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The highest garbage dump in the world

Sharat Pradhan in Uttarkashi

Indian mountaineers are chagrined over what they term as "increasing commercialisation of Mount Everest".

Spearheading the movement is Padma Shri and Arjuna award-winner Chandra Prabha Aitwal who, despite not being able to top Everest, is a name to reckon with among world class mountaineers. She missed conquering Everest by just a 1000 feet after she was asked to go to the rescue of another expedition. Her niece, Suma Kutiyal, though, has reached the top.

Aitwal, who shot into limelight as the first woman to conquer Nanda Devi, was conferred with the sobriquet "mountain goat".

She feels, "There is urgent need to stop the ever-increasing human pressure on the otherwise serene Everest." Towards this end, she proposes to start a movement to "keep Everest clean".

"Today it is not as much of skill as it is money that can take you right to the top," she complains, upset that some organisations take even novices on major expeditions, charging them exorbitant fees. This, beside the Rs 4,500,000 a small expedition (up to seven members) is required to pay as royalty to the Nepal government.

"So if you are a karodpati you can jolly well make it to the top of the world," she says.

What seems to irk Aitwal, her niece Suman Kutiyal, and even the chief of the Uttarkashi-based Nehru Institute of Mountaineering Colonel Ajit Dutt, is that nothing has been done so far to save the Everest from plunder on account of uncontrolled and unregulated number of expeditions.

"Sometime it is really maddening to find a dozen or two dozen independent expeditions scaling the Everest at the same time," laments Dutt, who wonders if "people would soon start going for picnics to Everest".

Suman Kutiyal says, "There were as many as 19 expeditions scaling the Everest at the same time, when I was going up there." She feels that those who have learnt the ropes of mountaineering the hard way are bound to feel frustrated when they see any Tom, Dick or Harry adorning himself with an Everest cap.

"Yes, I am aware of some groups that specialise in carrying anyone and everyone with rudimentary experience of rock climbing to the world's tallest mountain with utmost ease," adds Govind Pant Raju, an avid mountaineer and journalist, currently covering Uttar Pradesh for the TV news programme, Aaj Tak.

Raju has himself scaled peaks up to 23,000 feet high, and has the distinction of being the only Indian journalist to go to Antarctica.

According to him, the worst damage caused to the route is caused by cavities created by many people going over them. That makes these paths slippery and, therefore, hazardous, he says.

Aitwal feels that unless a serious view is taken of such physical and commercial exploitation of the Everest, "a day may come when there may not be enough snow at this highest point on earth".

She buttresses her argument using evidence from certain scientific studies that suggest even the source of the Ganga river may dry up one day "if the pressure of human activity around the Gangotri glacier was not reduced."

She recalls with disgust the tonnes of non-degradable litter left by mountaineers. "Sometime back, the Nepal government deployed special aircraft to lift the garbage from that place," she said.

An officer on special duty with the state undertaking, Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam, Aitwal still conducts special training camps for students and some budding mountaineers. "It is heartening to find some of them really making it big," she says, going on to name some. "Apart from my own niece Suman, of course there is this Navraj Singh, who did me proud by emerging as the second Indian mountaineer to scale Everest from the Chinese side."

Aitwal's interest in Everest emanates from the frustration she felt after being deprived of the chance to making it to the top.

"The order of my team leader Brigadier Darshan Khullar came as a rude shock. I was scheduled to go for the final assault on the June 9, 1984, but while I was preparing myself for my ultimate goal in life, I was asked to rush back and rescue a Bulgarian expedition that was facing trouble while ascending from the other side," she recalls. Her teammate, Bachendri Pal, who was much newer to the job, was given three attempts to scale the peak on that very day. And so she made it while Aitwal couldn't.

"I do not know how much I wept on that day, there couldn't have been anything more gloomy for me," she recounts. But she did not give up and while she was still seeking another opportunity, she began training her niece, who is now more of a daughter to her. The next opportunity for her came in 1993, when she was already 51.

"At that age I had to keep pace with the 20-25 age group, so I could only remain in the waiting list," she says.

Aitwal first got interested when she saw an official circular sent to her college from the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering in 1969 about the first course for women being started.

Though she was 30 then, she went down to Uttarkashi to take her first lessons in mountaineering. She was so good that that she soon became India's first woman mountaineer of consequence. It also made her decide to remain single.

"I chose to get wedded to the mountains; and now my mission is to save the world's most magnificent mountain from commercial misuse and environmental pollution."

Aitwal hopes that the governments of India and Nepal would rise to the occasion to save the threatened environment of the world's highest mountain. "Some kind of restriction on the number of expeditions is necessary," she says.

She says already the Nepal government has responded to mountaineers' appeal and begun to regulate the rush, but it is still not screening Everest aspirants to keep out novices.

Govind Pant Raju recalls how an inexperienced liaison officer appointed by the Indian Mountaineering Federation even used the only pond that was a source of drinking water to answer the call of nature. He also narrated the case of world famous mountaineer Chris Bonnington, who suffered gastro-intestinal trouble after he consumed spring water polluted with excreta upstream by the expedition preceding his.

Colonel Dutt quips, "Climbing the Everest has become like the game of cricket. Everyone wants to play it. That is the why today you have the Everest route booked right up to 2005."

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