Edmund Hillary--A Biography

by Michael Gill

  The problem of the benzodiazepines

  As the second anniversary of Louise’s and Belinda’s death approached in 1977, Ed’s continuing depression and insomnia were of concern to his friends and to Dr Max Pearl in particular. Ed had remained on benzodiazepines, a pharmaceutical family including Librium, Valium and Halcion, which for many years were hailed as wonder-drugs in the alleviation of anxiety, depression and insomnia. During the first weeks of use their effects are miraculous. Initially benzodiazepines were described as being no more harmful than simple analgesics like paracetamol, but as the years went by it became apparent that they could be very harmful indeed and give rise to a tenacious dependency.

  The brain’s response during the weeks following the commencement of a benzodiazepine is to develop biochemical adaptations. As a result the drug becomes less effective in reducing anxiety. A more serious problem is that cessation of medication is followed by a withdrawal response. The patient caught in this dependency knows that without it they will be assaulted by intolerable withdrawal symptoms. For the benzodiazepines these could include anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, depersonalisation, tremor, muscular pains and headache. In elderly people, other symptoms are confusion, fainting, ataxia and dementia. Of interest at high altitudes is ‘respiratory depression when combined with other drugs’. The way out of dependency is gradual dose reduction over a period of months, a process which requires conviction and commitment from both patient and physician.

  None of this was well understood in the 1970s, but in January 1977 Max Pearl had become concerned that Ed was still taking two benzodiazepines, Serepax and Mogadon. He consulted a psychiatrist colleague who recommended stopping the benzodiazepines while treating the withdrawal symptoms with a different medication.

  During this trial regime Ed continued his diary: ‘Max had me over to see Dr E about my insomnia and depression. Dr E says he will “help” me, which I resent!’

  This was an inauspicious start. The patient’s competitive instincts had been aroused and he didn’t want to have any psychiatrist ‘helping’ him. Very quickly the withdrawal effects kicked in:

  [27th] A night of diarrhoea and fuzzy dreams. Got up in a daze and didn’t improve all day … felt sick in the afternoon.

  [28th] Another dreamy night – sort of unreal. Got up 4–5 times to go to toilet. Drove out to Anawhata and had difficulty concentrating. Felt ghastly. Max said to persist.

  [29th] Helluva night with almost continuous unpleasant dreams and frequent diarrhoea. Felt slightly desperate in morning. Started wondering what I was trying to prove so took a Serepax and after an hour felt much better. Reverted to old pills at night. Seven hours good sleep and woke feeling clear-headed … I can’t stand being mentally fuzzy. I’m starting to feel like a medical experiment – and I have no idea what we are trying to achieve apart from making me miserable … Since the good doctor started to ‘help’ me I’ve felt worse, taken more pills and been more depressed than at any time I can remember. I suppose the next step will be shock treatment

  … Met Dr E again and after a long chat we agreed that my problems are human ones and that I’ll have to overcome them myself – or at least learn to live with them.10

  No one knows whether Ed’s life would have been different without the pills. After 1975 he lost some of the old dynamism and creativity. In later years he had the occasional fainting attack, and associates noted that his mental alertness could change from day to day. The benzodiazepines might also have contributed to his increasing sensitivity to altitude. Nevertheless he continued on with what he had always done – caring for the mountain people of Nepal, keeping a home for his children, working, always working hard, and conjuring up new expeditionary adventures – beneath a thinly veiled cloud of grief.

  Mingma says ‘Sherpas much liking’

  Another preoccupation of Ed’s Nepali friends was the idea that his spirits might be restored by a new wife. One fine morning in Nepal, on the route between Junbesi and Ringmo where the track climbs gently around a grassy ridge between two rivers, Ed recorded in his diary a discussion with Mingma, with whom he always felt comfortable:

  Slept for about 6 hours and then lots of dreaming and sorrow. Somehow all the Sherpa stuff has brought Louise very keenly back into my thoughts. It was a beautiful morning and Mingma and I took the high route to Ringmo. We rested in the sun at the same place I remembered from the 1953 Everest expedition. Maybe it was the warmth or the view but Mingma and I started chatting in a very relaxed fashion. I told him that I had many problems – I had a beautiful house but it was no longer a home … that Sarah was gone and that Peter would soon be rushing off too … that without Louise I didn’t find life very interesting. I’d become a sort of lonely drifter, wandering around the world.

