An Indian Gentleman Mountaineer

by Stephen Venables

(From HIGH, April 1998)

When I first went climbing it was the inanimate geology of the mountains that drew me. I loved the play of light on form and texture, and I was preoccupied with my own gratification on a given face or buttress. Climbing partners were just a means to an end. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say that I was a selfish bastard, just that I did not necessarily expect great friendships to evolve from climbing. Perhaps it was a lack of self-confidence, or a wariness, for it took a while to realize the value of interdependence. Now it is very different and I rate a climb or journey less for its own physical merit than for the people who will share the journey.

I have been fortunate enough to climb with some of the worlds best mountaineers, but of all my expedition companions the one who has given most pleasure does not have a reputation based on cutting edge deeds at extreme altitude nor on glossy technical artistry. In fact, these days, he prefers increasingly to avoid summits and sticks to crossing the gaps between them, filling in the remaining blanks on a rich personal map of experience. He may not have climbed the highest peaks, but he probably knows more about the Indian Himalaya than anyone else alive and the number of his expeditions there exceeds his 53 years. All of which seems odd, on the face of it, for a man who grew up in a hot crowded city, a thousand miles from the mountains.

Bombay may seem an unlikely climbing nursery but, in the aftermath of Tenzing Norgays success on Everest in 1953, mountaineering was suddenly seen as a good thing for India’s urban youth. Harish Kapadia was fifteen when he signed on for his first rock climbing training course. His tutors Nawang Gombu and Ang Kami, both Sherpas from Darjeeling. Gombu, a tiny, laughing ball of fire would go on to climb Everest with the Americans in 1963 and again with Ang Kami and the Indians in 1965. Later, at a Himalayan training camp in Sikkim, Harish was to meet Wangdi Norbu, who had climbed Jannu with Lionel Terray. So, right from the beginning, the young Kapadia, destined to take over the family wholesale cloth business, was plunged into an alternative world of Himalayan legend, rubbing shoulders with people who lived and breathed mountaineering.

If he had been a military man, Harish could have made mountaineering his career, collecting a tally of prestigious ascents and the medals that accompany such feats. As a civilian, it has not been so straightforward. In India there is no obvious mountaineering career structure for civilians, particular ones like Harish who generally make a point of heading for esoteric peaks, or long exploratory treks with no particular summit in mind. He has little to offer in the way of banner-waving glory in a country where, outside the small circle of enthusiasts, the public still finds it hard to accept the idea of mountaineering for its own sake. He is, in the noblest sense of the word, an amateur. Mountain exploration remains an escape and a passion, not a career.

Luckily, he has a civilised timetable that does not require him to go to the office before midday. He also has an extremely independent-minded wife, Geeta, who is keen to pack him off to the mountains for a few weeks each summer. He has time and space to organize his trips, with a little left over for his other passions such as cricket, cinema and his stomach, which he indulges with epicurean delight. For many of us that time and space would degenerate into indolence, whereas for Harish it is an opportunity to grasp life with ebullient energy and make things happen.

He made our expedition to the East Karakoram happen in 1985. I shall never forget the atmosphere at Bombay Central Station, when a huge crowd of well-wishers and helpers gathered to see us off on the night mail to Delhi and Jammu. There was a palpable sense of goodwill, of people enthused and inspired to join in a great shared endeavour. The following day at Delhi we were joined by three men from Kumaon, hill shepherds who have been cooking and portering for Harish’s expeditions for years. All it takes is a letter from Bombay and they will turn up on a given date, anywhere in the Himalaya.

In Leh we had all manner of problems with officialdom. For Harish they just seemed another of life’s joyful challenges, to be tackled with streetwise wheeler dealing, stringpulling and cajoling, all tempered by the occasional well-aimed flattery. And if things were ever getting a bit to tense, he would just shout Chalo – lets go and have a meal, dragging everyone off to a restaurant, to concentrate on the things that really matter in life, and leaving the officials to fester in their dreary offices.

That ability to sit back and relax in the midst of turmoil is a great gift. In Harish’s case I suspect that it has been won by experience. He rarely talks about the bad times, but he has had his share of grief and suffering, three times on the peaks of Garhwal. He was badly shaken in an avalanche on Tharkot in 1969 and the following year, when he climbed Berthartoli Himal South, four members of his team died in an avalanche on the Main Peak. One of the victims was Ang Kami, who had instructed him on the first Bombay rock climbing course. Then in 1974, after making the first ascent of Devtoli, in the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, he fell into a crevasse, dislocating a hip. It took eight days to carry him to Base Camp where he could be rescued by helicopter.

Back in Bombay he was told no weight bearing for two years. As he recalls in, High Himalaya, Unknown Valleys, Harish replied, No problem doctor, I will not carry any weight. Someone will carry my rucksack in the mountains. When the doctor explained the reality of his predicament, Harish responded to the news with stoic determination. Within months he was trekking on crutches in the local hills, the Western Ghats. After one year he crutched to 5400 metres in Kashmir. Two years after the accident, with his old Parsee friend Zerksis Boga, he was back on his own feet, doing a 240 km trek through Sikkim in 30 days, crossing five high passes.

Zerksis Boga is one of the many Bombay friends who have left for Canada and The States. Harish remains ensconced in his beloved Bombay. He was recently persuaded to visit Europe and he has just returned from a lecture tour in Japan, spreading the gospel of small-scale expeditioning, but for all his cosmopolitan internationalism, he remains essentially Indian. Looking back on three Himalayan trips with him, I wince at moments of crass Englishman-abroad ignorance, and feel thankful for his and his friends tolerance. He seems to have a soft spot for the British, but he has no illusions. Someone commented recently about the reputed high calibre of British officials during the Raj, and he responded civilly but curtly, Yes, there were some good officials, but there were incompetent ones too. He then went on to state quite categorically that, in his view, if it had not been for Gandhi, there might have been terrible violence meted out to the British during the run up to Independence. For all his knowledge and interest in the British explorers who preceded him in the Himalaya, he feels no kowtowing nostalgia for colonial days. And, despite all his healthy mockery of modern governmental corruption, he is an unashamed patriot, a child of modern India.

The last time I saw him, in Delhi last September, he was doing deals with his publisher, sorting out at least one reprint and finalising the arrangements for his new book of Himalayan adventures. He was also badgering military contacts to smooth the way for a possible expedition to the Siachen Glacier. And while he was about it he thought that he would visit a cloth merchant, ever so casually, making it clear that he just happened to be passing, but yes it would be nice to have a cup of tea, before going to the next meeting. It was strange to think that a few days earlier, he had had us all up at dawn, beside a monastery in deepest Kinnaur, doing yoga to salute the sun; and that only three days ago we had been sitting talking to a 98 year old lama in the Baspa valley, one of the most peaceful and beautiful Himalayan valleys I have seen. The lama was deaf and had to peer hard through double pairs of spectacles, but he soon remembered the man from Bombay, chatting to him in Hindi about a lifetime of pilgrimages to Ladakh and Tibet. Harish was his most mellow relaxed self but as we set off to catch the bus home, he couldn’t resist looking up the valley towards a distant hazy blue peak and taking a few photos for the record. That’s a very nice peak. At least 6,300 metres I should think. Never climbed. Well have to come back.