setting & sounds

SETTING – SCENERY – VIEWS – SOUNDS

SPECIFIC LOCATIONS

SHIP:

1922 – Finch insisted on oxygen tank drills on the ship.

1924: Passed time on ship by working out in the gym, tossing medicine ball and running laps of the deck to stay fit.

 

TRAIN:

From Siliguri to Darjeeling they caught the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway – 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.  Sand had to be thrown onto the tracks in order to prevent the train from slipping.

DARJEELING:  Darjeeling station – gaggle of female porters, tumplines in hand – waited to hoist the luggage up the hill to governor’s house – where he was scheduled to stay as the personal guest of Lord Ronaldshay, governor of Bengal.

Mallory reached the mansion in a rickshaw, pulled and pushed by a team of three men, all Lepchas, indigenous hill people of Sikkim. Mallory referred to them as coolies – a term applied casually by the Brits to any working native, be they Tibetan, Nepal or Indian.

Mallory would have preferred to stay at the mountain Everest hotel where guy bullock stayed – or Bellevue hotel but he was put up in style and had to intend a formal dinner and reception hosted by lord Ronaldshay himself.  Mallory described it to Ruth as a “swagger” affair – guest list embossed invitations – servants in red livery w gold and silver braid – a proper orchestra – table laid w dazzling array of plates flatware bowls and crystal. There were 30 guests – fifteen couples. Mallory escorted Evie Morshead.

Darjeeling activities: tennis, badminton, golf at the gymkhana club, leisurely teas amid the potted plants and chintz and leather chairs and month-old copies of the Times and Illustrated London News. Afternoon races as Lebong. Dances and drinks in the evening at the Everest Hotel.

1924: Darjeeling: squash at gymkhana club, tea t the Rendezvous, dinner and dancing for 150 at the Planter’s Club, lawn tennis w a young lady followed by billiards and then more dancing, evenings that rarely ended before 2am. Natural history museum in Darjeeling – stuffed birds.

DAK BUNGALOWS: They reached a dak bungalow built of wood w four rooms w plates lamps and oil and library of old magazines beds mattresses and a chawkidar (guard) who provided firewood and milk. Notice on bungalow advised parties of 2 to travel w three servants: a cook, a bearer and a sweeper – the sweeper to clean bungalow toilets after use. The addition of a tiffin coolie to prepare picnics and assist the cook was optional but highly recommended. No coolie made to carry more than 50lbs and each to be paid a third the daily cost of a mule. If traveling to Tibet they were advised to carry several tins of biscuits, bottles of scented water, boxes of toilet soap as gifts for high officials, lamas and dzongpens. These were to be presented on a tray by a servant along w ceremonial khatas or scarves.

Kalimpong – comparatively lrg settlement w shops, churches, tea gardens, a post office and a telegraph line. The dak bungalow there was large and elegant w / room and veranda w pretty rose garden and scarlet hibiscus.

Punagang Monastery – Prayer wheel over 10ft hgih and 6ft+ diameter – inside inscribed on paper over a million prayers – w each rotation of the wheel a bell sounded indicating that the prayers had ascended into the sky.

“Om mani padme hum” – hail the jewel in the lotus

Phari was “the hill made glorious” in Tibetan. It was covered in its own filth – huts yak dung barren rock constant wind. Open air shops w hanging racks of rancid meat and cheese – kids w matted hair blood shot eyes ans grease on their face, begging.

Later small troupe of dancers arrived in late afternoon and put on a modest performance in the courtyard of the bungalow. Wheeler said “various meaningless stunts and some 1/2 cartwheels. One man played the drum, the woman the cymbals. Bury gave them 2 rupees w pleased them no ed.”

NEXT DAK BUNGALOW: The 8 expedition members crammed into one bungalow.

Tingri – very religious place – where Buddha threw stone and when it landed a single perfect note resounded through the universe. The Buddha called the place T’ing Ri.

Modest place a warren of stone.  Absence of wood – smoke of dung fires hovered in early afternoon light. The street stalls and shop fronts were stacked w wool and salt, piles of red chilies and great mounds of white butter, barley flour and chips of dried meat.

Tingri – Like most frontier outposts it gave way to gambling, drinking, etc. – highest rate of illegitimate born there. Lowest birth rate due to venereal disease.

HIGH CAMPS:  Bruce sent Somervell, Crawford and Geoffrey Bruce to camp 1 w 43 porters w 1200 lbs of yak dung and they built 4 roofless stone huts that would later be covered w tarps and canvas – tents being in short supply.

