Kapadia Family

CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN

 Salil Tripathi

1990

Imagine this scene-a slightly balding, Gujju businessman sitting on the gaddi near the galla in a dukaan in Bhuleshwar market and then walking down the streets and chewing away a meetha Banarasi paan and hatting away the cloth prices. And imagine the same guy with a rucksack on his back, in short and T-short, tattered hunter shoes running down merrily from the top after climbing yet another mountain and talking in shuddh dialect of that part of Maharashtra with the villagers and waiting for the bus.

            But Harish Kapadia has always been like that. For six days he would be in the school. He is study, he’d be the leader. But come Sunday and he would be in the mountains. It all began with his school picnics and even today he joins the enthusiastic band of kids.

            By sheer force of numbers his record is mind-boggling. Over 600 hikes in Sahyadris. Over twenty-five expeditions in Himalaya. And the peaks have all fallen-Sudarshan Parbat, Chiring We, Bhagirathi II, Ikualari, Devtoli, Kalabaland Dhura. Then there have been long, enjoyable treks. Like Ladakh last year (he still talks enthusiastically about Pengoing lake). Or Sikkim. Garhwal. Nepal. And so today he knows Himalaya better than do we know the geography of Bombay. He could tell you the best time to visit the valley of flowers, what food to take, how much money to spend even if you called him up while he is haggling with dealers about wholesale prices.

            And it’s a great experience to trek with him in the Sahyadri. You are walking him. There are a few other hikers along. They suspect that this is the Harish Kapadia. Whispers. One of them musters up the courage to come up and ask him-“Are you Harish Kapadia?” Yes, he says. The fellow goes back and tells the others that he is right, after all. All of them come forward. They are thrilled. They enthusiastically talk to him. Like little schoolboys talking to Prakash Padulone that they play badminton to keep fit. He smiles. He has seen them all. He knows how few actually make mountains their lifelong passion. He knows how few can resist the temptation of a good social evening or an outing on a Sunday when otherwise they did have gone to the mountains of course, on every Sunday he is out. So if someone sees him on a Sunday in the town, prompt comes the phone from him-“What’s wrong, Harish? Are you not well or something?”

            I ask him why he was not scaled one of these massive peaks. Like what, he asks. Say, Everest. He smiles again. Then quotes his friend Bill Aitkin. Wrote Aitkin, “Only an idiot would love a woman because she was taller than the rest. The current stampede to climb Everest only goes to show that there are a lot of idiots around.”

            In fact, Harish goes to the extent of saying that Everest is one of the easier peaks to climb. He tells me of a sherpa saying – and sherpas are not wrong when it comes to these things – that even a yak can climb Everest. In fact, the dream of Sherpas is to take a yak on the Everest. So much for Everest being the sole ambition in life.

            Harish’s ambition is different. He wants to go to as many different areas of Himalaya as possible. He tells me of the Europeans. They have scaled everything in the Alps. But they still have one ambition-to be in the Himalaya. And when such Himalayan peaks are but a few nights away, who cares about the other places?

            You cultivate a different outlook in the mountains. You are honest to yourself; you learn the grandeur of nature. The awesome presence of mountains. The strange music of streams. The hours of inactivity in the snowstorms when you are in the tent doing nothing. The heated discussions in the tent (Sometimes there is more of a violent storm inside than outside, he adds). The feeling when you are at the top. The long return home. The camaraderie, the experiences . . . and you know you have had a rich, full life.

            Harish and his friends-they have this group of eight-have made some innovations in climbing. Like they follow the Hindu calendar. This is because our calendar is more accurate in estimating weather changes. Often they get inquiries from abroad for getting an idea of weather conditions during a certain period. This is because the lunar cycle is more accurate. Also, it is their belief that one should eat, even on mountains, the food with which one is accustomed to. I mean, no lukkha-sukka pau, tin food for him. He conveniently eats his puri, shak, shiro, dhokla, bhelpuri and all that No eggs for him on the mountains.

            Some of Harish’s finest experiences have been with the men who guard our borders. He has been to many inaccessible areas. The soldiers have been overwhelmingly good. There was this time when he went to a barrack with a few hikers. The Leader was ordering about in a stern, no-nonsense manner in Hindi to his men. Harish went in. Asked whether they could stay with them. That old chap said-“First you go and make your own tent.” They did. Then this guy came and said-“You guys will get whatever you want. But dare you talk with me in Hindi. I am sick of that bloody language. Speak in English.” On another occasion, they met the Maratha regiment. Harish started speaking in chaste Marathi with them. The soldiers were maha-khush. Harish gave them bhel and all. They got along famously. Another came to him and offered 100 kgs of milk powder in exchange of a tin of condensed milk, so sick was he the powder-some barter! But it has not been roses, roses all the way. He had a terrible accident some years back. He had been to Devtoli. He was returning downwards when the fell into a crevasse. Dislocated his hip badly. So badly, he could not move. He was airlifted by a helicopter. Underwent an operation at Bareilly military hospital. When he was brought out of the train, everyone thought he’d be in a terrible shape. And there was this guy smiling at everyone. Dr. Bhansali told him (now it reads a little like a HIndi film, but it is a fact), “Sorry, you won’t be able to walk. “Thundered Harish, “Walk? I will climb mountains!)” He did. For months he was in plaster. Then crutches for two years. But the call of the mountains was too much. He climbed Matheran on crutches.

