 Nanga Parbat
I have a book called Nanga
Parbat: The Killer Mountain. The cover blurb says "The gripping story of more
than fifty years of heroism and tragedy… on the most murderous mountain in the
world." It's one of those books I should have read before our trip to Pakistan,
before we set off on the morning of August 23, 1992, to "have a look."
Nanga Parbat is 26,620 feet high
and holds up the western end of the Himalaya chain. I've seen is listed as either the
eighth or ninth highest mountain in the world. What makes it most impressive is that
"its mighty granite mass soars in an unbroken upthrust of 23,000 feet above the Indus
River valley, and is easily the highest single mountain wall on earth." On the south
face is a sheer precipice of 16,000 feet. From the time Western mountaineers first tackled
it in 1895 till Hermann Buhl achieved the summit in 1953, the mountain specialized in
chewing up climbing parties and spitting them out. Those early climbers were arrogant
adventurers.
On August 23, 1992, we found
ourselves climbing Nanga Parbat. We were not arrogant adventurers; we were merely ill
informed.
I blame it on the guidebook…
and on Najeeb's casual attitude about the whole thing. Najeeb, the angel who rescued us
from the landslide and performed ad hoc guide services for us, made "an overnight at
the Fairy Meadows tent camp" sound like the most innocuous of side trips (If
you're in Paris, you really must take time to see Versailles.) A glance at one of our
guidebooks gave an equally bland impression: I had a mental picture of a parking lot where
buses stopped to give aging British matrons a thrilling view of the mountain and a chance
to visit the loo.
But you have to understand
that, even though Najeeb was the most watchful of guides, he was a mountaineer at heart.
His father climbed with Reinhold Messner. Apparently we impressed him as intrepid and
capable.
The night we arrived in Gilgit,
Ali, the driver that Najeeb hired for this side trip showed up at our hotel, with an
interpreter (i.e., a man who knew about 10 more words of English than Ali). They pointed
out where we could rent sleeping bags and set a morning departure time.
Embarking that morning of August 23,
I was reminded that Pakistan was not a land of national parks and bus tours for aging
British matrons. We were back in Indus Kohistan with its bandits and police checkpoints.
Even though we were driving at an elevation of 4000 feet the landscape was as arid and hot
as a brick oven. We were not in an air conditioned Toyota this time but in an open Jeep.
Even though the roof was pulled over us, we baked.
After a couple of hours we
turned onto the Nanga Parbat road. The description of "fairy meadows" did not
prepare me for the road ahead. The fact that there was a road at all was a tribute to
human ingenuity and patience. There was no natural roadbed, no ancient yak path to build
upon. To our right and ahead was the mountain, soaring at a breathtaking angle from 4000
to 26,620 feet. To our left was the nala, or canyon ground out over the eons by
the Raikot glacier, which has its origins at the peak. Where we started our climb, the
glacial runoff fed the Indus River. The higher we drove the deeper it got. The only thing
keeping us from plunging into this narrow abyss was… what???
The road was built on the steep slope
through a miraculous piling up of stones and was exactly the width of the Jeep's axle.
(See the photo above, taken from the Jeep.) Jim and I sat on the abyss side, he in the
front (with no door), me in the back sharing my seat with a hitchhiker — an ancient
man whose blue eyes were lined with kohl. We were not able to see any road beneath us,
only instant death.
This is when you have to have faith in
your driver. Was he worried? Not a bit. He careened happily along, yakking with
the old man, lighting cigarettes, turning around to offer the old man a drag. This
isn't a bit safe, I was saying to myself. What happens if a car comes from the
opposite direction? A saner couple might have stopped this daredevil madness, a
yet… how could we get past the fact that Ali was so casual? He had such an
all-in-a-day's work air about him — no white-knuckled look of terror, no suicidal
glint in his eyes. So J and I just sat there, eyes darting between the abyss and the road
ahead, wishing Ali would stop fiddling with his pack of cigarettes.
After 40 eternal minutes, now
at an altitude of 7200 feet, the landscape flattened out a bit and showed signs of village
life. At a gang of men and boys we stopped and Ali jumped out. The old man got out after
him and trundled off. Was this our destination?
After some conversation, Ali
turned to us. "No more Jeep. We walk. Two hour."
What?? A 2-hour walk… uphill? NOT what
I had in mind. Where were the damn Fairy Meadows?
There was more conversation
and an exchange of money. (Later we learned it was ostensibly to pay the boys to watch the
Jeep, but really to pay them not to vandalize or steal it altogether.) A boy took my pack
and sleeping bag and we set off up the slope. What else could we do?