 

LANDSCAPES-PLANTS-ANIMALS

The 400 mile journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling – dust and heat – then monotonous landscape of paddy fields and bamboo, plantations of coconut and betel palms, bananas and plantains.

Bridge across the Padma – then many villages – a concentration of humanity unlike anything Mallory had ever seen.

Siliguri to Darjeeling – on Darjeeling Himalayan railway – through a rich forest of semul and sal trees – higher and higher into the mist – the train was toy like in scale.

Rivers – like ribbons of silver

Saw for the first time the summits of Kabru and Kangchenjunga

Tea fields glowed w a deep uniform green

What impressed him the most “was the forest itself, the incredibly touching and mysterious beauty of a tree clad hillside w all its wealth of growth and variety of greens and darkness and brightness. In one spot especially where I was walking ahead of the train I was irresistibly reminded of wooded hillsides in Chinese pictures where they are used to express some deep religious feeling.

The conditions were beyond terrible: mountainous slopes of forty degrees covered by dense jungle vegetation, river torrents that fell 50 ft in a mile – unbearable heat and leeches in lower elevation, while at the heights such cold that men died of frost. One soldier wrote to his mother “personally I would give the frontier to the Chinese if they want it… I have never seen a more awful spot”

Orchids mulberry trees walnut trees

Animals – ponies mules donkeys oxen and yaks

Further up – grasslands and marches and small ponds crowded w teals, mallards and bar-headed geese. Vast herds of yaks and sheep. Rich w abundant water. Thousands of midges and sand flies hovered in clouds around each animal and rider

“Huge moraines, side glaciers shooting rocks down. The natives say that a good many people lose their lives… Everywhere the rocks are frightfully loose-falls go on all the time on all sides. The peaks are all so steep, particularly the screes. I have never seen such consistently steep faces and ridges.”

Female bharal – so docile passed within 50 yards.

Glacial streams – alpine meadows of barberry and honeysuckle-white and pink spireas narrowed into a great gorge that after some distance opened upon the green barley fields of Tasang. They cooked that evening on a fire made of juniper, a pleasant change from the acrid scent of yak dung, a fuel that ruined the taste of every meal.

Narrow ravines and low forest of birch, willow, wild rose. At springs grew masses of anemones and yellow primulas, and on drier ground were thickets of gooseberries – they collected a whole supply.

H-bury again remarked about the docility of the wildlife.  No fear of humans -they passed within forty yards of a fine flock of rams and other female rams were so inquisitive they came within 10 yards to have a look.

The rock pigeons came and fed out of one’s hand and the ravens were as tame.

Black eared kites – extraordinary heights – dark silhouette of lammergeier too

Bullock collected flowers and butterflies in the afternoon sun.

Lammergeiers or bearded vultures scavengers dropping bones onto rocks to free the marrow – the basis of their diet. Or swallow whole bones the size of a lamb’s femur.

Cairns bristling w prayer flags.

Rocks carved w prayers – mani rocks: rocks w universal “mantra om mani padme hum”

Prayer wheels driven by wind or water

Gazelles fearless and grazing by them.

Mist

Beneath the black cliffs and ice fields of makalu, a mere fifteen miles from the base of Everest thrive immense forests of juniper and silver firs, trees the size of redwoods and farther downstream great thickets of bamboo grow as well as mountain ashes birches and rhododendrons the size of a woodsman’s cottage.

Blue irises and wild rhubarb

Ridgeline of silver firs

Dropped 4000ft following the kama chur for 3 days to its confluence w the arun where they satyed in a grove of blue pines and broad leafed alders – camp thick w leeches. Climbed through black mud reached summit of popti la at 14000ft – found ancient border stone inscribed in Chinese characters.

Nepalese women trudged by silently in the rain, burdened by 80lb loads of salt.

Langur monkeys in a valley scarlet w mountain ash and barberry.

THE LOOK OF THE FIRE: Getting colder – “the puffs of smoke from the fire give the faintest of blue cheer to our desolation”

H-bury found dwarf delphinium and delicate white saxifrage in full flower at 205000ft.