            Sometimes he finds it futile to talk about the mountains. I mean, here he talks of the beauty of Ladakh to someone, the other fellow nods and says, “Yeah, yeah, may be. Anyway, coming for a movie tonight? “What’s the point of talking about mountains with them,” he wonders. So he keeps to himself.

            He has this theory why Gujaratis are so good at all this. “Organisation is very important is mountaineering. You have not to deal with the bureaucracy (that is why he prefers private expeditions with friends, French, Japanese, rather than go for these official, government expeditions). Money and people’s psychology also play an important role.”

            Harish is also a gifted writer. He has written the only authoritative book on the western ghats-Trek The Sahyadri. It gives a wealth of information and maps. He has a thorough knowledge of Maratha history and whichever fort the climbs, he knows its history.

            He is also, for the past three years, the editor of Himalayan Journal. It is the most authentic source on Himalayan mountaineering. It has a fifty year history and has had a glittering array of names as its editors-Kenneth Mason, Wilfred Noyce, H.W. Tobin, R.E. Hawkins. And now, Harish Kapadia.

            He met his wife, Geeta, also on the mountains. He wants to put her on a 20,000 ft. peak. Hearing this, she grumbles. Their kids are named after sherpas.

            He loves music, drama, films. Once he told Amjad Ali Khan, “When you play, you take music on aesthetic heights. We take it on physical heights when we take it with us on the mountains.”

            Come May, and Harish will again we in the Himalaya. This time at Darma Valley. There will be meetings with the soldiers, stay in tents. Snowstorms, wonderful experiences, all memories packed in compact slides, a return to the city. and business as usual. For there will always be mountains to climb.

FROM HIMAL MAGAZINE

A CLOTH MERCHANT WHO KNOWS HIS ROPES

by Kanak Mani Dixit

When Harish Kapadia’s businessmen friends think he is attending a dealers’ conference in Kanpur, he may well be melting ice for tea on a pass up at 18,000 feet in Kashmir.

Harish Kapadia, as his name suggests, is a Kapadia merchant. Sitting cross legged in his shop, M/s Ramdas Bhagwandas, from noon till about ten at night, he sells cloth. Stacks of them, wholesale, for the cloth  giant Raymonds. The shop is located in the Vithalwadi locality of Bombay, the largest and oldest cloth market in Asia.

But this Kapadia has another life, something his businessmen colleagues and clients would frown upon if they only knew. Harish Kapadia is India’s best-known mountain climber and adventurer, who regularly disappears from his Vithalwadi shop and Cumbala  Hill apartment to go exploring in the deep Himalaya. He has climbed everywhere in the Indian Himalaya from Kashmir to the Northeast, summitting hard summits in the company of some of the world’s best climbers, such as Chris Bonington, Dick Renshaw, Victor Saunders and Stephen Venables. Mr Kapadia has also almost single-handedly helped inculcate a passion for the mountains and a sense of adventure among India’s urban professionals, who today make a small but dedicated group. The Indian climbers Mr Kapadia is closest to are Muslim Contractor, Zerksis Boga and Monesh Devjani. Among Sherpas, he climbs often with Pasang Temba. “I have always climbed in my own group of friends and do not go with national teams and so on, says Mr Kapadia, whose expedition support staff invariably come from Harkot village in Almora which lies on the famous trail to the Pindari Glacier.

