Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The team finally came together on 14 March 1980 outside the Kathmandu customs
shed. The fourth member was a Polish friend of Voytek's, Ludwik Wiczyczynski, a
musician and classical philologist. What a team: philologist, guide, computer techni-
cian and national officer, the first Anglo-Italian-Polish Expedition. Now the science
of climbing Himalayan hills is steeped in lore and one of the cardinal precepts would
suggest that such a racial mix must inevitably underline the inevitability of World
War III. But we have not been schooled in this discipline. We were not an expedi-
tion; we were a trip, or a holiday as they are wont to call it in my office.
On the other hand we were an expedition, the first Nick Estcourt Memorial Exped-
ition. The award, which will be made every year to one expedition going for a 'partic-
ularly challenging project', comes from the funds of the appeal launched after Nick's
death to commemorate his memory. We dedicated our route to his memory.
Dhaulagiri stands in central Nepal, on the west side of the Kali Gandaki river,
through which valley passed the trade route to the ancient kingdom of Mustang. It is
also, as far as Muktinath, a pilgrims' way. Dhaulagiri is the sixth-highest mountain in
the world, a 'mountain without pity', a 'mountain of storms'. Our objective was the
east face, rising steeply out of the jumbled south-east glacier, framed between and
formed by the northeast and south-east ridges.
There are two ways to the traditional Dhaulagiri base camp. For the purpose of the
pre-monsoon season of 1980 they might be described as a short, silly way and a
longer, sensible way. Naturally we went the short, silly way.
Some hours above Tukuche, a once flourishing town on the ancient Trade Route
between the Indian plains and the Kingdom of Mustang, it snowed for a week. We
put up the tents, dismissed the porters and took to the skis. Our liaison officer fled
for sanity when his tent disappeared on the second day, closely following our sirdar,
and closely followed by the Poles. A passionate valley-orientated interest in prepar-
ing for 'when it cleared up' spread through our team like the plague, as the roof of
the frame tent disappeared under the little white flakes, excepting that is, that it nev-
er quite reached the Western Bloc. They hung on with vacant grins, multiple injuries
and trusting in the unruffled calm of Kasang the cook, who finally called a halt to the
proceedings with the help of a magic potion, courtesy of a local lama, scattered to the
four winds one black night when it seemed the whole lot might go under and we
were sleeping with boots on and open knives clasped, minds intent upon the rasping
strains of Marianne Faithful.
'Why'd ya do it?' she asked.
It consequently cleared up and with a group of hardy but record-breaking-ly ex-
pensive porters, we limped into base camp three days later with half the gear, thigh-
deep through the snows of the Dhampus Pass and the French Col, thankful to arrive
at this latter point, a most pleasant spot which Terray had once taken a liking to as
'the foulest-looking place'.
If you are alert, sharp-witted, or work at the BMC, you might have taken cognis-
ance of the curious fact that 'alpine-style' expeditions manage to remain absent from
their country of origin for at least as long as their more portly neighbours. Ignoring
the occasional week conveniently but quietly lost in Bangkok or Warsaw, the name of
