The Assault on Mount Everest, 1922

by C. G. Bruce

I arrived in Darjeeling with Captain Bruce on March 1, and there I found that our agent in India, Mr. Weatherall, had carried out the instructions which he had received from England in the most efficient manner. The large quantity of stores which we had ordered previously were all beautifully packed and ready for transportation; the tents of the previous year all mended and in good order; the stores of different kinds, such as there were, which had been left also from the previous year, had been put into order; and last and most important, 150 porters had been collected for our inspection and from whom to make a selection. He had also for us a large number of cooks to choose from, a most excellent individual to look after the tents, Chongay, who proved quite invaluable to us, and a local cobbler who had expressed his willingness to come with the Expedition.

Owing to the tremendous hurry in which all arrangements had to be made in England, the stores were forwarded in different batches. On our arrival in Calcutta, we interviewed Mr. Brown, of the Army and Navy Stores, whose work, both for the Expeditions of 1921 and of 1922, has been quite beyond praise. He told us that only one instalment of stores had yet arrived, but that the ships containing the remainder were expected shortly. Luckily for us, we had at the Army and Navy Stores, and acting in the interests of the Expedition, a most capable agent. As the ships containing the stores arrived, the latter were unloaded, rapidly passed through the Customs, and forwarded on to Kalimpong Road, which is the terminus of the Darjeeling Railway and the Teesta Valley. On arrival there they were met by our representative in no less a person than Captain Morris, handed over to the contractors who were moving our stores, and forwarded on to Tibet in advance of the Expedition. This naturally required a great deal of arranging.

I must mention that, shortly after our arrival in Darjeeling, we were joined by Captain Morris, who immediately left for Kalimpong, two stages on our journey, to which place the whole of the outfit of the Expedition was sent. We could not spare the time to wait for the arrival of the oxygen, and therefore, when the party finally left Darjeeling, Captain Finch, the scientist in whose charge the whole of the oxygen and scientific apparatus had been put, remained behind with Mr. Crawford to bring it up. Luckily, the ship arrived in Calcutta just as we were leaving, and therefore the delay was less than we had anticipated.

The people of Darjeeling, both the British and the native inhabitants—whether Tibetans or Hillmen—were all immensely interested in our Expedition, and Mr. Laden La, the Deputy Superintendent of Police, was, if anything, the most enthusiastic of them all. Mr. Laden La has himself rendered excellent service to Government, and has travelled greatly in Tibet. He is himself a Tibetan, and, I believe, is an Honorary General in the Tibetan Army. His influence in Darjeeling and the district is great, and his help to the Expedition was invaluable. He arranged in Darjeeling, both as head of the Buddhist Association of Darjeeling, and in conjunction with the Committee of the Hillmen’s Association, that the whole of the party should be entertained by these two Associations, and that the chief Lamas and Brahmins of the district should bless and offer up prayers for the well-being and success of the party. The entertainment went off most excellently, and it was altogether a most interesting function. The Nepalese members of the party were blessed by the Brahmins, but also, in order to confirm this blessing, further received the blessings of the Lamas. I think there is every reason for supposing that this small function assisted in bringing home to all our porters and followers what was expected of them by their own people, and it was very likely a good deal in consequence of this that they behaved on the whole so extremely well. For it must be understood that all these hill people, whether Nepalese or Tibetan, are very light-hearted, very irresponsible, very high-spirited, and up to the present time prohibition as a national measure is not exactly a popular outlook; in fact, none of them on any occasion, unless well looked after, lost any opportunity of looking on the wine when it is red—or any other colour.

Our cooks had to be chosen with a good deal of care. Captain Bruce and myself took the most likely candidates out into the hills and gave them a good trial before we engaged them. One of them, who was a Nepalese, had been an old servant of my own for many months; he was the only Gurkha among them. The other three (for we gave ourselves an ample outfit of four cooks) were Bhotias (Tibetans). They were the greatest success, mostly because they are hard-working and ready to do any amount of work; but they were good cooks too. Captain Noel also engaged an excellent servant (also a cook), and Major Norton’s private servant (another Tibetan) was very capable in the same way; so that we were thoroughly well provided with an ample outfit, and wherever we were we could count on having our meals properly prepared. This is one of the important points in Tibetan travel, from the want of which I believe a certain amount of the illness that was experienced in the previous year was due.

