Everest legend Mallory and his Sikkim connection - i

As the old saying goes, legend never dies. George Mallory and his teammate Sandy Irvine went missing while trying for their third attempt to conquer the mighty Mt. Everest when they were just a few hundred meters below the summit. The year was 1924, and 75 years later, a search team was lucky enough to recover the legendary Mallory's body with his badge struck on his weathered cloth. 

This story of George Herbert Leigh Mallory has always fascinated my little fantasy. My excitation knew no boundary when I read that Mallory, on three separate Mt Everest Expeditions (1921, 1922, and 1924), had passed through the valley of Sikkim on their way to Mt Everest from the north side of Tibet since the route through Nepal was closed for Western foreigners. The failure of the 1921 and 1922 Everest Expeditions did not deter him.

He once replied to a reporter, ‘Because it is there,’ when asked why he wanted to scale Everest. The phrase went on to be a record book as one of the popular phrases, and people around the world take inspiration from his words when they think of climbing Mt. Everest. Interestingly, Mallory was the only person to have participated in all three Mt.Everest Expeditions, the pioneering effort to reach the highest mountain peak in the world.

Like the earlier Everest Expeditions, the 1924 British Everest Expedition team arrived in Darjeeling and, in two separate groups, passed through the land of Sikkim via Kalimpong—Pedong to Rongli. One of the groups halted at Rongli Dak Bungalow, while the second group rested at Ari Dak Bungalow (now popularly known as Aritar Dak Bungalow). 

Rongli is my birthplace, and watching the photographs (Collection of Benthley Benthem) of Mallory and his fellow members taking baths on the Rongli River was a joy. More than 80 years later, it seems hard to recognize the river bank, but I feel proud that the route was part of the legend. The other classic photographs of the 1924 Everest Expedition team taken at Lingtam, Phadamchen, Kopup, and Gnatong are precious enough to be kept for archives. 

The books written on the accounts of these mountaineers mentioned the jungle of Sikkim as a greenhouse with rich and beautiful bio-diversities. From the bank of Rongli Chu, they moved to Sedongchen (now Phadamchen) and later reached Gnatong at some 12,000 feet for a night halt. The mountaineers saw the scattered stone huts at Gnatong and wrote about the hamlet as ‘filthy, dry and bleak’ and ‘a most depressing place’ with its existence solely made up from the fact it was the only British outpost at the Sikkim - Tibet frontier. Mallory wrote, “Goodbye beautiful wooded Sikkim and welcome – God knows what! we will see.” And they entered Jelep La, the gateway of Tibet.

 

Published in Sikkim Express - 04.10.2020