in the Cwm, this excitement had been blunted a little by the altitude; today, though my body was aching still, it all came flooding over me with a new stimulation. I banged it out fast, only occasionally delayed when the wind caught a sheet of paper and sent it flying helter-skelter across the moraine, chased by a few laughing Sherpas, frying-pans in hand. Soon it was finished, and sealing it thoroughly in three envelopes, I gave it to the last of my runners. All the others were out, somewhere in the mountains between Everest and Katmandu; but I had saved the best of them for these last dispatches.
They bowed, shook hands, plunged the dispatches into their cloaks, and left. I would meet them on the road back to the capital, when they were returning to Sola Khumbu, their job finished; but I knew them well and trusted them, and I paid them the whole of their fee in advance, together with that handsome bonus reserved for those who did it in six days. Sure enough, they performed their promise exactly, and I next saw them (only to say good-bye) on a misty grassy ridge half-way to Katmandu.
Base Camp was almost deserted. There were only Westmacott, a few Sherpas and I. Some of the other climbers might get down there that evening: the rest, conscientiously packing up some gear in the Cwm, would return the next day. I packed my various bags, threw away the rubbish, and distributed my loads among the Sherpas. The treasure chests were much lighter now, and I had lost a few of my possessions: but I had acquired a minute pair of Tibetan boots, made at Namche for my elder son and sent to me as a gift from Roberts, who had commissioned them on his way south. For the rest, my goods, like myself, were a great deal shabbier, more tattered, dirtier and more threadbare than they had been when I set out with such lively confidence from Katmandu.
I had an early lunch (boiled potatoes, chocolate, cheese and lemonade) shook hands with Mike, hoisted my rucksack on my back, and left the camp. I planned to reach Lobuje that night, and to continue the next day into the valley of the Dudh Khosi, south of Namche. In the old days this was four or five days’ march, but it was important to me to get to the other side of Namche as quickly as possible – the runner would probably hand my message to the Indians on the following morning. So we marched off down the glacier at good speed. I looked back once, not to see Everest again, but only to wave good-bye to Westmacott, still sitting in his wide hat on a packing-case in the camp, reading The Times. Very soon the mountain was behind us, and we were threading our way through the dozens of streams, pools and waterfalls that now, under the impact of summer, watered the moraine. I walked in a semi-daze, numbed by excitement and exertion, thinking dimly and pleasantly of far-away places.
We passed Lake Camp without a halt. Its sheet of water was still grey and forbidding, and there were a few piles of burnt sticks and ashes which showed where the hardy Sherpas had sheltered from the blizzard all those weeks before. Sonam, marching beside me, touched my shoulder and pointed behind us to the distant ridge, on the flank of Pumori, where we had sat and eaten our snow sandwiches and gazed in wonder into the Western Cwm. If we climbed there again, I thought, there would still be nothing to see on Everest; the flags on the summit would be indistinguishable, if they were not already blown down by the wind, and only the eye of faith could see John’s little crucifix in the snow. Sonam smiled gently and, for no particular reason, reached out as we walked and shook my hand.
So we came to Lobuje, a green and pleasant place. A little stream ran beside the yak-herd’s hut we slept in, and the grass outside was speckled with flowers. There were signs of recent occupation inside, for during the expedition most of the climbers had come down here, at one time or another, for a rest; and here Tom Stobart, wheezing and panting in the darkness of the hut, had weathered his attack of pneumonia. Evening fell soon after we reached the place, and we sat late around the fire eating potatoes and talking about yetis. By now, with the messages away, I had told all that faithful little company about the ascent of Everest, and we drank our chang as a libation.