Red-billed chough, a blackbird flying overhead. And tracks of foxes and hares in the snow – surprised h-bury

Among the tracks was one that appeared uncannily like that of a bare human foot. The porters knew precisely what it was: the mark of a yeti, Metohkangmi, the “wild man of the snows” a monstrous creature known to descend upon villages to kill men, steal women and drink the blood of yaks and children. H-bury said it was likely a wolf.  This would make the press “the abominable snowman” “tall muscular and very hairy race of men”

WATCHING CLIMBERS FROM DISTANCE: Black specks appear along the skyline.

1922:

Butterflies and moths and “forts and monasteries like martins’ nests on a cliff”

Buddhist monks chanting prayers to avert hailstorm, accompanied by drums, cymbals, rattles, and a trumpet made from a human thighbone. Somervell deciphered the “cacophony” into precise musical notations and commented on their musical appreciation and tendencies

March to kampa dzong – bleak and arid landscape, blinding blizzards and “poisonous” winds.

Grey clouds roll in – race before the monsoon season sets in. The wind was awful.

SEEING CLIMBERS SEARCHING FOR MEN on LATE DESCENT: Mallory and Odell saw torches from Norton and Somervell and they found Norton and Somervell and brought them back to camp

 

1924:

Odell supported the climbers at camp 5 carried food up to camp 5 as they attempted the summit. Odell lingered at camp 5 and checked out the rock formations “variety of gneisses… Highly altered limestone and igneous intrusions of light granitoid rocks”. The sky lifted and Odell glimpsed the northeast ridge. What he saw would be challenged for the rest of his lifee.

“At 1250 saw M and I on ridge nearing base of final pyramid”

“There was a sudden clearing of the atmosphere, and the entire summit ridge and final peak of Everest were unveiled. My eyes became fixed on one tiny black spot silhouetted on a small snow crest beneath a rock step in the ridge; the black spot moved. Another black spot became apparent and moved up the snow to join the other on the crest. The first then approached the great rock step and shortly emerged on top; the second did likewise. Then the whole fascinating vision vanished, enveloped in cloud once more.’

He and hazard stayed up through the night keeping watch for flashlights or flares.

Noel had waited in his eagle nest w his lens fixed on summit until he was too cold and no sign w so much cloud cover (eagle nest was his favorite perch)

Noel said “may the Genie of the Steel Bottle aid them!”

Still looking out for MALLORY AND IRVINE:  Calling to porters. “Kutch dekta?” Answer “kuch nahin sahib”

 

EVEREST

Younghusband had seen Everest – “the first streaks of dawn gilding the snowy summits of Mount Everest poised high in heaven as the spotless pinnacle of the world”

Everest ” towering up thousands of feet, a glittering pinnacle of snow… A giant amongst pigmies, and remarkable not only on account of its height, but for its perfect form…

“A night of early moons… Even before the first glimmer of dawn… The mountains were somehow touched to life by a faint blue light – a light that changed as the day grew.” Then with sunrise: “a flush of pink and purple shadows”. Everest unveils itself: “we were not kept waiting for the supreme effects; the curtain was withdrawn. Rising from the bright mists Everest above us was immanent, vast, incalculable + no fleeting apparition of elusive dream-form; nothing could have been more set and permanent, steadfast like Keats’s star ‘in long splendour hung aloft the night’ a watcher of all the nights, diffusing, it seemed universally, an exalted radiance.”

Makalu and Everest – emerged as islands above the clouds.

Bury “all of a sudden a ray of sunshine touched the summit of Everest, and soon flooded the higher snows and ridges w golden light, while behind, the deep purple of the sky changed to orange. Makalu was the next to catch the first rays of the sun and glowed as though alive; then the white sea of clouds was struck by the gleaming rays of the sun, and all aglow with the colour rose slowly and seemed to break against the island peaks in great billows of fleecy white. Such a sunrise has seldom been the privilege of man to see, and once seen can never be forgotten.”

1922

Morale soared when they caught a glimpse of Everest not 15 minutes out of Shiling – they rounded a rocky promontory and suddenly caught a clear view of Everest 55 miles away to the southwest

The view opened up and suddenly they simply stopped and stared in wonder- Mallory said “for a time we completely forgot our quest”

SOUNDS

Yak bells

Listened to the thunder of avalanches breaking on all sides of the valley.

Finch: “the wind flapping of the canvas… Made a noise like that of machine-gun fire. So deafening was it that we could scarcely hear each other speak.”

Then an avalanche hit the climbing party. “An explosion of untamed gunpowder”.

Tibetan music during rituals along with ‘devil dancing’ in masks.