We also engaged almost the most important subordinate member of the Expedition—the interpreter, Karma Paul. He was quite young, and had been a schoolmaster in Darjeeling. He had also worked, I believe, for a time in an office in Calcutta. He was quite new to the kind of work that he would have to do. But he was a great acquisition to the Expedition, always good company and always cheerful, full of a quaint little vanity of his own and delighted when he was praised. He served us very well indeed from one end of the Expedition to the other, and it was a great deal owing to his cheerfulness and to his excellent manners and way with the Tibetans that we never had the smallest possible misunderstanding with any officials, even of the lowest grades, to disturb our good relations with the Tibetans of any kind or class. He also was bilingual, for he had been born in Lhasa, and still had relations living there.

On March 26 the whole Expedition started off for Kalimpong by rail, with the exception of Captain Finch and Mr. Crawford, who remained to bring on the oxygen. Owing to the kindness of the Himalayan Railway Company, we were all taken round by rail to Kalimpong Road free, the whole Expedition travelling up the Teesta Valley in the normal manner, with the exception of Captain Noel, who elected to ride on the roof of the carriages in order to take pictures with his cinema camera of the Teesta Valley. The junction at Siliguri, where the Teesta railway branches off from the main line, is only 300 feet above the sea, the terminus at Kalimpong Road about 700 feet above the sea, and therefore as one dives down from the hills one enters into tropical conditions and passes through the most magnificent tropical jungle and the steepest gorges and ravines. It is a wonderful journey. Even the long spell of hot and dry weather and the heat haze at this time of year were unable to spoil the scenery. And though we saw it almost at its worst time, it remained gorgeous.

At Kalimpong the Expedition broke up into two parties, but before we left we had a very pleasant function to attend. I had been charged by Sir Robert Baden-Powell to deliver a message to the scouts of Dr. Graham’s Homes for European Children at Kalimpong. Not only that, but incorporated with these scouts was the first small body of Nepalese boy-scouts. It was a very interesting function indeed, and a most enthusiastic one.

From there we pushed on stage by stage over the Jelep La into the Chumbi Valley. Of course, journeys through Sikkim have often been described. Again we were disappointed. On my first arrival in Darjeeling, the cold weather had hardly finished, but now (March 28) we were well into the hot weather of Bengal, and in consequence we were also in the hot-weather haze. During the whole of our journey we never got a single view of the gorgeous Southern faces of the Himalaya, of Kanchenjanga and of its supporters, and especially of the wonderful Siniolchum peak. This was a very great disappointment, as from several points on our road a view of the Southern face can be obtained. Nevertheless, a journey through Sikkim is always a wonderful experience. The steep and deeply cut valleys, the wonderful clear mountain streams, and the inhabitants and their means of cultivation, are all full of interest. The depth of the valleys is always striking, and can never be anything else. When one thinks that from Rongli Chu, situated only at 2,700 feet above the sea, one rises in one continuous pull to close on 13,000 feet on the ridge which looks down on the Gnatong bungalow, and travels through cultivation and forest the whole way, passing through every phase of Eastern Himalayan landscape, one cannot cease to be continually impressed by the scale of the country. We were too early for the rhododendrons on the way to Gnatong, but there were just sufficient in flower to give us a mental vision of what these wonderful rhododendron forests would be like in another three weeks.

On the way to Gnatong, at a height of 11,500 feet, we came to the little village of Lungtung. Here there was a tea-house kept by some Nepalese. It was spotlessly clean, or at least all the cooking arrangements were, and here, as we came up, we all indulged in tea and the local cakes, and found them both excellent. Not only that, but the little lady who kept the shop was full of talk and full of chaff, and we all sat down and enjoyed ourselves for more than an hour, keeping up a continuous flow of conversation. All the men joined us as they came up, and I am afraid we made rather a noise. As a matter of fact, all through Sikkim these little tea-shops are to be found, and the tea is generally quite drinkable. This little lady’s shop, though, was particularly well run and attractive. When we left we promised to call and see her again on our return, which promise we were able to fulfil.