After 15 minutes or so the boy
stopped and handed me back my stuff. More conversation with Ali. Apparently we had a
choice: continue on the washed out road or take "the Way." The boy pointed up
into the scrubby pine woods. A short-cut, great. But a short-cut to what? I'd had this
vision in my head of what Fairy Meadows would be and now knew that my notions were already
wildly off base. I wished I'd asked Najeeb more questions.
Ali shrugged his shoulders,
politely took my sleeping bag, and clambered up the steep path with J close behind. The
boy took off back home. My brain was still stuck in the groove of this isn't what I
had in mind, but Fairy Meadows was right over the ridge, wasn't it?
No. It wasn't. Nor was it over
the next ridge or the next ridge or the next ridge.
Life took on a hallucinatory quality.
Why were we here, climbing on the eighth highest mountain in the world, marching
relentlessly upward from 7200 feet, without knowing where we were going, with no more than
2 canteens of water for the 3 of us? We marched along the edge of bottomless cliffs and
got a rush of false hope every time the path opened out into a flowery meadow. (Is
this it? This must be it!) Most disheartening was when our driver turned to me (after
about an hour and a half) and said, "I never been this way." So… we might
actually be lost. Maybe it didn't exist at all and we were on some kind of
reverse-Shangri-La misadventure.
Our legs were the least of our
problems. It was the oxygen depletion in our blood that kept our hearts pounding
wildly. We needed to stop more and more often just to slow the beating in our chests. And
we had to keep our mouths shut from attacking flies. More evident was our lack of water.
We were trying to ration our 2 quarts as we quickly dehydrated in the bright thin air.
Looking at Jim terrified me because I could see his saliva turning into a foamy white
paste that lined his lips. It made me wonder: Are we going to die? Are we just going
to keep marching upward like idiots till we keel over and die? When do we turn back? When
will it be too late to turn back?
Every once in a while we'd
come to a cool stand of pine trees and I'd be overwhelmed with the rich aroma of
Christmas. Why can't we just stop here? I'd whisper to no one. I wouldn't
mind spreading out my sleeping bag right here. Right here. No more walking. No more. There
is no Fairy Meadows, can't you see that?
Two hours was turning into three.
We were approaching 10,000 feet. My body thought it had run a marathon and hit the wall.
When we came to a little creek — sweet with bubbling clear water — I knew I
would drink it despite all my civilized training about "raw" creek water. What
the hell could possibly be upstream to pollute it? "I'm staying here,"
I announced to Jim. "You do what you want."
He wasn't sure what to do,
especially now that somehow we'd lost track of Ali, who'd gone on ahead. "Well…
you rest here… I'll see what's ahead."
Of course I couldn't rest and
let him go on without me, so I dragged along.
We came to a sunny field
slanted up to another ridge. There were signs of civilization: cows, donkeys… We
stood there stupidly... just stood there.
Then Ali appeared over the ridge,
followed by a man in a giant red parka. We trudged up the hill toward them. They held out
cups to us and we slurped up the most delicious gulps of Tang (yes, Tang) that
the planet had to offer that day. We'd arrived at the Fairy Meadows tent camp.
At the top of the ridge was a
small plateau with the view we'd been chasing all day. Nanga Parbat. The details of the
snow-covered peak filled our vision. As the crow flies, it was only 3 kilometers away. Its
glacier, in summer spate, fed a thunderous river. It roared in our ears. We were suddenly
cold. Nabi, our host, switched us to hot chicken soup and showed us our tent, a spunky
little dome, where we could dig the jackets out of our packs.
Instantly, the misery of the
climb had disappeared. If this wasn't Shangri-La, what was?
We met the other guests, two
Austrian men who'd just made a climb on one of the smaller peaks. Meanwhile Nabi killed a
chicken, cooked it up in a spicy sauce and served it with rice and fresh white radish. We
dined in Nabi's kitchen, a makeshift dwelling of pine logs stacked against a large rock to
form a room. Afterward, Nabi built a fire outside and we four sat on benches before it,
facing the peak of Nanga Parbat. We watched the glow of its golden sunset and listened to
its roar.
If I have any regret, it's
that I didn't spend more time gazing at the billions of stars and less time searching my
tent for bugs to kill. My most vivid memory of the sky occurs when I woke up about 2 a.m.
needing a comfort call. There were no latrines. The idea was just to find a private place
away from the stream and squat. I remember walking back to the tent awestruck by the sky
and realizing our earlier camp fire had diluted the full impact. Instead of scurrying back
to the warmth of my sleeping bag, I wish I'd sat on the bench for a while and watched the
heavens. I should have savored the moment more. The "killer mountain" nearly got
me but there I was. I didn't climb its deadly peak, but clearly I was on top of the world. |