I woke early next morning, and, putting in train a cup of tea and some breakfast, strolled off into a neighbouring rock gully which would have led me, had I the time or the inclination to follow it, into the neighbouring valley of the Chola Khola. It was one of those still, oppressive, grey, sinister Snowmen gullies, and I did not go far along it. No Snowmen were in sight; but when I climbed upon a little rock platform beside it, I saw away up the glacier, coming down from Everest, a solitary figure. My heart bounded. Could it be that some wretched Sherpa had sold his soul to the Press, had hastened down from the Western Cwm, and was now heading for Namche with the news? The scoundrel! Gripping my ice-axe firmly, like an irascible colonel about to deal with trespassers, I stumped heavily down the gully again, oblivious of any watching yetis. My goodness, I thought, whoever he is, he’s making good time. He can certainly move! And as I watched the approaching figure I realized that this was no ordinary Sherpa, moving so swiftly and gracefully down the valley, swinging and buoyant, like some unspoilt mountain creature. A wide-brimmed hat! High reindeer boots! A smile that illuminated the glacier! An outstretched hand of greeting! Tenzing!
‘Good gracious me, Tenzing! Haven’t you walked far enough? Where in heaven’s name are you off to now, like a bat out of hell?’
He took off his big hat, smiling still, and sat down upon a rock, while my excited Sherpas crowded round. He was going to the neighbouring village of Thamey, he said, to see his aged mother, who lived there. I was astonished at his freshness and strength. He looked rather older, I thought, than the day I had met him first, down the hill at Thyangboche; rather thinner, certainly; perhaps a little more assured, as if he had some inkling of things to come; but he was as lively and springy as ever, though only two days before he had hauled himself with such appalling labour to the top of the world.
He was going to rest and wash, and then traverse a neighbouring ridge towards his village. We had breakfast together, and I asked him if, as a souvenir of our meeting there, he had a photograph that he would sign for me. He pulled from his wallet a snapshot of himself with a number of little Tibetan terriers. ‘Given me by the Dalai Lama,’ he explained with pride, ‘when I was in Lhasa with Professor Piccardi.’ Taking a pen from his pocket, he slowly wrote his signature (the only word he could write) across the bottom of it and handed it to me with a self-deprecatory grin. The last I saw of him at Lobuje, he had stripped his lean lithe body to the waist, and was soaping himself with water from a tin basin. It looked a chilly operation.
Out of the snow peaks we passed, and into the damp green alpine valley of Phalong Karpo. By now, I thought, my runner had presented my message to Mr. Tiwari, and if all went well it should go to Katmandu by the afternoon transmission. But who could tell what happened on the way? Had he been intercepted by unscrupulous rivals? Had he let me down, and found the ex-nuns of Thyangboche, or the chang of Namche, so enticing that he had long ago lost that precious dispatch? Had Mr. Tiwari rebuffed him? Or seen, with a quick flash of his policeman’s eye, that the dispatch was not what it seemed to be?
Well, there were always the other runners, striding ahead of us on the road to Katmandu. That beguiling capital was now seething with rumours about Everest. Wild and wonderful reports were appearing in the Press, and half the world believed that brief mendacious message, telling of the failure of the assault, which had reached us so impertinently at the moment of reunion. So I had my moments of anxiety as I hastened through the static yaks. At Base Camp I knew nobody had preceded me down the mountain. Now there were three men ahead of me carrying in their pockets the news of success. Only one thing comforted me, as I thought of the pleasant social encounters they might undergo in the course of the journey: not one of them knew what he was carrying!
The monks greeted us kindly at Thyangboche, and
we rested for a moment on a low stone wall outside the monastery. Many were the friendly and keenly inquisitive divines and Sherpas who crowded around us there, with many a sharp insidious question. My Sherpas, thoroughly aware of the need for secrecy, just for a few more days, almost overdid the thing in their exaggerated expressions of conspiracy, their faces contorted with silence, their eyes twinkling, their fingers held to their lips, their cheeks bursting with suppressed laughter and information. We passed on our way intact.
A very good thing we did, for only a short way out of Thyangboche, on the track to Namche Bazar, I ran slap-bang into Peter Jackson, on his way home to the derelict villa he had rented from the monks. As we saw each other, in the dappled shade of the juniper trees, we both stopped dead in our tracks.
