Ripcord Adventure Journal #2

RAJ 1.2

Volume 1 | Number 2 | Second Edition

A Letter from the Editor Welcome to Ripcord Adventure Journal.

In this issue, our second, we venture widely in our quest to find great adventures. From an article written and sent from Princess Elisabeth Station in Antarctica, we venture along the Omo River to meet Ethiopian tribes who are holding on to their authentic way-oflife in the face of commercialisation and tourism. We read how a couch potato climbed Mount Fuji in Japan. Our writers have wandered along the ancient Roman roads in Transylvania, climbed Mount Toubkal and tasted wondrous epicurean delights in Morocco. Finally, the biography of a little known Anglo-Irish explorer leads us on a journey to Everest.

We aim to be the home of authentic, adventure travel writing, which serves as a starting point for personal reflection, study and new journeys.

On behalf of the editorial, writing and design team I wish to thank our sponsors Redpoint Resolutions and the World Explorers Bureau for their continued support.

Tim Lavery Editor in Chief, Ripcord Adventure Journal www.ripcordadventurejournal.com www.ripcordtravelprotection.com

Ripcord Adventure Journal First Published February 2015 by Redpoint Resolutions & World Explorers Bureau. All articles and images Š 2015 of the respective Authors and Photographers.

Second Edition Š March 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests, general enquiries or sponsorship opportunities, contact the publisher: Ripcord Adventure Journal: info@ripcordadventurejournal.com

"The seventh wave is said to be the worst, the one that does the damage in the turmoil of an ocean gale. Modern oceanographers know this is just a superstition of the sea; they have complex wave-train theories and the laws of wave mechanics to prove it. But still the notion of the seventh wave lingers on; and clinging to the helm of a small open boat in the heaving waters of a bad Atlantic storm, one's temptation to count waves is irresistible."

Tim Severin "The Brendan Voyage"

RIPCORD

Editor in Chief Tim Lavery

ADVENTURE JOURNAL 1.2

Second Editon

Featuring Shane Dallas Jos Van Hemelrijck Robb Saunders Siffy Torkildson Fearghal O'Nuallain Kieran Creevy Ruth Illingworth

Advisory Board Shane Dallas Paul Devaney Terry Sharrer Charlotte Baker Weinert

Publishers Redpoint Resolutions & World Explorers Bureau

WWW.RIPCORDADVENTUREJOURNAL.COM

Contents The tribes that time forgot Shane Dallas

1

A field trip in Antarctica Jos Van Hemelricjk

23

Mount Fuji versus the couch potato Robb Saunders

33

Hammam Siffy Torkildson

49

The land beyond the forest Fearghal O'Nuallain

79

Terroir: Morocco Kieran Creevy and Claire Burge

95

Charles Howard-Bury Ruth Illingworth

109

Contributors and credits

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The tribes that time forgot

Shane Dallas 1

The tribes that time forgot Shane Dallas

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A truly remarkable wooded valley lay below, its carpet of trees backed by mountains that cut their sharp shape in the hazy sky. The bright, baking sun beat down on me and my driver, Tsegay, his short-cropped wiry hair sitting atop a stern face that illuminated whenever he smiled, which was often. His softly spoken voice broke the silence. “That is the Omo Valley.”

Much lay in wait in this valley in the south-west of Ethiopia bordering Sudan and Kenya – a place where people of different tribes scar, paint and pierce their bodies, where women are publicly whipped to demonstrate their loyalty, and where men run naked across bulls to prove their manhood. We returned to the maroon and silver Nissan Patrol to bump and skid along the dirt roads that kicked clouds of dust in our wake. It was the first of many similar journeys during the forthcoming week.

We had travelled for perhaps a couple of hours, the sameness of the scenery dulling the sense of time, when suddenly on our right side appeared a collection of two dozen sizable wooden huts within a

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spacious clearing. It was a village of the Arbore tribe. Once out of the vehicle, I encountered a practice that elicits much debate amongst those who visit the Omo Valley – namely the payment of a fee to take photographs. The problems of this practice quickly became evident. Upon our arrival, the Arbore people rushed from their huts to form a long line near the vehicle hoping to be chosen, and paid, to be photographed. It felt incredibly forced, and though I am unsure where this practice emanated from, obediently lining in an orderly fashion was inconsistent with every other activity I witnessed in the Omo Valley. This appeared imposed from outside.

