Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In his misery, only one thought gave Lachenal any pleasure: to contemplate “my
family, my kids, whom I have a mad desire to see again, my wife who alone will take
care of me.”
From Base Camp, Herzog had sent a Sherpa ahead as a runner to get the news of the
expedition's success back to France. On June 16, while Herzog lay waiting for death in
the woods of Lété,
Figaro
broke the news. Because the team had signed exclusive con-
tracts with that newspaper and with the magazine
Paris-Match,
Herzog and Ichac had
been vigilant, as they had periodically sent off dispatches, that news from the expedi-
tion not be intercepted and leaked. Even at the time, Rébuffat was scornful of these first
efforts by Herzog to put his own spin on the story. In one undated letter to Françoise,
he wrote, “Don't believe for a moment what the telegrams sent to
Figaro
say. It makes
us laugh sometimes to hear the wording Ichac and Herzog give them!”
Slowly the caravan moved on. On the 21st Lachenal bore what he called “the most
painful episode for me of the whole evacuation,” when Adjiba carried him across a
bridge over the Kali Gandaki. At the start of the crossing, Lachenal's left foot (the
worse frostbitten) struck a big stone; then, as Adjiba stumbled on, both feet banged re-
peatedly against the chains that suspended the bridge. “He left me weeping beside the
trail on the other side,” wrote Lachenal; “he dumped me literally on the ground as he
went off to look for the Bara Sahib [Herzog].”
So the entries in Lachenal's diary stream on, noting small indignities and rare mo-
ments of pleasure, giving the day-by-day details of the long march home that Herzog's
account is too well crafted to include. “A pretty bad night. Didn't have any morphine.
Besides, I was nibbled by fleas.” “In the middle of the night, a huge need to take a shit
which I satisfied in an old box.” “It rained in torrents almost the whole night and it's
still raining this morning.” “I believe I have never been so dirty in my life. It's been
two months since I washed—not even my hands.”
“All the young females in this region are beautiful, with eyes like coals.” “In the
evening, the countryside was very beautiful, a mixture of the green of vegetation and
the ochre of the cliffs.” “When I'm not suffering too much, life seems almost good.”
Lachenal's sole distraction on the slow march out was a mystery novel Ichac lent
him, which had the ominous title,
The Man Without a Head.
That, cigarettes, and
morphine got him through his days.
Lachenal's able-bodied teammates seemed to him to have little compassion for his
sufferings. Even Terray was distant on the march out from Annapurna. Only Rébuffat
seemed truly solicitous. “He was very nice to me last night and this morning,” wrote
Lachenal one evening, and some days later, “He offered me several very kind words,