  Now everyone in Solukhumbu was wanting me to do things and perhaps this was the best thing for me. But I said it was a lonely sort of existence … everybody liking me when I money giving.

  It wasn’t a particularly negative discourse – just sort of musing along. And then I said jokingly to Mingma, ‘If I stay on here in Nepal and work doing, maybe I get a nice Sherpani girl to look after me. What would the Sherpas think then?’

  To my astonishment Mingma said ‘Sherpas much liking.’ I don’t know whether he was talking about marrying a girl but he then said ‘What Peter and Sarah thinking?’ I assured him they wouldn’t give a damn one way or the other – they were much too interested in their own affairs.

  ‘Anyway,’ I told him, ‘I not long lasting and then girl rich getting and some young man marrying,’ and we both laughed. As we walked on along I thought if I had any gumption it would be a good idea – but I wouldn’t even know where to start. We crossed the Ringmo bridge, over Taksindu to Manedingma where we spent a cheerful evening and they asked me for a health clinic.11

  – CHAPTER 29 –

  Ocean to Sky, the last big expedition

  It was the ‘Ocean to Sky’ expedition of 1977 that lifted Ed’s mood. The Sun Kosi jet-boat trip of 1968 had seemed ambitious at the time, but the conception of Ocean to Sky, and ascent of the whole 2500 kilometres of the Ganges River – Mother Ganga to Indians – was on an altogether grander scale. The river’s vast and fertile plain had cradled the culture and civilisation of India for more than 3000 years. It was the birthplace of two great religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. At peak flow during the monsoon, the Ganges is the third-largest of the world’s great rivers, and its water comes from the Himalayas, the greatest of Earth’s mountain ranges. The Indian Ocean in the Bay of Bengal was where the expedition would start; the sky where it would finish was the Garhwal Himalaya, main source of the Ganga and by chance the place where Ed had begun his journey to Everest in 1951.

  An early thought in 1973 had been for a small group to drive up the Ganges, casually exploring the lower reaches of its tributaries – but the plan grew because everyone wanted to be a part of it, not least the Government of India. On his way to and from Nepal between 1974 and early 1977, Ed would stop off in Delhi to talk with the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Tourism and receive encouragement, but he had no source of funds. Then one day in April 1977, a handwritten letter arrived unexpectedly in the letterboxes of Ed’s friends in Christchurch and Auckland:

  Mike, Jim and All, Life has been an appalling rush so I’m writing this to you at 6am in the morning. Sorry I haven’t time to type it. Over the last few weeks I’ve had masses of discussions about the Ganges in Chicago, Toronto, London and Delhi. The results have been sufficiently encouraging that I feel we must press ahead.

  Finances: I have signed a contract for a book with Hodder and Stoughton; Air India has confirmed that transport of 12 people plus 600kg of freight from Sydney to India and back and we’ll get free shipment of the jet boats to India; Sears will supply the camping gear and air freight it to Sydney so we can take it to India as personal baggage. I had useful discussions in New York with major publishers and we confidently expect a contract to eventuate. Thin
gs look pretty good as far as magazine rights are concerned. Confirmation of these items will come in the next four weeks … I am accepting the major task of bridging finance … but the main thing is that we should press on with plans and worry about snags if and when they turn up.

  Mike Gill – would you tell Peter and Max of the situation (and show them this letter) and give Graeme a call also? Jim – would you coordinate with Jon and with Murray.