I lowered my head, undecided if I wanted to participate in this awkward spectacle, but there was no retreat, for the Arbore would aggressively pursue those with cameras to photograph them. They would grab your arm or camera and verbally badger for a picture; this whirlwind of activity and attention was almost overwhelming. I wandered far away from the scene with one Arbore woman in order to distance myself from the selection line, which on further reflection, looked more and more like a circus with paid performers.

By having her with me, it seemed to keep the others away, but that only lasted until she dawdled away after the photo shoot, for the chaos descended on me again.

After a difficult photography session, I returned to the vehicle – and upon closing the door found myself inside a serene silent shelter from the buffeting verbal tempest outside. My first tribe visit proved to be a confronting experience. In 2010, the payment amounts were small, one or two Birr (approximately 15 cents at the time), whereas a larger amount (at least 250 birr) is payable as a village admission fee. However, these prices have increased many times over since then.

While still musing on the most responsible method to approach photography in the Omo Valley, we proceeded to the small town of Turmi. Our plans to arrive in the late afternoon were thwarted by the road conditions. Shortly after Tsegay had changed a tyre due to a puncture, he lent out the window, and muttered something under his breath before stopping to attend to the second puncture in the space of half an hour. With little phone coverage and almost no

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traffic in this part of the Valley, any serious vehicle issues would cause immense problems. Since we now had no spare tyres, a third puncture would leave us stranded.

The journey through a terrain of trees upon sandy soil continued after sunset, and the surrounding scene was one of absolute darkness. The vehicle’s headlights were the only source of illumination on this landscape devoid of any other light source – nothing coming from huts, none marking any streets, and no other vehicles. Avoiding any further punctures, we arrived in the small town of Turmi, and the faint orange glow of the occasional street light enabled me to discern a town comprised of a single road populated with squat flat-roofed buildings on either side of the carriageway.

Our late arrival on a cool evening in Turmi meant that accommodation was limited to the diabolical Green Hotel. If one considered that the hotels of the world formed a human body, and a doctor needed to give this collective body an enema, then they would insert it into the Green Hotel. It is the foulest place I have ever stayed in, the one remaining room was small, stuffy with peeling green paint and a broken fly screen that allowed entry to malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The linen was a public health risk and as an added feature of this five dollar room, it held a complimentary pile of condoms, some opened. These were obviously used by the clients of the women who frequented the nearby bar whose music reverberated through the entire room. Though the music finally ceased at 1am, it was followed by a frightful fight between highly inebriated women who charged by the hour and their equally drunken clients.

After a broken sleep and pitiful breakfast, happiness again returned when I saw the Green Hotel disappear in the rear-view mirror.

With both punctured tyres now repaired, two hours of driving along moderately good roads saw our arrival in the small town of Omorante, only 40 kilometres from the Sudanese border. It was a very warm and dusty place where people languidly shifted along the roads lined with forlorn shops, whilst goats and other animals occupied themselves in the search for food.

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After registering at the police station, there was a choice of two hotels, one dire, the other dismal. As with most accommodation in the Omo Valley, the toilets were fetid, the showers cold, and the food average. The latter was the biggest disappointment, for Ethiopia has an excellent cuisine – arguably the best in Africa – but sadly, that quality was absent in the Omo Valley. The main reason to visit Omorante was to cross the Omo River to visit the Galeb tribe.

However, my desire for embarking on this short voyage quickly evaporated when watching the elongated and unstable boats carved from a single tree plying the fast flowing Omo River. The boatmen were obvious masters of their craft for they would direct the boat close to the steep river bank some distance upstream before swinging to the centre of the river and being hurtled downstream whilst crossing to the other side. Even an experienced swimmer like me would have trouble surviving in those treacherous waters in the case of a capsize. Some adventures are best left for another time.

So far the expedition to the Omo Valley had been beset by barriers and difficulties with meagre rewards – it had been an inauspicious start to the adventure. Thankfully, the situation improved on the third day when Tsegay drove me to a village called Kolcho inhabited by the Karo tribe. Our vehicle encountered the roughest dirt road conditions of this journey, and we occasionally needed to navigate around gaping holes that threatened to swallow the vehicle, and manoeuvre past almost vertical declivities – Tsegaye’s driving was superb.

