DARJEELING · 1976 · THE HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINEERING INSTITUTE
The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling was founded by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1954, in the wake of the first Everest ascent, with Tenzing Norgay himself as its first director of field training. It was, and remains, the most prestigious mountaineering institution in India. Its courses are open to anyone with the application and the commitment to apply.
In 1976 I was placed on Course 102 Basic — a mixed group of soldiers, NCC cadets, and civilians from across India. I was a law student at the time, with two Himalayan expeditions already behind me. The mountains were not new to me. But the Institute was something else: a place where mountaineering was taken seriously as a discipline, taught by people who had been higher than almost anyone alive.
The training began in Darjeeling itself — rock climbing on the hillsides above the town, rope work, knots, the academic foundations of high-altitude mountaineering. Darjeeling in those years had a particular quality to it: the smell of tea gardens in the morning air, Kanchenjunga appearing and disappearing in the clouds above the town, the sense of being at the edge of something vast. The HMI campus sat in this landscape with the quiet authority of an institution that knew exactly what it was for.
Then we moved to Sikkim for the mountain phase.
The trek through the Sikkim foothills toward the base of Kabru is beautiful in the way that only the eastern Himalaya can be — dense forest, the sound of water everywhere, the mountains revealing themselves gradually as you climb. But there is one feature of those lower forests that nobody warns you about adequately: the leeches.
They fall from the trees. You do not feel them attach. You do not feel them feed. You are walking through the forest thinking about the mountains ahead, and then someone behind you says: what happened to you? And you look down and your shirt is red. The leech has been at work for some time and you had no idea. This is one of those experiences that is, in retrospect, interesting to have had.
On the approach we passed through Gill Camp — a rest camp in the Sikkim hills, named after a former Army Commander of the region. A good place to stop, to breathe, to look up at what was coming.
We reached Kabru base camp and began moving up the mountain. Kabru South sits on the Nepal-Sikkim border at over 7,000 metres — a serious peak by any standard, a significant undertaking for a training course. The views from the upper slopes, with Kanchenjunga dominating the horizon, are among the finest in the Himalaya.
The graduation ceremony was held back in Darjeeling.
It was presided over by two men whose names belong in any serious account of Himalayan mountaineering. Nawang Gombu — Tenzing Norgay’s nephew — had, at that point, climbed Everest more times than any other person on earth: first in 1963 with the American expedition, then again in 1965 with the Indian expedition. He served as Director of Field Training at HMI, and it was in that capacity that he assessed every member of the course and signed every certificate.
The younger man presenting certificates alongside him was Dorjee Lhatoo — one of the greatest Indian mountaineers of his generation, HMI’s chief instructor, a veteran of the 1965 Everest expedition and, that very year, fresh from the Indo-Japanese Nanda Devi expedition. He was warm, direct, and clearly a man who loved the mountains with the uncomplicated passion of someone for whom they were simply home.
And somewhere in the building, available for a cup of tea and a conversation, was Tenzing Norgay himself.
I met him briefly. There was no dramatic encounter, no words of great wisdom dispensed to a young climber. Just tea, and conversation, and that smile — the one everyone who ever met him mentions, the smile that had been photographed on the summit of the world in 1953 and had not dimmed in the twenty-three years since. His personality filled a room without effort or intention. He was simply, completely, himself.
After the ceremony, Gombu signed the course reports. Mine read as follows:
Physically tough man who is keen on mountaineering. He is confident on the mountains and has esprit-de-corps. He is good at Rock climbing as well in Ice craft. He kept cool head under adverse situations. He is sincere and determined. Recommended for ADVANCE course.
— N. Gombu, Director of Field Training. Grading: A. Above Average.
I have kept that certificate for nearly fifty years. Not because of the grade — though a grade awarded by Nawang Gombu is not nothing — but because of what it says. Esprit-de-corps. Cool head under adverse situations. Recommended for ADVANCE course.
Gombu had climbed Everest twice. He had been higher than almost any human being alive. When he looked at a young climber on a training course and wrote those words, he was not writing them carelessly. He had seen enough mountains, and enough people on mountains, to know the difference between someone who was there for the certificate and someone who was there for the climb.
I like to think he could tell the difference.
The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute taught me that the mountains are the only honest examiner. You cannot charm them, you cannot negotiate with them, and you cannot submit a report about what you would have done if conditions had been different. You either went up or you did not. You either kept your head or you did not.
Nawang Gombu, who had stood on the summit of the world twice, knew this better than anyone. His remarks on that course report are the most accurate assessment of my mountaineering that anyone has ever written. I have been trying to live up to them ever since.
— P.S.B.