This article was written by Mathew Koh who was part of MIR 9, the team that went to India from 23rd May to 17th June for their Technical Mountaineering Course led by Kaushal Desai and his team of mountaineering instructors from above19000ft.

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India. What image does the mention of “India” conjure up in your mind? To someone interested in history, India would be the stronghold of century-old civilisations, a treasure trove of culture and heritage. To a nature lover, India might be this wild, untamed frontier, home to tigers, lions, bears, cobras and so on. A gourmand might know India for its unique culinary tradition, a computer scientist might recognize India as home to the best computing minds in the world, and to a writer India might be a place of spiritual solace and rebirth.

We did not know what to expect from India. All we knew was that we were going there for our technical mountaineering course (TMC), and even then we had chosen India because it was the cheapest destination. We had probably expected India to be greener, though, because when we landed, we were taken aback by the endless expanses of parched brown lands. And then there was the heat. In India, during the dry season, daytime temperatures easily reach 45°C, which we were not prepared for. Fortunately, we were only in Delhi for a couple of hours, before we took an overnight bus to Manali, arriving there around noon on the 24^th of May.

Manali is a town of around 7,000 inhabitants located in the state of Himachal Pradesh, at the foothills of the Indian Himalayas. Our guiding company, called Above 14,0000ft, is based there. On our first day there, we met our friendly guide, Kaushal Desai, his two dogs, Maggie and Vicki, and the team of great people who work with him. We were put up in a pleasant campsite.  It is at a slightly higher elevation than the rest of the town, and offered an unimpeded view of lofty, snow-capped peaks towering over us. Woods of conifers, flushed with pure mountain air, surround the campsite: a startling contrast to Delhi, a noisy and dusty metropolis.

We spent two days in Manali, getting acclimatized to the slightly thinner air, the cold nights and also having our first taste of Tibetan food at Chopsticks down at the bazaar.

On the 26^th of May, we finally departed for our TMC. We took a half-hour drive to Solang, from which we took a leisurely walk to Dhundi, a popular camping ground, just 7km away. The walk, along the main mountain road, was intended to help us get used to the altitude. As we approached Dhundi, we got our first glimpse of the mountain we came to climb: Hanuman Tibba. With its jagged ridges and windswept peak, it looked to us, whose eyes had scarcely seen snow before, the epitome of a mountain.

We camped the night at Dhundi and I remember coming out of my tent to a wondrously full moon. It seemed so low and was so bright that I could write by its light. In the distance, the snow-capped mountains glowed in the night. The next day, we took a five-hour trek up to our base camp, at an altitude around 3,500m: Bhoj Batar. This was to be our home for the next two weeks.

We arrived on a sunny afternoon. Bhoj Batar is sited on the side of a rocky ridgeline, sprinkled with alpine plants, and marked by the wind-worn birch tree it is named for. I remember feeling a sense of exhilaration at reaching our base camp, and a feeling of anticipation at the days of discovery that lay ahead. We spent the afternoon practising knots and roping up techniques. Aside from a few headaches and slight fevers, brought on by our bodies acclimatising to the altitude, we felt fine and optimistic. We went to sleep feeling quite snug in our down sleeping bags.

That night, at about 2am, we were roused by the sound of snowfall and the guides shouting outside our tents. We had to dust our tents, knocking the snow off the flysheets to prevent them from collapsing inwards. We lumbered clumsily out into the night and brushed the snow off the flysheets with our hands. This was, for most of us, our first real encounter with snow. When we woke up the next morning, our whole world was white. What had been rocks, plants and soil the previous day was now a seamless coat of snow.

The sun rose on what was to us a very alien world. We begin our training programme by learning to walk in snow. Over the next few days we learnt the basics of technical mountaineering: roping up, using an ice axe, self-arrest methods, using crampons, ice climbing and so on. Our usual training day begin with a trek to the ice field, either down the ridge or across a valley of moraine. We usually left in the morning, returned to camp for a late lunch, and spent the afternoon resting. We would read or play cards. Sometimes we improvised a game, for example, scratching a board in the dirt and playing checkers with leaves and pebbles.