We passed a naked man standing on a sandy dry riverbed overlooking the few cattle in his possession. His lean dark frame stood motionless, supporting himself on the long stick which he held in one hand. There was not even a hint of modernity in this scene that could have occurred thousands of years ago, rather than in the 21st century.

After much jarring of bones and inhaling of dust, we arrived at Kolcho nestled near to a stunning lookout with a magnificent grand and wide panorama over the Omo River far below. This was one village worthy of an entrance fee, for not only were the views

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impressive, but so too was the village. Covering a large area with a multitude of large huts that were relatively densely packed, it was a tremendous place to explore the numerous paths that meandered between the habitations.

The Karo were a very pleasant people, it was possible to walk around unaccompanied and receive only occasional, polite requests for photographs. In this village with neither electricity nor water supply, I could quietly observe Karo pastoral life; women would grind grains for dinner and larger children would play with their younger and smaller siblings by sitting them on a large piece of metal and drag them along at speed. It was an idyllic scene of simple and unaffected contentment. The Karo people deserved their title as the region’s best body painters as they sported elaborate and full decorations but the reason for this artistry was never fully explained to me, apart from the obvious atheistic and decorative aspects.

I was sauntering around the village when someone behind me spoke in perfect English “How are you?” I had not sighted another foreigner, but could have been mistaken since there were so many huts where one could loiter unseen. So imagine my surprise when I turned to see a Karo woman with painted face and numerous necklaces squatting by her modest hut. She only spoke a few words of English, but was the only person who was able to communicate with me verbally. For everyone else, it was via gestures and the international language of a smile.

One vividly painted Karo warrior and I formed a particularly strong bond. Proudly carrying his automatic weapon, and with red tinge in his eyes that were accentuated by his white painted face, I showed him images of other tribes which seemed to interest him greatly. He posed for numerous photographs and we shared a smile and laugh whilst reviewing the images. When it came time to depart, he gave me a genuinely emotional farewell, I could discern it in his eyes. He did not want me to leave, and I felt the same way. There was so much more to learn from him about his life and his village. It is heartening to know that genuine warmth can be established between people from extremely different cultures and different languages

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within a brief time.

We returned to Turmi and I decided to pay a relative premium for a spacious cabin at the Evangadi Lodge with cold showers and a toilet that did not make me shudder. This Monday was a special day in the town, for not only was it market day, but a Hamer initiation ceremony would occur later that afternoon. The Hamer people are famed throughout Ethiopia, their beautiful women plat their hair and coat it with a distinctive red clay, and the men are equally handsome. I warmed to the Hamer tribe more than any other, they were gentle and a smile never seemed far away.

The market was the best in the Omo Valley, as hundreds of Hamer converged to interact and trade goods in an expectedly relaxed environment. I espied a few women with large, wide scars on their backs and arms, which I thought odd for a seemingly placid people.

It felt surreal to watch this glimpse of tribal life and it was not the only time this journey that felt as if I had stumbled into the middle of a National Geographic documentary.

After losing track of time, I needed to hurry to attend the Hamer initiation ceremony, one of the highlights of any Omo Valley visit.

This ceremony is an elaborate affair which allows the male initiate, if successful, to commence the process of choosing a wife. The ceremony lasts hours and commences with women adorned in bangles and carrying small noisy horns, jumping in unison and following each other in a tight circle. This celebration is not so unusual, but the same could not be said of the public whipping that followed.

Tradition dictates that any relative of the initiate can prove their loyalty by being publicly scourged with a thin, destructive whip.

The process involves a woman approaching any Hamer adult male to deliver the punishment, but some men were reluctant to take part, and they had less enthusiasm for the practice then some of the women who needed to cajole them for another lashing. Supposedly a woman will plead to a man “Hit me,” he will respond “No,” and her retort being “You are no better than a woman!” at which time she would receive a single strike. Some women proudly displayed

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numerous open welts on their back, but not every female was similarly enraptured by the societal pressure. I espied a forlorn teenager with doleful eyes who had just received her first whipping; I pointed to a long thin cut on her back and she expressed her feelings by grimacing.

While the women bravely bore their wounds in silence, the men continued the ceremony by engaging in ritualistic face painting – a rather genteel task compared to what the women endured. Most memorable was that the packed group of men squatting in the shade of an enormous tree were so incredibly intense. The concentration of the painters’ faces were immense, but it paled when compared to the recipients, whose eyes were simultaneously both calm and fervent; the gaze of men searching their inner thoughts as if in a trance.