Since he started climbing 35 years ago, after undergoing training at India’s two mountaineering institutes in Darjeeling and Uttarkashi, Mr Kapadia has concentrated on interesting peaks rather than the “big names”. He has climbed a total of 33 peaks so far. His main contribution to Himalayan climbing has been to explore unknown areas and to open up “climbing possibilities” as he terms it. Some of Mr Kapadia’s. major ascents have been Devtoli(6788m), Bandarpunch West (6102m), Parilungbi (6166m) and Lungser Kangri (6666m), the highest peak of the Rupshu range in Ladakh. Not limiting himself to climbing, Mr Kapadia is also an Himalayan archivist and editor, and a custodian of Indian mountaineering lore. He edits the respected Himalayan Journal, published by the Himalayan Club, which was started by gentlemen climbers of British India back in 1928. Unlike the “official mountaineering” promoted by government, military, police and paramilitary units, the Himalayan Club is the centre of true  “amateur climbing” in India. The mountaineers of Mr Kapadia’s strain head for the rock and ice because of love of adventure and personal achievement, rather than in response to the commandant’s bark. Come weekends, when he is not hanging off the side of some over-exposed Himalayan rock face, Mr Kapadia and his sketch-artist spouse Geeta, two sons Sonam and Nawang (so named to mark their father’s Sherpa associations), and friends can be found bouldering and climbing just north of Bombay’s Andheri suburb. While the beaches themselves are filthy with oilslicks and overboard garbage of oceangoing ships, the low cliffs that overlook the Arabian Sea have rocks that are firm and inviting. Farther afield, Mr Kapadia also gets the credit for popularising the Sahyadris, a part of the Western Ghats. Years of hiking in this escarpment-rich range led Mr Kapadia to write, in 1977, a detailed handbook, Trek the Sahyadris, which has now become a standard reference for a generation of Bombay trekkers. His other books, which include Exploring the Hidden Himalaya (with Soli Mehta) and High Himalaya, Unknown Valleys, have been equally instrumental in making mountain lovers aware of little-known areas in the Himalaya. Up Short in Siachen In June 1996, Mr Kapadia and a team of Bombay climbers got permission from the foreign and defence ministries in New Delhi to venture up the Siachen region of Kashmir, which has been the subject of a longstanding dispute with Pakistan. After making their group was about to start up the snout of the Siachen Glacier when the army blocked its path. Mr Kapadia and his friends were asked “vacate”; the area. Civilian approval did not matter, they were told, it was the military hierarchy which must allow permission to climb in the super-sensitive border area. “Faced with many questions, heavy expenses, and puzzled at the army’s behaviour, we returned to Bombay recalls Mr Kapadia.

Looking back on the misadventure, Mr Kapadia is critical of the restrictions put on climbing in the Indian frontier regions. He notes that while India restricts even Indian climbers from Siachen, Pakistan has allowed more than 18 expeditions to climb in the area. “India’s neighbours are more open about allowing climbing in the border areas, he says, and points out with some amusement that this year the Chinese gave quick clearance to an Indo-Tibetan Border Police team to climb Everest from the North, “even though the ITBP has the word “Tibet”  in their name and as a force was raised specifically to fight the Chinese! Regarding Siachen, Mr Kapadia says: The military commitment has not solved the dispute to India’s advantage, and it has caused untold misery, expense, and loss of lives. It is essential that India’s national security interests are reinforced by other cost-effective means, such as allowing more Indian and foreign civilian expeditions on this range. n According to Mr Kapadia, such expeditions would help reinforce Indian claim over the area and the country’s “ sovereign rights” over the entire East Karakoram belt. Many More Peaks But Mr Kapadia is not one to be despondent for long after a setback. in June 1974, while climbing Devtoli in the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, he dislocated his hip at 22,000 ft, and was carried for 13days before being evacuated by helicopter. He spent two years in crutches and was ready for Sikkim by May 1976.

Despite the Siachen disappointment, Mr Kapadia is already full of plans for the coming years. As of this writing, he is off with just one companion, climber Rajesh Gadget, to make a winter attempt Hansbeshan Peak in Kinnaur. This coming summer, with three other friends and the Harkot porters, Mr Kapadia plans a traverse from Badrinath to Gangotri which entails crossing over a high col and negotiating the entire Gangotri glacier. This traverse has been done only once before, by Eric Shipton and Harold William Tilman in 1934. In 1998, Mr Kapadia plans to go with Chris Bonington to the East Karakoram for an attempt on the unclimbed Chong Kumdan II (7000m).

Mr Kapadia, who was recently elected Honorary Member of the UK-based The Alpine Club (one of only two Asians among 23 honorary members, and a young one at that), has plans to complete two books during 1997. One is Trek the Himalaya, on 30 new treks in the Indian Himalaya, and another the classification of all the peaks of the India, Bhutan and Nepal Himalaya, grouped in sections. Asked about his life’s mission, Mr Kapadia replies, Life’s mission! To see all of the Himalayan ranges with my own eyes, and to write about it all. Abode of Snow by Kenneth Mason is the bible of Himalayan history till 1953. I would like to bring the information up-to-date, but according to region, based on my own travels.

Why are there not more Indians interested in mountaineering? “It is hard for amateurs” to juggle the finances, the interest, and jobs, and so mountaineering loses out. In my own case, I have to balance my cloth business, family, writing, active climbing, and other interests like music, drama and films. But the way I see it, you have to utilise the time you have to the fullest. As for Siachen (Sia means ;rose ; and chen is; where is grows in Balti),this cloth merchant from Bombay proposes that the mountaineers of the world together lobby India and Pakistan to withdraw their armies in order to establish there International Park of the Rose.