Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and packing and bought our tickets for the early morning bus to Pokhara. The last
evening in the Up and Down Bar was excessive, and when our small team as-
sembled at the bus depot the next day, we were feeling a little rough, although not
as miserable as Mr Gupta. He took one look at us and our meagre possessions and
his face fell with the disappointment of the condemned man.
'Where is all my new equipment?' he asked as we boarded the bus.
'All packed specially for you,' Alex responded. The law in Nepal was that all ex-
peditions had to supply high-altitude equipment for liaison officers and also pro-
tective clothing for the base camp cook boy. Between us, we'd brought perfectly
adequate but rather patched and slightly whiffy sleeping bags, down parkas and all
the other requirements for our LO and crew. We could not afford new kit. It was a
sore point throughout the trip. The Nepalis were worried there might be bad
karma carried in used clothing, especially when someone who had subsequently
died had worn it.
Good to his word, Mike Cheney's sirdar met us in Pokhara. We hired thirty-eight
porters, issued them waterproof sheets and the low-cut wellingtons unique to the
porters' trade, paid them an advance for half the stages, and then had a quiet even-
ing wandering through town, hoping the monsoon clouds might part for long
enough to give us a view of our mountain.
We set off early next morning in blistering heat. The walk-in for the most part
passed in a dreamlike state of uncertainties overlaid by the compulsion of where
we were going and why we were here. Mountaineering was, Alex told me, just tour-
ism with an objective.
I had hoped that the days walking in would give us a chance to get to know each
other again. We had rarely climbed together in the past two years and had been on
different trips after three expeditions in a row together in the late 1970s. Disagree-
ing over the inclusion of the film team had not helped our relationship in the
weeks before departure. Alex admitted he had needed to borrow £700 from Mike
Parsons to make his contribution. I reflected it would have been nice to have the
luxury of money on this trip but that was not the main worry.
Alex was more withdrawn than in the past. He walked more often with his Walk-
man as companion than he did with me. Our last major climb had been in Peru
three years before. There, we had played to our strengths, made a few ascents, and
failed on a few others. I suspected we would not be singing 'be kind to your web-
footed friends' on this trip. He was a more serious and less communicative charac-
ter than the Alex of old.
What had changed? The main thing was that Alex was now a professional moun-
taineer. He had crossed the line. On every expedition he would be expected to