‘Well, well,’ said Jackson.
‘Ho, hum!’ said I.
‘Here you are then,’ said Jackson.
‘More or less,’ said I.
‘Weather’s very pleasant, don’t you think?’
‘Not too bad.’
‘Are you – er – leaving the mountain now?’
‘Oh I’ve been up there so long, you know, I feel the need for a rest. It’ll be nice to get down in the green again for a bit.’
‘Hmm. Things going all right?’
‘Not too badly.’
‘Everybody all right?’
‘More or less.’
‘It’d be a pity if they didn’t climb it this time.’
‘A shame, a great shame. Still, there’s always the French.’
‘Well,’ said Jackson.
‘Ho ha!’ said I.
And with a shake of the hand and a twisted smile at each other we parted, he to climb the hill to Thyangboche, I to continue my journey towards the valley. I hoped, in this brief and enigmatic exchange, to give him some vague impression that the expedition was not going too well, without actually telling him any fibs; in fact, he told me afterwards, I was not successful. My guarded reference to the French, I flattered myself, would imply that Hunt’s expedition was at least preparing to leave the mountain to next year’s challengers: but I forgot that if all these pre-monsoon assaults failed, there would certainly be another British attempt in the autumn. Jackson spotted this discrepancy in my innuendoes at once, and as he wandered back to his monastery fostered a niggling nebulous suspicion that Everest had been climbed.
But hey ho! I was past him safely; he still had no radio; and he would not hear the news, unless it spread from Tenzing’s village, for another day or two. Soon we approached the grassy ridge that stood above Namche Bazar. A few men and women stood about there, doing obscure things with bits of wool, and four or five children ran about and made faces at us. I was afraid that news of our passing would be taken down to the village, or that some sharp eyes in upstairs windows would see my little caravan as it skirted the place. There was a long expanse of green open to view from the village, and this we crossed at the double, our bags and rucksacks swaying and bumping, my odd paraphernalia rattling, the older Sherpas wheezing heavily. Nobody emerged to intercept us, and soon we were moving through thick woods to the east of Namche and scrambling down a steep leafy slope to the Dudh Khosi, cool and creamy between the trees.
As we descended a strange and uncomfortable lassitude overcame me, the effect perhaps of de-acclimitization. I had been weak on the glacier high above; now I was not only weak, but intolerably lazy. I could hardly bring myself to move my limbs, or urge my lungs to operate; and often, as we made our way along the stream, I would take off my pack and sit down upon a rock, burying my head in my arms, trying to recover my resolution. It was too ridiculous. The path was easy, the country delightful; the monsoon was about to burst, and there was a smell of fresh moisture in the air; but there, it had been a long three months on Everest, and a long, long march from Lobuje, and my body and spirit were rebelling.
It was evening now. The air was cool and scented. Pine trees were all about us again, and lush foliage, and the roar of the swollen river rang in our ears. On the west bank of the Dudh Khosi, about six miles south of Namche Bazar, there was a Sherpa hamlet called Benkar. There, as the dusk settled about us, we halted for the night. In a small square clearing among the houses Sonam set up my tent, and I erected the aerial of my radio receiver. The Sherpas, in their usual way, marched boldly into the houses round about and established themselves among the straw, fires and potatoes of the upstairs rooms. Soon there was a smell of roasting and the fragrance of tea. As I sat outside my tent meditating, with only a few urchins standing impassively in front of me, Sonam emerged with a huge plate of scrawny chicken, a mug of chang, tea, chocolate and chuppatis.
How far had my news gone, I wondered as I ate? Was it already winging its way to England from Katmandu; or was it still plodding over the Himalayan foothills in the hands of those determined runners? Would tomorrow, June 2, be both Coronation and Everest Day? Or would the ascent fall upon London later, like a last splendid chime of the Abbey bells? There was no way of knowing; I was alone in a void; the chicken was tough; the urchins unnerving; I went to bed.
