How did you get involved in the operation to plant the devices in the mountains?The moment our team landed at Palam airport after the successful ascent of the Everest in 1965, joint director of the Intelligence Bureau Sardar Balbir Singh called me aside and asked me to have a quick word with R N Kao, director, Aviation Research Centre (ARC), who was waiting for me behind the aircraft. Kao asked me to be ready, along with seven others, for a mission to the US. I was to leave within a fortnight, soon after I had dispensed with the ceremonial functions lined up over the Everest ascent.So you left for the USA.On July 19, 1965, we were herded into an aircraft in great secrecy and flew to New York after a brief stopover in London. In New York, we met Bill McKniff, a CIA case officer who would be part of our team. We trained at Anchorage, Alaska, for three weeks and then flew back to India under cover of secrecy.What was the mission?Pandit Nehru had appealed to the Americans and the British for help after the border clash with the Chinese in 1962. The US plan was to place a nuclear monitoring device on top of Kanchenjunga to keep tabs on Lop Nor in Xinjiang province, where the Chinese conducted their nuclear and missile tests. (The mission) was so hush-hush that even the defence secretary and the three service chiefs were kept out of the loop.But why was the plan changed and a new peak chosen for the device?Kanchenjunga was an extremely difficult peak to climb. We had to carry four heavy loads in mountains where even rucksacks are a difficult proposition. We finally compromised with Nanda Devi, the highest peak in India.Did the mission proceed according to plan?Initially, the progress was fairly fast. But after reaching Camp IV we ran into bad weather and blizzards halted progress. After a while, we decided to descend from the mountain. We placed the device in a cave with the antennae jutting out. We secured it with ropes and pitons and left after fuelling the generator. Did you plan to go back for the device?Immediately after we returned, we planned a second operation. We feared that the device had been buried by an avalanche. When the Americans expressed fears that the device could have been buried in the Rishi Ganga and could pollute the Ganga, we planned an operation to recover the device. I was supposed to receive the Arjuna award on July 9, 1966, but IB chief B N Mullik was so worked up we left immediately. The search operations went on from July to October but we could not recover the device.But by then you were already preparing to plant a second device?(That’s because) the Americans finally accepted my original proposal to set up a monitoring device on the dome of Nanda Kot, at a height of nearly 22,000 ft. We got signals from Delhi that the device was functioning. It managed to send us some data but I was subsequently informed that the device had stopped functioning. I returned to Nanda Kot and discovered that the antennae had been damaged. We managed to replace it. However, the device finally stopped functioning in October 1997. When a team was sent to recover it, they found the device buried deep in the snow and returned it to the Americans. Only a transceiver box was lost. Years later, I was asked by then Prime Minister Morarji Desai to write a report for him when the matter came up in Parliament.And you put it all down in Spies in the Himalayas?As a mountaineer I wanted to write about the mountaineering aspects. It was an amazing experience and I was lucky to be a part of it all. Many feel that spying was the major task and mountaineering was incidental. To me the spying aspects were incidental, only climbing the mountains mattered.