Kaushal spent a lot of time with us sharing his mountaineering experiences and climbing ethics. To him, mountaineering is not a sport: it is a lifestyle. It affects a person in a profound way, teaching him or her to live in harmony with nature, appreciating both the beauty and the beast in nature. Mountaineering is not about how high one climbs: it is about what one becomes in the process.

On the 4^th of June, we finally departed for our attempt on Hanuman Tibba. That day’s trek took us through a wide river plain and up towards the Thentu Pass, the most challenging stage of our climb to the summit. Around 11am, we ran into a light snowstorm that became a drizzle in the noon sun. We then had to scale a steep ridge that led up to our advanced base camp, about halfway up Thentu Pass, at an altitude of about 4300m. Mist rose about our feet as we toil uphill. Tiny alpine flowers of all colours adorned the slippery slopes. We reached the advanced base camp at 2pm, in a rather good time.

The advanced base camp was no more than a few small, snow-covered ledges that permitted tents to be pitched on them. The tents perched in a seemingly precarious position over a 30m straight drop to the bottom of the pass. Kaushal assured us that the tents were safe to sleep in, though we had to be careful not to roll in our sleep. Needless to say, we viewed that night with a good deal of trepidation.

As the sun got low in the sky and shadows settled over the campsite, the cold quickly set in. We had a quick, simple dinner of rice, chapatti and dhal (most of our dinners consist of these three basic items), and we packed into two tents to sleep, five in each tent. Clothed in several bulky layers of fleece, down and outer shells, it was really a tight fit. We were ready to sleep at 6.30pm and it was not even dark yet. We settled in for a long night.

And it did turn out to be a long night. At around 9.30pm, when we had scarcely slept for two hours, the bad weather started. Heavy snow, alternating with heavy rain, started to fall. We hunkered down, feeling quite miserable, and afraid that our tents would cave in on us at any moment. We heard an avalanche roar down the pass. The guides shouted at us to dust our tents. We set up a roster system with one of us going out every hour to clear snow from our already flimsy flysheets. Fortunately, by about 1am, the weather had abated, and we could sleep through the rest of the night uninterrupted.

We rose before 5am and the sight that greeted us made the whole night worthwhile. The sun was just starting to peek over the adjacent peaks, casting an orange glow on a world covered in several feet of snow. Above us, the sky was a clear cloudless expanse. The pass and river plain spread out below us, while all around us, blindingly white peaks reached into the sky. I understood why the Himalayas are called the roof of the world, and thanked God for this oh-so-beautiful place we could be in.

The guides soon roused and Kaushal met us with unpleasant news. The night of heavy snowfall had rendered the peak too difficult to ascend. The steepest part of the Thentu Pass still lay ahead of us, and given all the snow that had fallen, there was a risk of avalanches. The snow would be deep on the upper ridges and the summit might be near impossible to ascend. Had we been a smaller or more experienced team, we might still have had a shot at the summit, but as it was, our attempt at Hanuman Tibba was over.

Kaushal’s proposed plan was to return to base camp, rest a day, and then attempt one or two lower peaks that required less technical skills. Rather reluctantly, we began the trek back to base camp, retracing a path we had taken just the day before.

Back at base camp, we had a pleasant day of rest and good weather. However, we were still itching to begin our next climb. This was to be to either Shitidhar or Friendship Peak, via a route that goes past Beas Kund Lake. Unfortunately, on the 7^th of June, the day we were to set out, Kaushal declared the weather too inclement for climbing. There was no rain or snow, but there were low hanging clouds, and the sun was nowhere to be seen. Somewhat grudgingly, we spent another day at base camp that, for all intents and purposes, appeared to have been a good day for climbing. Kaushal urged us to be patient, reminding us that mountaineering was not about what peak we climbed, but about what we learnt in the process.

