Testing Friendship - Part 3
Trek Diaries
Note: This is the final chapter of the Friendship Peak Trek series. Unless you are the sort who likes to peek at the last page of a book to check if the butler did it, do read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, before you read this issue.
Journal Entry - Day 6
One of the great perils of working in a corporate law firm is the obligation to accept connection requests received from clients on LinkedIn. Rejecting, or even ghosting, such requests is deemed impolite and you have no choice but to play by the rules of business etiquette. As a result, your newsfeed is soon flooded with motivational quotes, self-satisfied updates which feature so many synonyms of the word ‘humbled’ that irony chokes to death under their combined weight, and bizarre claims masquerading as trivia.
Did you know, one such recent LinkedIn post proclaimed, that when Einstein was asked what is mankind’s greatest invention, his reply was compound interest?
This is, of course, patently false. Not only is there no proof of Einstein having made this statement, it is but obvious that a man of his intelligence would have known compound interest is not the right answer to that question. The right answer is powdered sweet corn soup. It is what’s keeping me alive right now, as I write this; and it is as much a manna from heaven as porridge is muck from hell.
The day began - at midnight - with porridge. I am not given to harbouring extreme opinions but sometimes one must face up to the truth. Porridge, particularly in its oats avatar, is beyond redemption. It is a vile thing that reeks of misery and leaves the taste of anguish upon your tongue. This does, admittedly, make it the ideal breakfast for a challenging day in the mountains. Once you’ve survived a few mouthfuls of oats porridge, nothing can faze you anymore. You become unflappable because you know the worst is already behind you.
The first leg of our route to the summit of Friendship Peak passed through a field of boulders. This meant navigating treacherous terrain in the meagre illumination offered by our headlamps, while wearing inflexible snow boots that had threatened a sprained ankle on level ground. Progress was slow and tedious. After a couple of hours, we reached the edge of a glacier where we clipped on our crampons and began to climb the frozen river of ice and rock.
The recommended technique, when ascending steep slopes, is to chart a zig-zag path. Zig a few steps to your left, then zag a few to your right. Counting your steps can also help. It is remarkable how you can spend hours doing this and yet, remember so little of it. Later, you wish you had taken more breaks and more pictures to embellish the memory of being the only human beings in a desolate place of such forbidding beauty. But at the time, all you did was walk and count, walk and count, because stopping for more than the space of ten breaths meant acknowledging the fatigue and allowing it to seep into your bones.
As we laboured up the glacier, we made the fatal error of asking our guide if the route would continue to be this difficult. This was, to be fair, a rookie mistake. One never asks a trek guide a question about the route in the hope of receiving a comforting response. He barked out a laugh and said, Ye to kuch bhi nahi hai, bohut easy hai. Asli route toh aage hai (This is nothing, very easy. The real deal is up ahead). Thus chastised, we trudged on in silence.
Around 4 AM, we reached a ridge at the top of the glacier - a col, in mountain-speak. After a brief break - during which, an attempt at photography sent an iPhone gambolling down the mountainside - we resumed our hike1. By this time, we had lost a member of our party to exhaustion, and altitude sickness soon lay claim to another. Our senior trek leader had to escort the retirees down to base camp, which left the remaining eight of us in the charge of his deputy and the trek guide. Roped to one another, we continued up the shoulder of the mountain as the day broke over jagged peaks. In what seemed like minutes, the velvety blackness that had enveloped us for the past many hours, turned to indigo and then pink, before settling into a dazzling blue-white.
The clear skies and wispy clouds gave us heart. The days of relentless rain were a distant memory and we felt certain we would soon be on the summit. But the mountains have scant patience for hubris.
Around 500 metres short of the summit, we stopped at the lip of a crevasse. The final leg of the route was almost entirely perpendicular and would need us to apply the nascent skills of rappelling and jumaring we had acquired yesterday. Until this point, we had been the only team on the mountain but as our guide began to fix the ropes for our ascent, we were joined by a large group from the mountaineering academy. They moved at a breath-taking pace and as, one by one, they snaked their way up the cliff, we were left struggling in their wake. The trail had been pulverized by their rapid climb and with every step, we sank knee-deep into the soft snow.