*
But the morning broke fair. Lazily, as the sunshine crept up my sleeping-bag, I reached a hand out of my mummied wrappings towards the knob of the wireless. A moment of fumbling; a few crackles and hisses; and then the voice of an Englishman.
Everest had been climbed, he said. Queen Elizabeth had been given the news on the eve of her Coronation. The crowds waiting in the wet London streets had cheered and danced to hear of it. After thirty years of endeavour, spanning a generation, the top of the earth had been reached and one of the greatest of all adventures accomplished. This news of Coronation Everest (said that good man in London) had been first announced in a copyright dispatch in The Times.
I jumped out of my bed, spilling the bed-clothes about me, tearing open the tent-flap, leaping into the open in my filthy shirt, my broken boots, my torn trousers; my face was thickly bearded, my skin cracked with sun and cold, my voice hoarse. But I shouted to my Sherpas, whose bleary eyes were appearing from the neighbouring windows:
‘Chomolungma finished! Everest done with! Okay!’
‘Okay, sahib!’ the Sherpas shouted back. ‘Breakfast now?’
*
Far away in Westminster Abbey, as the notables prepared themselves, Field-Marshal Montgomery opened his newspaper that morning to read the news from Everest: so an adventure ended, crossed the continents, and joined the footnotes of history.
12
Valedictory
Half a century later, the memory of that happy triumph is tinged with regret. The very idea of Mount Everest has lost some of its magic, as our world has shrunk, humanity has multiplied itself and almost nowhere is unfamiliar. Men have walked on the Moon since 1953, and literally hundreds of men and women have stood on the very spot, 29,002 feet above sea level, where Hillary and Tenzing wrote their names in the history books fifty years ago.
Many of them have gone there as clients of commercial climbing outfits, paying large sums of money for the experience, and this has demeaned the reputation of Everest as a place of spiritual meaning. So has the litter they have left behind them. So has the new ease of access to the mountain, by aircraft and motor-road, and by the proliferation of lodges and hotels along the trekking routes. So has the plethora of books, magazine articles, memoirs, films and videos, some magnificent, some wretched, which has made more worldly the once transcendental image of Chomolungma.
The notion of a Queen of England’s coronation has lost its arcane fascination, too. Not just in England, but around the world, the British royal family has come to feel more like mere fodder for the tabloids than material for historical allegory. Loyalties have become fragmented. Mysticism is banished from the affairs of State. Thousands will no doubt still stand agog, if ever another English monarch is crowned at Westminster Abbey, but not with the same mysterious depth of pride and latent superstition that animated them in 1953.
I always stood out
side these sources of inspiration anyway – Everest never felt holy to me, still less kings or queens – so that my own regrets, when I look back at the old adventure, are much more personal. So many of my companions on the mountain, who became my friends, have died since then, some on other hills, some on the plains below – Tenzing among the first, John Hunt (by then Lord Hunt of Llanfair Waterdine, Knight of the Garter) just too soon to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of his success. Away in the Himalayas not too many Sherpas are still around to share their recollections of the expedition over the chang. At home in Wales, when I have seen survivors of the climb gathered for their periodical reunions at the foot of Snowdon, they have seemed to me no more than so many elderly civilized gentlemen, leaner and fitter than most, but contemplating like everyone else the sad effects of time.
But if Everesters age and die, if Everest itself is tarnished rather, if Coronations are out of mode and news can be flashed instantaneously by satellite anywhere on earth – still that first ascent of 1953 remains, to my mind, one of the most honourable and innocent of the great adventures. It has not been diminished by the passing years. Mount Everest is littered now with the corpses of mountaineers of many nationalities, but not one of them lost their lives in 1953. None of the climbers vulgarly exploited their celebrity in the aftermath of success, and some of them have devoted their later years to the welfare of the Sherpa people. I thought them very decent men when I first met them, and essentially decent they remained.
