Shipton Mountains of Tartary

Mountaineering and exploration in northern and central Asia in the 1950s
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-910240-62-5
Verlag: Vertebrate Digital
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 5, 183 Seiten

Reihe: Eric Shipton: The Mountain Travel Books

In Mountains of Tartary, mountaineering and explorer Eric Shipton describes his climbs and explorations in northern and central Asia, taking the reader places that most would otherwise never go and writing with humour and self-deprecation. During the Second World War, and up until 1951, Shipton worked as consul general in Kunming and Kashgar in China, and as a diplomat in Hungary and Persia. In Mountains of Tartary, he describes his climbs and explorations that take him from the barren steppes of central Asia, to glass-clear lakes and forested slopes. Shipton and his party enjoy varying degrees of hospitality from the local people and occasionally potentially dangerous encounters. The book details the exploits of the climbers, explorers and guides, including a hilarious drunken banquet with government officials. Mountains of Tartary is like a postcard from history - a must-read for any keen climber, walker or explorer.

Eric Shipton (1907-1977) was one of the great mountain explorers of the 20th century, often known for his infamous climbing partnership with H.W. 'Bill' Tilman. He climbed extensively in the Alps in the 1920s, put up new routes on Mount Kenya in 1921, and in 1931, made the first ascent of Kamet with Frank Smythe - the highest peak climbed at that time. Shipton was involved with most of the Everest expeditions in the 1930s, reaching a high point of 28,000 feet in 1933. He went on to lead the 1951 expedition, which was the first to approach Everest from the north (Nepali) side through the Khumbu ice fall, and on which Edmund Hillary first set foot on the mountain.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Shipton, Eric

Leseproben

– CHAPTER 1 –

Hunza–Kashgar–Tashkent

1

In 1937, with two companions, I had spent several months exploring some thousands of square miles of country on the undemarcated frontier of China and India, on the northern side of the Karakoram. It was my first acquaintance with the vast land of mountain-desert and mountain-oasis, so utterly different in form and scale from the parts of the Himalaya that I had visited. As is usually the case in detailed exploration among great mountains, the scope of our travel was severely limited – in time by the seasons, in distance by the labour of moving unaided by animal transport over steep and difficult country. After the months of toil that had gone into its making, our map, when printed on a scale of 1 inch=4 miles, seemed ridiculously small in relation to the stupendous mountain vistas I remembered, an absurdly simple solution to the topographical problems we had puzzled over for so long. But, better than any diary, any album full of photographs, it had the power to recreate in imagination every phase of the experience.

As I look at it now I can recall vividly the feelings with which, during the whole of that summer, I gazed northward to the barren mountains of the Kuen Lun, which for us represented an impossible barrier to an intriguing and very desirable land. Even if the flooding of the Shaksgam had not threatened to cut off our retreat, we could not have travelled beyond the uninhabited regions of the Aghil Range without the certainty of being captured and thrown into a Chinese prison. For at that time Sinkiang was more inaccessible to the Western traveller than it had been for half a century, more inaccessible than Tibet, and scarcely less so than Outer Mongolia. And it seemed, by the way affairs were shaping in Central Asia, that the Iron Curtain had been dropped beyond the Karakoram finally and for ever. Like small boys gazing over a fence into a forbidden park, this rigid political barrier greatly enhanced the enchantment of the remote country, where, compared with the small compass of our horizon, distances were prodigious and where vast areas were still unexplored. I came to regard Sinkiang as one of those places where I could travel only in imagination. Had I been told then that for four years its strange landscape was to become as familiar to me as England, I should have dismissed the notion as fantastic.

But three years later, when, with the outbreak of war, I had abandoned all hope of ever going to Central Asia, when I was applying my mind, with little success, to learning to be an army officer, I was suddenly taken out of that environment and, in August 1940, sent to Kashgar as Consul-General. In those days one had grown accustomed to refrain from looking far ahead. The fact that the Consulate had for the past couple of years suffered frequent and prolonged boycott; that British subjects (Indian traders) had been suffering severe and calculated maltreatment; that I could hardly expect a pleasant time and would certainly not be free to travel; the strong possibility that Russia, whose influence in that remote spot was then paramount, would enter the war against us – none of these considerations did much to damp my enthusiasm at the prospect of six weeks’ trek through the Karakoram, across the great Asiatic watershed and over the Pamirs to the Tarim Basin beyond.