The gathered crowd walked the one kilometre along a dirt road for the climax. Whilst the Hamer men gathered around the initiate in a tight huddle, twelve reluctant bulls from a collection of many more were forcibly placed beside each other in a line, as the women danced, jingled and played their horns around the corralled beasts.

Some of the beasts almost broke free to wreak havoc on their handlers, but they was thankfully subdued. With scores of men holding the bulls in place under cloudy skies, the naked initiate stood at the far end as the women increased their noise to a crescendo and the tourists paused with cameras poised. Suddenly the initiate leapt onto the first bull and quickly, but ever so carefully, stepped on each animal before jumping on the ground near me, at which time I detected his expression of absolute concentration flicker for a moment to one of momentary relief. He returned from whence he came, again stepping on each of the bulls, and he repeated this whole process two more times. It took less than a minute for the initiation to be successfully completed and the foreigners applauded, which seemed incongruent for this traditional ceremony.

The assembled onlookers dispersed and when leaving the area we offered a seat in our vehicle to a Hamer teenager, his youthful dark face a start contrast to his shining white teeth. He saw me reviewing

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the images on my camera and requested to see the picture of the naked initiate crossing the bulls.

I showed him the picture, and he asked me, “Get closer,” so I zoomed into the initiate alone.

The teenager looked over the body and commented. “He is a strong man, and has a strong gun...” which referred to the size of the man’s genitalia, “he will have good children.”

He looked away from the camera before stating, “My initiation ceremony will be soon.”

“Really, that is great news,” I replied, “When will it be?”

He paused before answering, “In a few weeks. I do not know the day.”

“Will it be a big ceremony like this one?” I enquired.

“No, a small one. There will be no women, only men,” he stated.

“Will there any faranjis?” I asked, that being local word to describe foreigners.

“No, only the men of my tribe.”

“So you can choose if you want a big or small ceremony.”

“Yes I can. I will have a small ceremony. Not many people.”

We had arrived at my hotel, “I wish you the best for the ceremony.”

“Thank you,” he responded by flashing that brilliant white smile and he exited the vehicle.

The only town of note in the Omo Valley is Jinka, it even had mobile phone coverage. As we approached I remember hearing that Jinka once had a airport used for regional flights, so I asked Tsegay.

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The tribes that time forgot Shane Dallas

“Did Ethiopian Airlines used to fly to Jinka?”

“Yes, but they stopped it not long ago.”

“Why?” Tsegay gave me one of those of his typical wry smiles. “You will know when you see the airstrip.”

And sure enough I did, for there in the middle of Jinka’s low rise buildings sat what was once the airport, the former airstrip an uneven surface now populated with animals grazing on tufts of grass. Any plane landing on this surface, even without the grass and bovines, would be a risky venture.

“Now you see why,” stated Tsegay.

I laughed and nodded in reply.

Rambling around the dirt streets one late afternoon, many friendly people approached me who keenly wished to talk and swap stories.

So many were interested in my country of origin, and what I thought of Ethiopia and the Omo Valley. When the sunset’s scarlet light painted the buildings with its soft hue, I returned to my room where I saw my reflection in a mirror for the first time in many days and was surprised at my gaunt appearance. Subconsciously I had reacted to the poor state of the food and the worse state of the toilets by eating little, thus allowing me to minimise my exposure to both.

Jinka was the base to meet the most famous and feared tribe in the Omo Valley; the aggressiveness of the Mursi is known by many, and some travellers have refused to visit due to episodes such as stone throwing and their predilection for alcohol. However, this promised an unforgettable experience, so undaunted we proceeded to the Mago National Park where the tribe resides. A sign at the park’s entrance states: No Automatic Weapons, but this regulation is flagrantly ignored by the Mursi.

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At the final checkpoint we were required to acquire the services of an armed guard, and whilst organising this service, we met a departing group of half a dozen European tourists who had stayed with the Mursi the previous evening.

“How was your night?” I asked a young unshaven man.

He glanced at me with weary eyes. “It was...difficult. I had very little sleep,” as he turned and walked away. That was not reassuring.

