– Chapter 1 –

The Assam Himalaya

The total length of the great Himalayan chain from Nanga Parbat in the west to Namcha Barwa in the east is some 1500 miles. Of this the Assam Himalaya, as defined by Burrard and Hayden in their standard work, Sketch of the Geography and Geology of the Himalaya, occupy about 450 miles. These, however, include the Himalaya north of Bhutan; if we consider only that part of the chain between Assam and Tibet the length is about 250 miles.

Of all the Himalaya these are the least known, and it is not difficult to understand the reason. From the Assam-Bhutan frontier for a distance of 250 miles eastwards to the Brahmaputra valley there is only one way over the Himalaya to Tibet, or even as far as the main range, and the existence of this route was not even suspected until the opening years of the present century. Between the last tea gardens and rice fields of Assam and the crest of the Himalaya is a wide belt of heavily forested foothills inhabited for the most part by savage tribes—Miji Akas, Silung Abors, Daflas. The reputation of these tribes, the difficult country, and an extremely heavy rainfall, discouraged closer inquiry until it was gradually realised that between the Bhutan-Assam frontier and the Bhareli river, a distance of some forty miles, the country was not occupied by violent men inimical to strangers, but by peaceful tribes allied to the Bhutanese called Mönba, Sherchokpa, and others. Through the interest and exploration of various Political Officers from Assam, this corridor, known as Mönyul, was slowly opened up. Through it have passed travellers like Col. F.M. Bailey and Major H.T. Morshead in 1913 and Kingdon-Ward in 1935 and 1938.

The journey of Bailey and Morshead in 1913 was extremely interesting, for it cleared up one of the outstanding problems of Asiatic exploration. It was only in 1912 that the discovery of Namcha Barwa by Morshead and the determination of its height as 25,445 ft. had surprised the geographers, who had thought that there could be no peaks above 20,000 ft. north of Assam. A year later Morshead and Bailey discovered the great gorge between Namcha Barwa and Gyala Peri, 23,460 ft., by which the Tsangpo forces its way through the Himalaya to become the Dihang and later the Brahmaputra of Assam. The question of where the Tsangpo flowed after leaving Tibet was the most interesting problem of Asiatic exploration in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Several well-known ‘pundits’, native explorers and surveyors employed by the Survey of India, had been engaged on its solution. Three of the most famous were Nain Singh, A.K., and Kinthup. In 1884 Kinthup was dispatched from India to Tibet with orders to cast marked logs of wood into the waters of the Tsangpo in the hope that they might be recovered in the Brahmaputra later on. This rather fond hope came to nothing.

It is interesting to note that the discovery of a great peak, or rather two great peaks with only fourteen miles between them, at the point where the Tsangpo breaks through to the plains, confirmed a conjecture of Burrard and Hayden who, in the first edition of their book, 1907, wrote: ‘The Sutlej in issuing from Tibet pierces the border range of mountains within four and a half miles of Leo Pargial, the highest peak of its region; the Indus when turning the great Himalayan range passes within fourteen miles of Nanga Parbat, the highest point of the Punjab Himalaya; the Hunza river cuts through the Kailas range within nine miles of Rakaposhi, the supreme point of the range. It will form an interesting problem for investigation whether the Brahmaputra of Tibet has cut its passage across the Himalaya near a point of maximum elevation.’

In their journey in 1913 Bailey and Morshead entered Tibet from Assam by following the course of the Dihang until they were stopped by the gorge east of Namcha Barwa. By a detour to the north they rejoined the river, the Tsangpo as it is called in Tibet, and followed it down past Namcha Barwa to a point less than thirty miles from the place at which they had left it. After this they moved west along the Tibetan side of the Himalaya and returned to Assam by the Mönyul corridor route.

In 1935 and again in 1938 Kingdon-Ward travelled extensively in Mönyul and on the Tibetan side of the Assam Himalaya bringing back many new plants and seeds and much new geographical knowledge.

In 1934 and 1936 Messrs Ludlow and Sherriff, starting from Bhutan, travelled through Mönyul into south-eastern Tibet, also collecting plants and seeds.

