Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
On April 9, Lachenal dryly recorded Easter Sunday: “For us, a day like all the oth-
ers, except a few more hassles than usual.” The sentence was suppressed in the 1956
Carnets du Vertige.
Even the most laconic daily jottings (“Evening, the eternal chicken and potatoes”)
were excised from the
Carnets,
as edited by Gérard Herzog. Yet the sentence, “At noon,
we opened a bottle of white wine, which devilishly reminded us of our native land,
truly the most beautiful we have seen to date,” was preserved.
On April 11, Lachenal witnessed an eerie rite:
I am going to attend the burial of a young girl who was carried on a stretcher. A hole is dug
near the river, the girl put inside it, and after a little ceremony, covered with stones. The
body will be carried away by the floodwaters to fertilize the plains of Nepal. [Suppressed]
Lachenal's record has the virtues of a true diary, in that it notes the homely, quo-
tidian verities by which the party measured out its progress. From Herzog alone, for
instance, the reader would little guess how constantly beset the team was with annoy-
ing ailments and illnesses.
18 April.
Everybody has been sick, except Schatz and Noyelle [the liaison officer]. Tonight
Lionel [Terray] had really bad indigestion with diarrhea. I woke up feeling fine. I ate and
then I took off. En route the urge to vomit and diarrhea made me stop several times. . . .
Today was for me the most terrible since we started.
23 April.
Lionel was sick all night, with constant stomachache.
25 April.
. . . Always I have a bit of diarrhea. This morning I shat in my pants—not pleas-
ant.
29 April.
. . . I have a boil that started on my sternum. I just hope it's the only one.
30 April.
. . . My boil only gets bigger, and I already have some ganglions under my arms.
(All these passages were suppressed, as if to admit to developing a boil on one's chest
were unworthy of the crème de la crème of French mountaineering.)
Likewise Lachenal's candid observations of the native Nepalis the team passed daily.
“The women seem to have very small breasts—even, if I'm not mistaken, not to have
breasts at all.” (The second half of the sentence was suppressed.)
If in Herzog's text, the nine climbers blur together, all hearty team players, all
knights of the sky, the occasional passages in Lachenal's diary hinting at interpersonal
conflict or quirks of character bring his comrades to individual life. “The night was