  The two major problems to be handled in New Zealand are the jet boats and the filming … It is very important that we do a film as that has been one of my selling points. It is difficult organizing things at such short notice but so far things have gone rather well. I’m prepared to gamble a very large sum of money on the trip … Would you have a conference about it all … Please keep me informed. Regards, Ed.1

  Jon Hamilton was the key person for the boats. He knew everything there was to know about the jet units and was arguably the most experienced driver in the world. Jon’s son Michael had joined the family firm, and he too was a skilled driver and understood the mechanics of the boats. The third driver was Jim Wilson who was starting urgent training on the rivers of Canterbury.

  Filming the expedition was more of a problem. We knew from experience that film projects can be fraught, subject to personality clashes, expensive to fund, difficult to see through to completion. As chance would have it, Ed received a letter from an unknown Australian:

  Dear Sir Edmund, I am writing to express my great interest in being involved in your Ganges Expedition film. Over the last four years I have participated in quite a number of film projects of this nature … including four films in the Himalayas … I have a great love of India … having travelled on various sections of the Ganges, I know what a beautiful and fascinating river it is and I have a tremendous enthusiasm for portraying this to the very best of my ability on film.

  Yours sincerely, Michael Dillon.2

  When Mike flew across from Sydney to meet us, we saw immediately that he was indeed motivated solely by a passion for filming India. He volunteered both his services as director-cameraman and his professional camera equipment at no cost, and offered to complete and market the film when the expedition was over. It was a gamble, but Ed could see that here was someone who fitted in with the low-key way he liked to do things. And it paid off. No one got rich, but the completed film was sold into every television market in the world and Mike Dillon went on to make more Hillary films over many years.

  Sacred river of the plains

  Four months after Ed had fired the starting gun for his expedition, his three boats arrived in the hold of the Vishva Vikas at the port of Haldia, 130 kilometres downstream from Calcutta – now Kolkata. The next day, 24 August, was the first of a 57-day journey which began at the temple of Ganga Sagar, the place where Ganga the river meets Sagar the ocean. It was a benign, sunny day with a fresh breeze blowing white caps off the waves on a blue sea. We drove along the shoreline of an island of flat silt until we found what we were looking for – a temple – and drove in through surf to beach our three boats. There at the temple pilgrims were sprinkling water and crimson petals on an image of the goddess Ganga in a simple act of devotion that we would see countless times on our journey up the river.

  A blessing was needed, and soon Jim Wilson had found for us a priest, a small man who we liked immediately. Hastily he enlisted a few small boys to carry offerings of coconuts and flowers. He showed no surprise on seeing our three gleaming white boats but poured coconut milk over their bows, garlanded them with red flowers, and pressed crimson tilak marks on our foreheads and on theirs. Finally he filled a small vessel with holy Ganga water to take with us to the sources of the river in the mountains. We were on our way.

  The combined Ganga and Brahmaputra rivers form the Sundarbans, the largest river delta in the world, spreading over 60,000 square kilometres. Where it meets the ocean along its southern border there are vast mangrove swamps in which tigers may still be found. We had been offered the services of a guide who had said that if we were exceptionally lucky we might see one. For three days we drove our boats along muddy channels between tall mangroves. Why would a tiger live here? They ate fish, we were told, and the occasional villager.

  On the third day a miracle happened. Our guide was suddenly pointing to where a big cat was leaving the mangroves, tail aloft, to slip into the water and swim casually towards mid-channel. Seeing us, it turned back to leap up the muddy bank in three immense loping bounds.

  A few moments later, a second miracle happened: a big orange flank striped with black was moving inside the outer margin of the mangroves. Briefly he came into full view, powerful shoulders rippling under sleek tawny skin, big head held defiantly aloft as he looked us over. Turning, he walked slowly away, then glanced over his shoulder before gliding into the gloom of the swamp. A moment later a low, menacing growl reminded us who was in charge of this vast mangrove delta. That was a male, said our guide; the first one a female. We had indeed been exceptionally lucky.

  Turning north from the Sundarbans we drove up the Hooghly River, one of the many distributaries into which the main Ganga divides as it encounters the flat lands of the delta. The great city of Calcutta, home to eight million people, lies on its banks.3 Ed had many tasks there, including press interviews and the inevitable, and endless, requests for autographs. An important meeting was with Indian Oil which was not only donating fuel but also arranging its delivery at numerous towns along more than 3000 kilometres of river. It was a hectic two days, but the welcome had not been excessive and we assumed that from now on we would be on our own, apart from a few Indian Oil employees waiting on landing stages with drums of fuel.