The position then in 1939 was, that of the mountains themselves little or nothing was known except that the major peaks, that is, those over 20,000 ft., had been fixed trigonometrically from the plains of Assam. Even the Assam-Tibet frontier had not been defined. It was assumed that it followed the crest line of the main range until in 1912 it was discovered that Mönyul, which is south of the Himalaya, was being administered by Tibetans. In 1913, by some arrangement between the Governments concerned, all the districts south of the Himalaya were ceded to India, but nothing was done to administer the ceded territory, which remained, until 1939 at least, to all intents Tibetan.

Just to the east of the Mönyul corridor, or ‘Tibetan Enclave’ as it might be called, lies a group of some dozen peaks over 20,000 ft. Only four bear names, which are all Tibetan in origin: Gori Chen 21,450 ft., Kangdu 23,260 ft., Chiumo 22,760 ft., and Nayegi Kansang 23,120 ft. These were the mountains which I hoped to explore, and some of which I hoped to climb. Nothing is known of them and nothing has been written about them, for unlike many other parts of the Himalaya they have no place in the religious history of India. No temples or shrines adorn the banks of their rivers, no pilgrims visit them, no traditions enrich them.

I like to think I can see as far through a brick wall as most people, and in the latter part of 1938 it seemed clear to me, as to many others, that war was inevitable. This affected my plans for 1939. Shipton was returning to the Karakoram to continue the work which we had begun in 1937, and I should very much have liked to join him. But we should be extremely isolated, almost beyond recall in fact, and Shipton’s plans necessitated staying out the following winter. I was not so abandoned yet as to consider being beyond recall an advantage. Moreover, the War Office, after twenty years of deep thought, had just remembered they had a Reserve of Officers, of which I was one, and had announced a scheme for their training. I decided therefore that by August 1939 I must be home. This ruled out the Karakoram, and my choice fell upon the Assam Himalaya as being the most accessible and the least known region for exploration.

This would be my sixth visit to the Himalaya, and though occasionally I had qualms about such indulgence, I had so far managed to stifle them without any severe struggle. The appetite grows as it is fed. Like the desire for drink or drugs, the craving for mountains is not easily overcome, but a mountaineering debauch, such as six months in the Himalaya, is followed by no remorse. Should such a feeling arise then one may echo Omar’s cri de cœur,

Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before

I swore—but was I sober when I swore?

Having once tasted the pleasure of living in high solitary places with a few like spirits, European or Sherpa, I could not give it up. The prospect of what is euphemistically termed ‘settling down’, like mud to the bottom of a pond, might perhaps be faced when it became inevitable, but not yet awhile. Time enough for that when the hardships common to mountain travel—the carrying of heavy loads, the early morning starts, living or starving on the country—were no longer courted or at any rate suffered gladly.

Having fixed upon the Assam Himalaya as my objective, I had to decide how to get there and what to do there. Obviously the greatest prize for a mountaineer was Namcha Barwa, and a very useful job could be done making a reconnaissance with a view to climbing it another year. It would be necessary to get permission to enter Tibet, but even if one were not allowed to go to Namcha Barwa, the best approach to the Gori Chen group, my second string, was from the Tibetan side. Indeed, when these tentative plans were made on the way back from Everest in July 1938 I was not aware of any other way.

Passport difficulties are not confined to what we call the civilised world. For some of the lesser known parts of Asia entrance is even more troublesome; Tibet is a case in point. Most of the stock of good will of the Tibetan Government as well as the patience of the Indian Government in evoking it is used up by the Mount Everest expeditions. A favoured few can sometimes get in by using the direct-approach method, and one or two omit all formalities and just go in, presenting the Tibetans with a fait accompli. The difficulty about this is that if the Tibetan authorities resent this intrusion, the invader is easily checkmated by the local headman who will be told to refuse his unwelcome guest all means of transport. Exceptions have been made. On the way back from Mount Everest in July 1938 I met at Tangu in north Sikkim a party of German scientists led by a Dr Schaefer. They were officially working in Sikkim, but by a direct approach to a high official from Lhasa, who happened then to be just on the other side of the border, they were invited into Tibet where they spent several months. Strange stories of their behaviour were current when I came across them again in a train in India the following July. They must have got home just in time.

For the necessary permission I applied to Mr B.J. Gould (now Sir Basil Gould),...