the expedition

BASIC LOGISTICS

Approach to mountain Everest would be made through Tibet, not Nepal.

The Royal Geographic Society – RGS would be responsible for preliminary negotiations w the British, Indian and Tibetan government and a formal deputation led by Younghusband would immediately seek the support of the secretary of state for India.

Main hurdles:  Money, permissions and the right climbers.

Joint committee of alpine club and rgs would work on the organizing and planning of an expedition to extend over 2 seasons.

Howard-Bury said “the entire problem is the failure of either Montague or Curzon to agree with the government of India’s request to sell arms to Lhasa.

Charles Bell, British-India’s ambassador to Tibet, was instrumental in securing permissions for Everest expeditions.  Bell had built relationship with Dalai Lama in Darjeeling in 1910 after Dalai Lama’s exile.  Bell had made it so Tibet and Britain felt as one. Tibet even offered soldiers to Brits – but offer was declined. To have this relationship after what Younghusband had done in Tibet in late 1800s was amazing.  (Younghusband and Tibetans had had a stand off in which the Brits sprayed the Tibetans with machine gun fire.  It was modern weapons against crude knives.  There was no surrender by the Tibetans, they just turned and walked away and the Brits kept firing.)

ROUTE

Getting there: Mallory went from Calcutta docks to Sealdah Station to catch the Darjeeling Mail – the evening train that ran north overnight to Siliguri.  Siliguri – terminus of the line – was a small trading settlement scattered on a stony plain 7 miles from the slopes of the indian foothills of the eastern Himalya.

From Siliguri they caught the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway – from Siliguri to Darjeeling – the train was toy-like in scale. Called the toy train.  It had a narrow-gauge ribbon of track that zigzagged and looped its way some 7000 vertical feet up the flank of the mountains to the hill station of Darjeeling – the summer seat of the government of Bengal and staging point for assault on Everest.

The initial expedition route: down to Kalimpong, up the Teesta valley, across the Jelep la to Yatung and then the long ascent to the Chumbi valley to the Tibetan plateau at Phari.  Then Tingri.

The climbers’ departure from Darjeeling was deliberately staggered.