17th July, 2021
The day I was told I will be part of the team climbing to Mt. Nun that season, was one of extreme and conflicting emotions. As excited as I was to get the opportunity to climb my first 7000M peak, that too one which is considered ‘not so easy’ - it would be my first technical peak. For a climber like me with moderate abilities, it sounded out worldly and brought with it a surge of emotions ranging from exhilaration to intense fear. The journey from elation to slight nervousness to outright terror was fairly swift. I was already on a trek which I would return from by the 21st of July and I was to leave for this daunting undertaking by the 23rd which left me little to no time to process these overwhelming feelings.
Three years in the making
While I had always had a special connection with the mountains – I literally took my first steps on icy slopes as a 10-month-old – when my family was on one of our many customary vacations to the Himalayas. However, the summer of 2018 was when I discovered that walking in the mountains is much more than just walking in the mountains. I learnt of a whole new world, that of outdoor recreation when I did my first mountaineering course in May of 2018.
While it was challenging and fun, I had still not considered it to be something to indulge in. However, this did not stop me from completing my Advance Mountaineering Course in the fall of 2019 as a part of which I got to touch the height of 6000M – my first brush with high-altitude. When I did my courses, my idea was that I wanted to pay respect to the mountains by learning about them. I reckoned it was my duty to study them in order to be in them as deferentially as possible. My goals were momentary, my dreams of mountaineering limited and my desires, unexplored.
A playground for the wild and free
I had grown up to stories of mountaineering which seemed climactic, extreme and so elite – like the sport was made for a select few who were born for it. They sounded so exciting with all the histrionics and the constant danger of death lurking in your sack or under your foot – the sport seemed inaccessible and completely out of reach for someone like me – with my narrow structure, city-dwelling, mostly conforming personality.
Of all the tales of successes and failures, the one thing that was prominent was the glorification of the climb and its climbers which made my ideas around the sport romanticized versions of its reality. And now it was going to be my reality – I was climbing Mt. Nun which was at an altitude of 7,135M. The things I’d imagined - the anticipation of the many dangers, the expectancy of utter elation on getting to a new height on reaching the summit, the extreme test and the spiritual revelation from pushing my limits, the absolute freedom borne of my reconnaissance of as supreme an entity as the mountain and its altitude, the joy of connecting to the raw elements. I’d thought the formidable slopes of high-altitude mountains are for some kindred spirits who are wild in their minds and free in their hearts. I’d thought the mountain would be my playground to unleash all that’s wild in me and to set myself free!
How long do I have to wait?
It was already day 12 of our 24-day expedition. We had finished our four-day pre-acclimatization trek through the arid valley of Markha, made our way from Leh to Tangol and walked miles to reach base camp at the top of the waterfall at 4600M.
Through all of this, we had trekked in extreme heat, torrentuous rains and a hailstorm. Walked on an assortment of terrain like moraine, scree, glaciers with violent winds and biting cold – all on steep, slippery or heavily bouldered land. No spiritual reformation yet - but following are the things I did experience:
1. My stomach was being a chatty bugger – it constantly had something to say!
2. A flood of a period which was also extremely painful and to my utter despair would last me 10 more days – which was the entire length of the expedition. Turns out I was cursed to be wet and uncomfortable all throughout.
3. There was way too much correspondence coming through from my digestive tract (lactose intolerant? More like ‘everything’ intolerant!)
In episode two of ‘the things to deal with’, I learnt that we do not have toilet tents after base camp. (Note: This is part of load-shedding where one carries only absolute essentials to higher camps and is usually the norm in all mutli-camp, high-altitude expeditions). Now the thing to know about the three campsites on Mt. Nun is this:
You don’t see any land beyond base camp – you exist only in snow from here on.
- Camp 1 (5,500M) is bang in the middle of a massive 4 km wide snowfield – flat land with not a single rock to take cover behind.
- Camp 2 (6,100M) literally dangles in the air atop a tall, very narrow pinnacle. Your tents and your life hang in the balance with an 800-meter drop to one side and an impossible slope to the other.
- Camp 3 (6400M), which is the Summit Camp, much like Camp 1, lies in the middle of a snowfield.
We were 17 climbers in all. One of the only two women on the expedition, I seemed to be one of the only two people who noticed the absence of secure quarters for our daily rituals. It also would have helped to get some privacy for the maneuverings required to manage my over-zealous period. I don’t remember reading anything about unheroic problems like leaky noses, missing toilet tents, and noisy stomachs in any of the climbing stories. How long did I have to wait to be free of these paltry difficulties and engage in some soul-searching?