The first half of the journey, from Srinagar to Gilgit and through the Hunza gorges for ten marches beyond, I already knew well. But I could never have enough of it. Hunza is the most spectacular country I have ever seen. For a hundred and fifty miles the caravan route follows along the great gorge of the Hunza River, through the very heart of the greatest concentration of high mountains in the world. The whole way the river is closely flanked by peaks more than twenty thousand feet high. The first of the giants is Rakaposhi, whose northern face rises straight out of the river-bed at 6,000 feet, first through forested slopes, up steep glacier corries to the great ice-buttresses which support its lovely snow summit (25,550 feet), nearly twenty thousand feet above. A large part of the caravan road is carved out of the sheer sides of the gorge, but every few miles there is a village oasis of terraced fields, fruit trees, briars, willows and poplars, vivid green in spring and summer, aflame with red and gold in autumn. Where the gorge widens out around Baltit, the capital, these villages merge into a great area of intensive cultivation, perhaps forty square miles in extent. Above stand the vast rock walls of the Kanjut Peaks, whose summits, individually unnamed, rise to 24,000 feet. It is difficult to describe this fantastic principality without indulging in superlatives. Both to look at and in character the people are worthy of the unique settings of their country. We like to romanticise about mountain people; and certainly some have produced as fine types as can be found anywhere. But they are so often marred by a high proportion of goitred and cretinous people. The Hunzas are remarkably free from this affliction. Indeed, I have heard it said that there is less sickness, disease and malformity in Hunza in proportion to the size of the population than anywhere else on earth. Their passion for polo is evidence of their splendid horsemanship; as natural mountaineers it would be hard to find their peers. They are proud, loyal, brave and open-hearted. They certainly lack subtlety, but they are not less likeable for that.

My caravan was a large one, for besides the ponies carrying my own baggage and stores for two years, two Indian clerks were travelling with me. I had brought as servants two Sherpas, Lhakpa Tenzing and Rinzing, who had been with me on several Himalayan expeditions. We crossed the Mintaka Pass (15,600 feet), on the frontier, in a snowstorm. Beyond the pass the country changed suddenly and completely. The great gorges and huge mountains of the Karakoram gave place to rounded hills and grassy, U-shaped valleys, with only a few, comparatively small glaciated peaks. We spent our first night in Sinkiang, unmolested, in the pleasant valley at the northern foot of the pass. The next morning, after we had gone a few miles down the valley, we met a platoon of mounted Chinese soldiers under the charge of a young officer. The latter was quite polite, but he told me that we must halt where we were. I showed him our papers, which, of course, included diplomatic visas issued by the Chinese Consul-General in Calcutta. However, these did not interest him much and he said we must wait until he got permission from higher authority to let us through. I asked how long this would take and he replied that he hoped to get a reply within a week. We spent most of the rest of the day arguing the toss. But it was quite useless, and, wondering how far I would be allowed to explore the surrounding mountains, I resigned myself to a long wait.

However, the officer evidently reconsidered his decision overnight and early the next morning he informed us that we were to proceed with an armed escort. We marched for thirty miles and as it was getting dark we reached the wide open valley known as the Taghdumbash Pamir. We started again very early the next morning, but before we had gone more than five miles we reached a large, gaunt fort at a place called Dafdar. We were ordered to halt half a mile from the fort and told not to move until we received further instructions. I expected the commander of the garrison to come out to see me, or at least to be summoned to his presence. But we waited all day in vain, and towards evening we pitched camp. The next morning I rode over to the fort with the intention of paying a call, and finding out the form. As I approached the great mud walls and the large, six-pointed red star painted over the entrance, three soldiers appeared on top of the parapet and waved me back. At first I took no notice and continued riding towards the entrance. The soldiers shouted angrily and finally aimed their rifles at me. I took this gentle hint and returned to camp. In spite of this depressing treatment, I found infinite satisfaction in being in this strange and beautiful land. Far away to the north I could see the great ice-dome of Mustagh Ata. Some fine granite peaks flanked the wide valley on the west. The great distances, the clear, cold air, the intense blue of the sky, the bare, rounded hills that coloured so vividly in the evening light – it all reminded me very much of the plateau of Tibet.

On the third day two officers and some soldiers came over to our camp, made a thorough search of our baggage, making us open all our cases of stores, and told us to be ready to start early the following morning. With another armed escort we marched thirty-five miles and arrived at Tashkurghan late in the evening. We were herded into a filthy serai, pack-ponies and all, and an armed guard placed at the entrance to see that none of us emerged. There we were kept for another three days. We were not allowed out for any purpose, except to answer calls of nature, and then we were escorted by one of the sentries, presumably to check that our stated reason was genuine. I requested permission to call on the local magistrate, but this was ignored. Eventually one morning a number of policemen with red stars in their caps turned up and started to search our belongings. I had thought that the examination at Dafdar had been thorough, but it was a mere cursory glance compared with this. All the boxes of stores had, of course, to be opened again; all garments were turned inside out and linings were felt with the utmost care; the clothes we were wearing were subjected to an equally rigorous search; a statement of my bank account was studied minutely (at least that was in the right colour!)....