Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
nothing for the first thirty-six hours. Our first real meal in two days was at the Pol-
ish embassy in New Delhi. We had expected to stay there as we had the year before
in Kabul, but now the atmosphere was more difficult thanks to increased tension
between East and West. I moved into a cheap hotel just off Connaught Square.
Voytek waited at the embassy for our equipment to arrive on the truck coming
overland from Poland, the 'Makalu Truck'. I happened to be at the embassy when
it finally arrived, four days late, and saw what I should not have seen. The seals on
the truck were broken, our gear unloaded and various other items loaded on for
the onward journey to Nepal.
'This is normal,' Voytek explained. 'Our drivers have seals for all the countries
they go through.' The opportunities for import and export through these legations
were clearly limitless. Our equipment was all in order and with no bonds to clear,
thanks to the Makalu Truck, we should have been ready to head for the Garhwal as
soon as the others arrived. But negotiations with the Indian Mountaineering
Foundation for our permits for Changabang were at a stalemate. Polish wheeling
and dealing was nothing compared to the CIA's shenanigans with spy stations on
Nanda Devi a decade before; we were now caught up in a legacy of intrigue that
looked likely to end our adventure before it had really begun.
I met Alex, Krzysztof and Lech at New Delhi station next day.
'When do we leave?' was Alex's first question.
'Maybe not at all - it's complicated. Let's get to the hotel.'
Above the noisy puttering of the rickshaw and the roar of Delhi's traffic, I asked
Alex if he had heard of the American Nandi Devi expeditions of 1965 and 1966. He
hadn't.
'Well, they were covers for a covert CIA operation to plant a nuclear-powered
listening device to monitor the Chinese atomic-bomb tests. But the 1965 expedi-
tion was stopped by bad weather, and they left the monitor bolted to a ledge. When
they returned next year, they found no trace of it. It had been avalanched into the
source of the Ganges. News has just broken here in India. Seems one of the 1965
expedition members had a guilty conscience and wrote a story for a Seattle news-
paper. The thought of radiation in the Ganges has caused uproar. The Indian au-
thorities have closed the Nanda Devi Sanctuary to all expeditions. Voytek went
ballistic with the IMF staff.'
'Hmm,' said Alex. 'Now I understand what that Russian meant yesterday on the
plane when he told me: “It is an Ilyushin you are flying, and an illusion if you think
you will climb in India now.” He didn't get it when I said: “Strange, I'm sure we are
off the ground.” How serious is it?'
'Very, but Terry King and I have a plan.'
