The Himalayan Institute of Mountaineering, Manali Part 1
Simon Waters
I was sitting looking into the beautiful brown eyes of a stunning, sari-clad princess, at a party in Dehli, when my father came up. “There is someone over here I think you ought to meet”.
“I’ll just be a few minutes Jake”, I replied, and turned back to the princess.
I had a good relationship with Jake, and respected his judgement, so I soon reluctantly left the princess and joined him. “This is Mr Govind; he is Chief Secretary at the Ministry of Defence Production”. Mr Govind looked at me affably and said, “I hear you want to go to the Himalayan Institute of Mountaineering?” He asked me a few questions about my interest in climbing, and then turned back to Jake, “I think we can get Simon into the institute, Mr Waters. Just give me a call at the ministry next week.”
I had been given a copy of Hunt’s book on the conquest of Everest for my tenth birthday, and had dreamed of climbing Everest ever since. I had heard about the Himalayan Institute of Mountaineering in Darjeeling, which was run by Tenzing Norgay, who with Hillary had been the first to the top of Everest. Since the trouble with China, I believed that the institute was used exclusively to train India’s mountain troops, and I worried that I’d be seriously out of my league. On my application form, I exaggerated my day trip to Harrison’s Rocks and two or three weekends in the Llanberis pass, into a more substantial climbing portfolio.
A few weeks later, back in Hyderabad, Deccan, I heard that I had a place on the 28th basic course in mountaineering in Manali, Punjab, the newer, satellite branch of the main Institute in Darjeeling. The course was due to start in May (1965). The course itself was free, but we had to pay for the special low weight and preserved foods we would need for the time above the snow line. So I began a six week training programme of runs, push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups, and substantially reduced my drinking. As the course got closer, I got out my rucksack and filled it with restaurant sized tins of chop-suey (a mistake on the order from our food shipper) and ran up and down the Banjara Hills. In the last week of training, I was running with 80 pounds of canned food in the back-pack.
I took a train to Dehli and then up to the railhead. It didn’t occur to me to find out if there was a bus, and I hitch-hiked the rest of the way. I got a lift from a local Maharani, and put up for the night in her luxurious apartments in the capital of her kingdom. She interviewed me politely, in her drawing room, overlooking the town, and the mountains behind. “What is the purpose of your visit?” For once, I had a simple answer. I arrived in Manali a day early, but was kindly let stay in the student’s hostel. The institute was a large building on the edge of a town of about five thousand in a stunning mountain valley at 6400 feet and surrounded by towering peaks.
When the other trainees arrived, I was relieved to find that this course was made up of university students from the Officer Training Corp (OTC), not full time hardened soldiers. Most of the trainees were twenty or so, though there were a couple who were mature students or doing their MA. I was the youngest at seventeen, but I didn’t feel younger, as the majority of my class-mates still lived at home, or in a university dorm, and I had left home to work at fifteen and had hitch-hiked to India alone at sixteen. Most of them had never seen snow, many had never seen a mountain, few had previously climbed, and several had been “volunteered” by their superior, and didn’t want to be there in the first place. But there was a core of very enthusiastic and very fit students, and we soon formed a group. We knew that if we passed the basic course with an A, we would be invited back to do an advance course. Success in the advanced course could lead to an invitation for an instructor’s course in Darjeeling. The instructor’s course was run by Tenzing himself. My goal was set.
In the morning we were woken at six, with hot chai delivered to our dorms. Then we went out into the cold morning air and did group exercises for half an hour, including 10 minutes of running on the spot, with knees lifted high. I was thankful for my six week training, and could keep up with the fittest. On some mornings, several of us ran the two miles up the hill to the hot spring, and soaked in the pool before running down for breakfast at eight.
Lessons on rope management, mountain craft, mountain weather etc were given in Hindi by the school staff; two Sherpas and two members of the Punjabi Border Police. I sat listening to a stream of words I didn’t understand, and a very few I did (utcha, tik-hair, hai, the numbers from 1-10) dotted with technical terms in English. These were spelt out, “crampon c-r-e-m p u n”, “avalanche, a-v-e-l-u-n-g-e”, “crevasse, c-r-i-v-a-s-s”. (How good’s your spelling in Hindi?). But I remember distinctly my surprise at “benightment, b-e-n-i-g-h-t-m-e-n-t”. In the breaks, and after lessons, I would cram with a couple of my new friends, especially my roommate Chopra; they would tell me the gist of the lesson, and I would correct the spelling of the vocabulary. We also learned knots, including the endman, to tie onto the end of the rope, and the middleman to tie into the middle. We were introduced to one hundred foot hemp ropes, and wooden ice-axes over 4 feet long.
We were taken rock climbing at a local crag. Here the boasts on my application form (“It doesn’t matter what you say, once you’re in nobody will read it”, said Jake) led to me being considered some kind of an expert in rock-climbing. Neither of the two instructors assigned to our course (Purshotum of the North West Frontier Police and the Sherpa Dan Kumar) was any good at rock climbing, so they asked me to lead on rock-climbing training. Seventeen, and already a climbing trainer at the Himalayan Institute of Mountaineering! I remembered much of what Tom had taught me in Wales, on those few weekends, and got people standing above their nailed boots, and picking their way up easy climbs. I was a bit reckless myself, and was soon soloing the small rockface alongside my “students” and passing on tips to the hapless. At lunch, I invented a game of running up a short steep face without using our hands. I had my come-uppance in the afternoon; when body rappelling with too much gusto, I tipped over and the rope wrapped around my neck. Fortunately, I was close enough to the ground for one of the instructors to take my weight and for me to untangle before I choked.
We had long hikes in the local well-wooded hills, where our four foot ice axes made excellent walking sticks on easy slopes, and lectures in the evening from the director. As Indians wash twice a day, and we wouldn’t be able to wash when we went to climb our peak, the director gave us a lecture on cleanliness. “A climber must enjoy being dirty, and if you don’t enjoy being dirty, you can’t be a climber” he said. Coming from a culture of the weekly bath (whether you needed it or not), I had no difficulty with the idea of not washing while we climbed. But, many of my classmates were truly horrified.
One morning, after about ten days, we were issued kit. “Don’t just take what you are given”, we were told, by the director, “make sure everything fits and is in good condition. Your kit will be vital when you get out into the mountains”. Chopra and I and a few other enthusiasts spent several hours trying things on and returning dud items for something better. I took back a kapok sleeping bag and got a thick down bag. I also changed my crampon straps, got a warmer down jacket and sweater, and got an extra sweater. Chopra and I went through the tents carefully and got the best we could find, and then poached better tent pegs from another tent. I noticed that several students just tucked their kit under their bed, sight unseen, and went back to playing cards.
There was a problem though as I had size 11 feet, but the institute had no boots bigger than 10. However, Hillary (the Hillary) had been hill-walking near Darjeeling the previous year and had donated his walking shoes to the Himalayan Institute in Darjeeling, run by his friend and climbing partner on Everest, Tenzing. The Darjeeling institute, being well funded, and properly supplied, had passed the shoes on to Manali, its poorer relative. The shoes were size 13, far too big, but the only shoes I could get into. Due to the vast size of the shoes, (they were brown Yorkshire walking shoes, stopping under the ankles, not boots) I managed to scrounge three pairs of socks so they would not fall off. So, not only was I going to go climbing in the Himalayas, literally, in Hillary’s shoes, I’d have the warmest feet on the expedition!
Next episode: Bear hunting, and a view of Tibet in Hillary’s shoes.
writesimon 