With the armed guard sitting beside me in the now dirt encased Nissan Patrol, we encountered another potential peril. Apart from the Omo Valley’s malarial mosquitoes, the park is home to the Tsetse Fly that can inflict a most painful bite. When one of these brightly coloured insects appeared in the cabin near to the guard, he became most anxious and feverishly waved his hands and gun in the air. An agitated armed guard is never a good situation, regardless of the cause.

I harboured nervousness about visiting the Mursi and the portent of silence within the vehicle reflected my thoughts. This concern was well founded, for we came upon a Mursi village to scenes of frenzied activity as two vehicles with a dozen tourists had already arrived, and the Mursi were swarming around them like a pack of sharks closing in for a kill. Women were particularly aggressive in physically seizing people for a photograph.

“This is not good,” I sighed to Tsegay.

“No, it’s not,” came his stoic reply, as we watched another tourist disappear behind a mass of gesticulating Mursi women.

“Is it always like this?” I questioned.

Tsegay nodded and quietly uttered, “Yes.” “Maybe we should wait until the other faranji leave?”

“A good idea,” concurred Tsegay.

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The tribes that time forgot Shane Dallas

Tsegay reversed the car and we observed tourism’s ugly side from a distance. We hoped that it would be calmer once these groups had departed, and thankfully this prediction proved correct. Once within the the small village with the simplest of huts, we noticed the ubiquitous presence of automatic weapons, even the women carried them, a practice considered abhorrent by other tribes. The reason for this convention was difficult to determine, it was either deemed necessary for protection against predators, or possible against other Mursi. This was even more confronting than the Arbore tribe, for when someone grabs your arm demanding a photo be taken, and they have an AK47 swinging from their arm, it does change the power balance of the situation strongly against the visitor.

Communicating with the tribe was protracted as conversations needed to be translated from Mursi to the national Amharic language (courtesy of the armed guard) and from Amharic into English (courtesy of Tsegay) so these stilted colloquies involved not only the Mursi and me, but two interpreters as well. Like much of the Omo Valley, it was difficult to garner a fuller understanding of the people due to the language barrier, and the Omo Valley contains many languages, each only spoken by a few thousand people. But this communication, however protracted, did make a different to our visit – when the Mursi knew we wished to learn more about the village and its people, their reaction changed. Many returned to their usual daily duties instead of focusing their energies on our presence. As the previous group discovered, heading into any tribe for a whirlwind stop just to photograph receives a less welcoming reaction than those who are prepared to linger and learn.

The body decoration on the Mursi was superb, and the scarification used by both men and women tended towards the elaborate.

However, the iconic image of the Omo Valley is that of the lip plate worn only by the women, and they vary in size from moderately small to more than 20 centimetres wide. This adornment is not universally utilised, but the women who chose to do so consider it an object of beauty. For those who choose to wear one, they start with smaller plates in their teenage years until reaching full-sized plates in adulthood. The plate, which has a groove around the edge where the extended lip is placed, is not worn continuously as the

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wearer will remove it when eating or sleeping, nor are they worn when visiting the Jinka markets as the Mursi believe that these plates appear odd to outsiders.

We departed 90 minutes later, but I was disappointed by my poor reaction to the Mursi’s initial aggressiveness that allowed me to be overwhelmed for a second time on this journey. I vacillated on whether to return to the Mursi tribe the next morning. My photographs on the first visit were quite poor, my creativity bludgeoned by the intense environment. Perhaps a return was in order, and despite knowing that it would be another confrontational experience, not visiting again would be a regret.

Thus, with a greater mental preparedness, we returned to two different Mursi villages. These were both smaller, received less tourists and hence less frenzy. It was such a calm contrast to the previous day. The more relaxed mood allowed me to capture better photographs, and even the sternest visage would lighten and sometimes laugh upon seeing their picture on my camera’s LCD screen. It was a pleasant conclusion to my tribal visits in the Omo Valley, and showed that generalisations about a people never account for the nuances that they, both as an individual and a collective, can possess.

As we embarked on the three day journey to Ethiopia’s capital of Addis Ababa, it allowed me to reflect on the oft described vanishing tribes of the Omo Valley. These tribes as so distinct that one could determine their identity by merely looking at clothing and body adornments, but how do these tribes retain their cultures?

Tourism’s negative impact includes photography payments and I was part of the problem by ceding to such. Visiting tribes where people stand in line hoping to be chosen to be photographed was most uncomfortable for all concerned.