  We left Calcutta at 7 a.m. with a drizzling rain falling from a grey sky. Beneath the iron girders of the Howrah Bridge we heard the roar of traffic overhead, the sounds of a city on the move. People leaned over the rail high above and waved. Farewell Calcutta, we thought. But when we saw a crowd on the bank further up, we drove over to see what they were doing. To our surprise, the crowd leapt up in excitement, and began calling Hillary, Hillary. The morning became an unending triumphal procession. There was not a spare space on the banks. People were in the trees, on boats, swimming, leaning out of windows, on balconies. They would wave as we approached, and as we waved back there came an answering roar of welcome. We were first astounded, then exhilarated by their extraordinary warmth and enthusiasm.

  At our first refuelling stop at Nabadwip, an excitable crowd packed the river banks. ‘We will need to be careful here,’ said Harish Sarin, a distinguished Indian Government officer from Delhi who had joined us at Calcutta. ‘Bengalis are very emotional people.’ As Ed was pressed towards a welcoming group, a policeman trying to restrain the crowd struck a large young man who became enraged. ‘Go over and shake his hand,’ said Harish urgently. Ed pushed his way through the surging crown and seized the hand of the young man, whose anger evaporated as he broke into a broad smile and shook Ed’s hand vigorously in return.

  Why were we seeing such crowds? We were told that the people had heard on the radio that one of the great heroes, about whom they had all been taught, was coming to ascend their river in magic boats. Some said he was a reincarnation of the god Vishnu. The boats could climb upriver against any current and could leap waterfalls. Hillary and their fellow Indian Tenzing had climbed a mountain that had been impossible to all men except these two. Perhaps Hillary was, like themselves, a Hindu. If they saw him in his magic boat on Ganga, they could receive his darshan – a glimpse that would give them spiritual strength.4 They had travelled long distances and waited hours or even days.

  How did Ed feel about his darshan? ‘I wished I could dispense with my darshan. I could hardly explain my lack of faith in my own darshan or my feeling that it was too small a return for the warmth and generosity of the welcome given to me by these people and the thousands, or even millions, we passed on the banks of the river.’5

  Next day we left the constricting
banks of the Hooghly behind and found ourselves on the vast expanse of the main Ganga flowing west to east as it crosses the Gangetic plain. The far bank was so distant as to be hardly visible, yet we could feel in the brown water beneath us the currents, boils and eddies of a great river whose flow during the monsoon was 30 times greater than during its dry season. We passed through the Farakka Barrage by climbing a steep tongue of water pouring through Gate 92, which had been specially opened to let us through.

  For a week we were almost alone on a broad river, encountering crowds only at our daily refuelling stations. The sky overhead was constantly changing, sometimes purest blue, sometimes filled with billowing white monsoon clouds higher than the Himalayas, sometimes inky black in pelting rain storms. Dolphins rose around us. Birds were everywhere: tall cranes, squat pelicans, storks, egrets, ibises, straggling ribbons of geese. The wide river parted around silt islands on which stood impermanent villages, some of them undermined and collapsing. We passed country boats driven upstream against the set of the current by multi-coloured, square-rigged sails, their black-timbered hulls carrying stone and sand for buildings in cities up-river from us.

  After a week we came to the ancient and holy city of Varanasi. An array of old stone temples and palaces rose from the ghats, the broad steps dropping down to the river where throngs of pilgrims bathed as part of Hindu ritual. We spent three days here, which for Ed meant attending a round of social occasions arranged by civic authorities and social clubs. He wrote in his diary, ‘Fed up with socialising and formalities. If I didn’t get so rushed for autographs and photos I could enjoy the people so. But I find it impossible for me to turn people down – they smile and say urgently “please” as if their lives depended on it. How can I refuse? … I’ve become a sort of paper hero.’6