Our original plan was to summit by 9 AM to leave enough time for a safe descent. As the day progresses, the increasing ice melt makes the mountainside more precarious - you do not want to be going downhill when you cannot trust your footing. We had started the final climb of 500 metres at 830 AM, hoping to cover the distance in thirty minutes. At 11 AM, we had made it halfway up the cliff.
We were, all eight of us, broken. Some more than others, but since we were tethered to each other, we could only move as fast as the slowest member of the group. With time running out, we could neither afford to slow down nor push beyond the limits of our endurance. At an altitude of over 5000 metres (around 16500 feet), bonhomie can very quickly dissipate in the face of nausea, tiredness and desperation. The urgent proddings of the enthusiastic fell like acerbic taunts upon the ears of the exhausted. Barbed words flew up and down the train, punctuated by pauses when we ran out of breath. Yet, even in these fraught circumstances, we were all in agreement on one thing: if we were to climb this mountain, we would do it together.
It was this collective will that drove us on; as if flowing from one to the other through the ropes that bound us, willing even the most debilitated member of our company to shuffle towards our goal. When the summit - an icy triangle just a few metres ahead - came into view, it seemed like the bickering and coaxing had paid off, after all. And then, the storm broke.
In an instant, the world went white. Blinded by the snow and battered by the wind, we had to make a choice. Continue climbing in the whiteout, which would further shrink our window for descent in worsening weather. Or turn around and head towards safer territory. In the mountains, prudence is always the better part of valour. We took one last look at the summit, saw nothing but swirling mist, and began to retrace our steps down the cliff.
I am already beginning to forget the details of our descent. I can recall snatches of it - wading through snow, sliding off a trail before anchoring myself to the slope, threading our way around crevasses - but not much else. Perhaps the mind has a habit of focussing on only what is essential, and right then, every ounce of our consciousness was devoted to walking towards the base camp.
We were no longer roped to each other, but most of us made our way down the mountain the same way we had climbed it: together. We egged each other on and took frequent breaks to recover. We ate whatever little food we had carried with us and sipped the last dregs from our water bottles. We muttered, almost there, almost there, to ourselves, as the hours passed and the day turned to dusk. Eventually, around 7 PM - over eighteen hours since we began our summit attempt - we reached the base camp.
I am in the dining tent, nursing my fourth mug of sweet corn soup but even this elixir is now surrendering arms. Our camp is quiet - a weary, content silence prevails. My sleeping bag beckons and I must now head to our tent. I suspect these will be the most tiring steps I will take today.
Journal Entry - Day 7
Did I say powdered sweet corn soup was mankind’s greatest invention? Scratch that. It’s plumbing. And hot showers. And mattresses and beds. And foot massages. God, I missed civilization.
We’re back in Manali. Obviously, the last day of our trek had to be the sunniest. We hiked up a short hill to take in views of Beas Kund before packing up camp.
The three-hour downhill trek to Dhundi was uneventful. At Dhundi, we boarded the waiting cabs and were ferried to our hotel. Ah, the sweet smell of petrol and exhaust fumes!
Having been apprised of our adventures, our senior trek leader assured us that we should count our attempt as a successful summit. The icy triangle, he explained, was off-limits due to safety concerns. Trekking companies do not risk taking people that far and so by rights, we had reached the point they declare to be the ‘summit’ of Friendship Peak.
I am both pleased and unsettled by this information. The image of the icy triangle still lingers in the back of my head.
At dinner, I asked Shouvik if we should come back and do this again.
No chance, he said. I laughed in agreement.
We both know we are lying.
Miraculously, our guide was later able to retrieve it and it is still working. An iPhone advert for the ages.
Loved every bit of it; the writing, the description, the humour. The series reminded me of the treks that I've done and how it felt in that moment. For a long time, I was obsessed with literature that had anything to do with mountaineering. Must say, your writing is as good as any of those books that I've read!
I'm sending you a LinkedIn request 😃