But tourism can both destroy and preserve. The Omo Valley seems to retain its culture better than many places; at least the tribes realise that their traditional lifestyle and culture provides an income, and this income encourages them to maintain their identity, even if it is at the cost of avarice. However, I sighted people in traditional tribal

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attire far away from the tourist path, so even without income from tourism, many of these practices would remain.

As Tsegay drove the vehicle out of the valley, we sighted a new bitumen road being constructed. It would make the journey between Jinka and the major town before the Omo Valley, Konso, much easier and faster. Development was coming to Omo Valley and as we passed groups of workers huddles around massive machinery, I wondered with trepidation what would be the impact.

Perhaps, time will not forget these tribes any longer.

The completion of that road changed the Omo Valley, for the easier passage not only meant better access to health care and trading, but also meant an influx of foreign visitors who would not undertake the journey on rougher roads. One sincerely hopes that these tribes which have filled the Omo Valley with their richness for millennia, can continue to retain their identity and thrive within a truly remarkable wooded valley.

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"Over the plains of Ethiopia the sun rose as I had not seen it in seven years. A big, cool, empty sky flushed a little above a rim of dark mountains. The landscape 20,000 feet below gathered itself from the dark and showed a pale gleam of grass, a sheen of water. The red deepened and pulsed, radiating streaks of fire. There hung the sun, like a luminous spider's egg, or a white pearl, just below the rim of the mountains. Suddenly it swelled, turned red, roared over the horizon and drove up the sky like a train engine. " Doris Lessing "Going Home"

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A field trip in Antarctica

Jos Van Hemelricjk 25

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A field trip in Antarctica Jos Van Hemelricjk

“Why don’t we go back?” Alain Hubert whispered.

“What?” I said

“Yes, we should go back and build a new Belgian Polar Station. But not just any station: a lightweight, high tech station. Using new, green, technologies like we do in our expeditions. Let’s show the world what we can do!”

I stayed silent. I did not want to hurt his feelings. The man, clearly, was nuts.

I had first met Alain in October 1996 at a press conference on the Mýrdalsjökull glacier, before he and Dixie Dansercoer succeeded in an unassisted crossing of Antarctica from coast to coast by skis, travelling 3940 kilometres in 100 days. In 2004, the Belgian government announced the building of a new polar base in close collaboration with a private foundation led by Alain Hubert. And so, Alain Hubert’s dream on that Icelandic glacier became a reality.

In January 2007 I travelled with Alain to Antarctica to film the spot where the new Belgian Polar base was to be build: on a rocky ledge of a nunatak called Utsteinen in the foothills of the Sör Rondane Mountains. I was part of a small expedition of 12 people, living on the ice for 5 weeks, sleeping in tents, cut off from the rest of the world. I enjoyed every second of it.

In 2013, I got a call from Alain Hubert asking me if I would be willing to go back to Antarctica and work as a resident journalist at the Princess Elisabeth Station base for the coming season. I had retired from the Belgian National Television station in 2009. I never expected to get a chance to see Antarctica again. I said yes.

It was an emotional moment for me when I got out of the plane and saw the striking shape of Princess Elisabeth Base glittering in the sun. Alain shook my hand and said “Welcome back at Utsteinen.” I could not answer him for the lump in my throat.

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Image: Jos Van Hemelricjk

A field trip in Antarctica Jos Van Hemelricjk

Field Trip to the Coast

We set out from Princess Elisabeth station for our long-awaited trip to the coast, Alain Hubert, seismologist Denis Lombardi, Roger Radoux the schoolteacher and me, your veteran reporter. We had news that our friends on Derwael Ice Rise were doing well despite heavy snowstorms that kept them pinned in their caboose for three days. They had finished drilling the first of two 30 metre holes and were 17 metres down on the second.

We were to meet with them on King Baudouin Ice shelf in a couple of days, but first we were expected at Sismo Camp, 160 kilometres North of Princess Elisabeth Station in an area known as the “grounding line.” It is the place where the glacier ice that slowly flows down from the Antarctic high plateau reaches the ocean and starts floating.

