Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
presenting arms, and dignitaries giving formal speeches. At the climax of the cere-
mony, the Maharajah conferred on Herzog the country's highest military honor, the
Gurkha Right Hand for valor, saying, “You are a brave man, and we welcome you here
as a brave man.”
Yet the topic also makes clear that attending the ceremony taxed Herzog to the lim-
it. As he sat watching the long performance, pus and blood oozed through his band-
ages. Ichac whispered, “How's it going?”
“Pretty awful,” Herzog whispered back. “I don't think I can hold out much longer.”
Later, in Delhi, Oudot discovered that Herzog's feet had become infested with mag-
gots. When he tried to use tweezers to remove them, they withdrew into holes in the
man's dead flesh.
Even if Herzog felt it vital to attend the audience of the Maharajah, why could the
five climbers in Delhi not have flown at once back to France?
When I interviewed her in 1999, Françoise Rébuffat gave me one answer, based on
her late husband's understanding of the situation. “Herzog said at one point that his
company, Kléber-Colombes, had asked him to work, to go see the Maharajah. They
knew Nepal would need rubber.
“Herzog took away all the men's passports, so they couldn't go home early. No one
was to get back to France before Herzog. He even insisted on being the first off the
plane when it landed at Orly. This embittered Gaston.”
In fact, it was Lucien Devies who, acting in consultation with Herzog, secured tick-
ets for a return flight on July 16. Meanwhile, in Delhi, the five climbers loitered, with
nothing to do. Lachenal's diary records this ordeal by monotony, which became for him
even worse than the agonies of the retreat by stretcher.
“All my comrades are dawdlers who think only about themselves, never about me,”
he writes on July 8. That evening the men attended a dinner party for all the French
citizens in Delhi—all fifteen of them. “My feet felt really bad, and in addition I was
sick to my stomach with colic, and at every instant I was afraid I would have to ask
someone to carry me to the bathroom.”
July 9: “I changed my dressings, which were oozing [with pus] and which smelled
really bad. There is a lot of rotten flesh. . . . I change positions a thousand times a day, a
thousand times a night. My ass, on which I sit day and night, gives me a lot of trouble.”
July 10: “The afternoon was very slow, it seemed it would never end. Several times
I asked myself what day it was. Yes, at 6:00
P.M.
, as at 3:00
P.M.
, as at 1:00
P.M.
, it was
still always the 10th and to get to the 11th, it was necessary to wait half the night.
And after—after that it will be the 11th, just like the 10th, with the same suffering,
the same pains.”
