It8217;s still there

The three members of the Indian expedition who hoisted the tricolour on Mount Everest on Friday morning have provided a fitting finale to an unusually busy and despairingly surreal May on the slopes. After an arduous six-week acclimatisation, Sange Sherpa, Kushang Dorjee and Amar Prakash joined a select group of four to have successfully scaled the 8,848 m peak from the treacherous and uncharted Kangshung Face on the Chinese side. In becoming the first climbers to accomplish the feat since 1992, they have quietly lent a touch of old-fashioned heroism to activity on the earth8217;s third pole at a time when the summit has virtually been turned into an upmarket adventure tourist resort. As the popular route up becomes increasingly paved with commercial tents, dead bodies and tonnes of litter, the classic mountaineering spirit of treading bravely into the great unknown has been replaced by a somewhat cynical intent to become part of the Everest fraternity by seizing fame in less perilous ways: by running up and downdeath zone to establish new records, by phoning back with quirky reports, by hyping one8217;s skills in getting amateurs up there.

Indeed, mountaineer Anatoli Bourkeev, who effected a near miraculous midnight rescue during the 1996 freak storm that formed the basis for Jon Krakauer8217;s bestselling account Into Thin Air, rued later that Mount Everest is no longer a challenge, that the true spirit of the climb demands that one essay new, undelineated routes. This is precisely what the Millennium Indian Everest Expedition has achieved. While attempting the hazardous, considerably more technical and comparatively windier Kangshung Face, without the benefit of routes carved out by past expeditions, the Indian trio has shown that there are still new frontiers on this most magnificent and enigmatic of mountains. And they did it against all odds 8212; they waged an unusually long drawn out battle against the elements, they had one of their teammates evacuated, they lost much of their equipment in an avalanche.

Andwhat of Everest? What further challenges does the Goddess Mother of the World hold out? What accounts for the hypnotic hold this rising chunk of rock and ice continues to have on us? 8220;Because it is there,8221; George Leigh Mallory, who this month acquired a most deserved memorial on a mount he can call his own, said famously when queried on the whys of his obsession. Whether he pronounced so in a moment of sublime inspiration or in exasperated irritation is the subject of much debate, but his words aptly echo the inner impulse that has animated generations of mountaineers and armchair travellers alike. Perhaps part of this fascination lies in the notion that somehow Eve-rest is a durable measure of human endurance. Summiteers have often talked of how at 8,848 m their cognitive abilities came to a virtual halt; it is possible, ask others, that had the mountain been even a few metres higher, it would have been beyond human reach, that there is nothing arbitrary about the physical challenges it offers. And theIndian team, by courageously heeding the Everest8217;s summons, have altered the geography at the top of the world.y