By dinnertime, a light rain had begun to fall. It did not let up all night, and continued to the next morning. Then it began to snow. Snow, interspersed with rain, fell all day. We spent the 8^th of June bundled up in our tents, trying to stay dry and talking about the food we would like to eat when we get back to Singapore. We went out intermittently to dust snow off our tents, all the while seeing the layer of snow on the ground grow thicker and thicker. It was a very cold day, and some of our clothes were damp. We began to appreciate the wisdom of our guides’ decision not to start our climb the day before. The time passed achingly slowly. We discussed, rather candidly, whether we were willing to return to Manali if this bad weather kept up or if we would spend another day waiting out the weather, fighting the cold and being bored out of our minds.

By dinnertime, however, it was evident that our only option was to return to Manali; Kaushal gave us no other choice. The bad weather, he said, was due to a cyclonic effect over the entire region. It would not let up for several days. Besides our food supplies were low, and with such heavy snowfall, the guides could not go for a resupply. Some of us were also not handling the cold well, and were eager to leave the base camp. Kaushal told us that we would wait for a break in the weather, and then descend to Dhundi, and head back to Manali.

The break came the next morning. Though it was still snowing steadily, and the clouds still hung low overhead, Kaushal told us to be ready to leave at 8am. We hurriedly struck the tents and bundled our equipment into our haversacks. With the snow still falling about us, we slung our packs on and begun our descent downhill. The snow had erased all traces of the paths, so we just slipped and slid over bushes and rocks on our way down the ridge. And thus we left Bhoj Batar, our home for twelve nights, and so familiar to us. Not on our own terms though, for nature placed us in circumstances not to our liking but beyond our control.

As we got further down the valley and nearer to Dhundi the weather began to clear up. The snow stopped and a bit of blue began to peek through the clouds. We picked our way over slippery rocks and streams swollen by the melt water from the recent snowfall. We passed several herds of benign and bored-looking buffalo. Within two hours we were back at Dhundi. Vans were waiting there to fetch us back to Manali. The drive from Dhundi to Manali normally takes no more than forty minutes. That day, however, it took us over two hours. Several sections of the road were washed out by landslides caused by the rain that had fallen continuously over the last 36 hours, resulting in massive traffic jams backing up the narrow road for several hundred meters.

We eventually got back to Manali and our serene little campsite shadowed by lofty mountains. We were relieved to be back safe although we were also certainly disappointed that we did not “summit” any peaks. However, each of us definitely came away with a personal experience of what mountaineering is. A mountain is breathtakingly beautiful, frustratingly unpredictable and sometimes shockingly dangerous.

On the 19^th of June, less than two weeks after we returned to Manali, a Japanese climber was killed descending from Shitidhar, one of the “less technical” peaks we had intended to climb in place of Hanuman Tibba. Some of the members of our team had actually met Minoru Yanagi and chatted with him at one of the campsites we passed, so his death struck particularly near to home. Mr Yanagi was a very experienced mountaineer who had climbed several times in the Indian Himalayas. He was struck by a piece of falling ice near the summit and rolled into the glacier below. He was 76 years old.

India left an indelible impression on each of us. For me, perhaps the most lasting impact was left not by my experience in the mountains but from what I saw elsewhere in India. This is a beautiful country, wealthy in culture and history. Unfortunately, there are so many poor and destitute people in India. From the old woman begging from cars at a traffic junction to the little girl selling beaded necklaces outside McDonalds, each person is part of a humanity far less fortunate, but no less in need of love, than we are.

I discovered mountaineering to be a grand pursuit. It challenges the individual, testing the human body and spirit in patience, endurance and self-control. It teaches us to coexist with the natural environment, not imposing our puny wills on it, but living peaceably with whatever it throws us. Yet, for the entire physical and mental quest that mountaineering is, I finally understood Kaushal’s ethic: mountaineering is not about which peaks I conquer, but about who I become in the process.

My experiences in the mountain and India became part of who I am. I left with a better understanding of what I value and what I wanted with my life.  Climbing a mountain trains me physically and mentally, but the goal of this training is not the elation or sense of accomplishment that comes with making the summit. Rather, through the bitter cold of snow, the beautiful isolation of a sunrise in the mountains, and the wretched poverty all about, I learnt that life is transient: it will soon be over and I must live for a Higher Purpose, to touch lives and help others. Together, India and the mountains showed me that I ought never to live for myself, but for a cause greater than me. That is what India meant to me.