The moment of truth
While the experiences I mentioned above were very real to me, if I were to zoom out, it was also true that just being on that mountain – in that environment – walking through its menacing landscape, standing on its vertical slopes, and trying to navigate through the many visible and invisible cracks on its surface was beyond magical. I guess, to put yourself up against something much bigger than yourself is that the vastness of its existence makes you realize how trifle yours really is – your footsteps seem minuscule on the vast slopes of the mountain. With a tiny misstep, your entire being – the one you took so seriously and allotted so much importance to – could get swallowed within the very soft flakes of snow that you crushed under your feet to get there. The ephemeralness of your being tends to put things in perspective. The entire experience helps you break down your ego where lies the feeling of ‘otherness’ which you slowly see dissolving. The humility that the climb brings in you may well, be the freedom that climbers talk about. Because I guess we are all just ruins, looking to the winds to tell us we did good in our time and the mountains to tell us we explored our highest highs and our deepest depths. Maybe that’s the only validation that’s important.
The thing to think about is that on the very cold days and even colder nights, with the winds breathing down your neck on the eerily silent slopes where the snow dunes shift with every gust of air – in that moment, it is just you – a singular identity. In shin-deep snow or hard ice patches when you are walking a minimum of 8 hours every day gaining vertical heights walking through the never-ending vertical slopes – there are no social, cultural, or gender barriers. It is the voice of the deepest part of you that feebly drives you on or pulls you down. The mountain allows you to connect to the most primal part of yourself and teaches you to listen to it beyond excuse. And in that elasticity of time, the problems of our physicality are the least of our concerns. There is a drive much beyond the strength of your body that keeps you moving forward even through the high-speed winds, aches, pains, and the many discomforts. The summit push is especially hard because it starts in the dead of the night, is extremely long and very challenging.
For it is a team sport, relying on the energy and cohesiveness of the group, it is still a very individual endeavor – each climber struggles within her own self to gather the will to keep moving forward when there are a thousand valid excuses to turn back.
I finally found my revelation
While reaching the summit was quite a personal achievement, and something that I will cherish for a long time to come, the highest point of my expedition lay elsewhere.
The journey to Mt. Nun, for me, was defined by my journey of working through the feeling of shame. Every time on treks, when you get stuck behind a line of mules (the ones who carry your load), one sound that remains a constant companion is the one escaping the mules’ rear! What surprises me is how unfazed they remain through it all! So unapologetic! Each time I hear it, each time I wonder, ‘if donkeys can fart without shame, why can’t we?’
Doing something so physically extreme, helped me appreciate the functional purpose of my body and introduced me to its resilience during all that I put it through. I knew ownership and acceptance of the body was a layered concept but, on the expedition, I learned that it needs to be approached at many levels, too.
Being in a high-altitude mountain where forget luxury, even basic amenities, are scarce, there is no way I could avoid facing my issues with my body - because it's such a physical activity – and requires exceptional levels of support from your body in addition, of course, to mental and emotional acumen. Extreme conditions, new people, and lack of amenities pushed me to confront my physical form and all that comes with it. While I have questioned and come to terms with a lot of its aspects, body fluids of all kinds had always made me extremely uncomfortable.
The onset of unwelcomed and extremely painful periods made my situation public and forced me to question this discomfort. It made me wonder why I was so uncomfortable – was it because I didn't want this to affect my strength to keep me from climbing the mountain, or because I was annoyed at the timing, or because I was embarrassed at having stained every place I sat on, or because it was painful? I don't know. Maybe all of it…but on more questioning, I came up with one more probable answer: I have had a complicated relationship with gender and maybe something which is so unique to one gender forced me to face up to the singular identity of my gender in a social setting instead of allowing me to hide behind different performances I could switch between based on mood and convenience.
Similarly, me missing the toilet tents was also a part of my discomfort with myself. The expedition taught me to communicate with my body; develop a language in which we could correspond. It made me realize that my exploration of myself will determine my comfort with my body and hence a deeper appreciation for it which would further my chances at achieving success in highly physical sports such as mountaineering. Shame is a social construct – imagine farting in an empty room, would you still be ashamed of this very natural body function? I’d say definitely not. Every body process has a functional use serving to make it more effective.
A successful summit
We create dream-like worlds in our imaginations to which we escape in our times of discomfort. My ascent to Mt. Nun brought on the realization that you don’t need imagination when you are in the mountains, because the reality of their beauty could trump our wildest and most fantastical worlds created through imagination. And to be able to place yourself within it, with dissipated faculties of shame – maybe that is what true freedom looks like…And maybe that is what it is to be wild…
1. To undergo something so extreme as a personal choice – no one forces us to climb mountains; the decision is quintessential of what free will is…
2. To position yourself against no other person but yourself…
3. To explore, face up to and integrate all parts of yourself into a whole…
These are some of the gifts of freedom that the mountain gave me, and for that I will utterly and forever be grateful. Here’s to Mt. Nun lending me a dream - that of wanting to climb more, climb higher and climb better!