It took us twelve bumpy hours on our skidoos to get there. We made a stop at Asuka, an eerie Antarctic ghost town where a Japanese station was deserted in 1994. The station itself has long disappeared under the snow, but we wondered at the sight of rows of abandoned vehicles – skidoos, bulldozers and trucks - nose diving slowly in to the ice by the weight of their engines. We were surprised to see a sledge sporting a mast and spars that bore an uncanny resemblance to a catamaran wrecked on a reef in a sea of ice. We could not linger. We had another 80 kilometres to go. It was a rough ride. “A bad year for snow,” Alain admitted, “the surface is usually a lot smoother.”

Sismo Camp appeared as a black speck in the whiteness. After a while we could distinguish a row of bright coloured dots: the tents where we were to sleep. There was a snow tractor and two sledges: one with the lab-container the other was loaded with fuel tanks and a 10 foot mess container. We were welcomed by Jan Lenaerts and Christophe Berclaz.

“Good to see new faces,” said Jan

By Iridium satellite phone we heard that the Icecon-team had left

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A field trip in Antarctica Jos Van Hemelricjk

Derwael to set up a new drilling camp on the King Baudouin Ice shelf.

“When you ride on a slow moving snow tractor over this plain,” glaciologist Frank Pattyn told me later, “it sets you thinking.

Baudouin Ice shelf is about the size of a country like Belgium. 400 kilometres across. But this shelf holds back the ice that is contained in an area that has the surface roughly the size of Europe!”

Global warming has caused important ice shelves to disintegrate in the recent past, mainly in West Antarctica. Glaciers there are speeding up at an alarming rate. This is not the case in East Antarctica yet.

The King Baudouin Ice shelf is typical for this area: it flows down to the coast at a leisurely pace of a 150 metres a year. This shelf seems to be stable and healthy… or is it? We do not really know.

Frank made me understand that a weakening of this seemingly rock solid chunk of frozen water would have dramatic consequences on the level of ocean waters. No wonder that scientists with different specialities concentrate on studying the King Baudouin Ice Shelf.

Penguin colony revisited

Two years ago Alain Hubert and Kristof Soete made headlines being the first persons to set eyes upon a colony of emperor penguins whose existence up till then was unknown.

The discovery was not made by accident. Alain had been looking for them since he read an article by a scientist from the British Antarctic Survey who had studied satellite pictures showing dark spots in the area that might have been caused by penguin droppings.

The colony is situated at the eastern end of the King Bauduoin Ice Shelf, a 100 kilometres from Drill Camp. Alain decided it was time to pay the Emperors a new visit. See how they were doing. I was invited to go along, together with Kristof Soete and field guide Christophe Berclaz. I was thrilled. The skidoo drive was long and tedious. The sky was overcast. But I could not care less.

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A field trip in Antarctica Jos Van Hemelricjk

At 9 in the evening we arrived at a waypoint marked with a red flag on a bamboo pole: the entrance to the valley where the penguins live. This valley is entirely made of ice. It is called a rift: a disturbance in the flow of the ice shelf caused by some obstacle at the bottom. A pinnacle of rock maybe that splits the ice shelf right where it reaches the sea.

The lack of sunshine made it too hard to distinguish any features in the snow. It took us more than an hour to pick out a safe way down the steep slopes of the rift. We even offloaded the extra fuel cans we brought to make our skidoos lighter for the final plunge. Then suddenly we were driving on sea ice between 30 metre high walls on our left and right formed by the broken shelf. In spite of the grey weather, it was spectacular.

The rookery

After two kilometres, we saw the first sign of the penguin colony: a brownish line in the distance. When we drew nearer we saw individual dots. We stopped our skidoos and then we heard the din.

Hundreds, no thousands of penguin chicks where squawking, yakking and flapping their little wings vigorously as if they wanted to fly.

The air was heavy with the smell of fish. We stood still and watched in awe. The chicks paid no attention to our presence. They looked cute in their brown down that made them look like they wore a fur coat. They walked about clumsily with a funny rolling gait that made me smile. There were some adults around, though not as many as I expected.

“This is a nursery, Alain explained, the chicks wait here until one off their parents comes back from the sea to feed them. Male and female penguin parents take equal care of their offspring. Each couple has one chick per season. That makes it very easy to count them: for each chick, we see there are two adult emperor penguins in the colony.�

We saw several chicks been fed by an adult. Was it mom or dad?

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A field trip in Antarctica Jos Van Hemelricjk

Impossible to say. The chick begs for food by pushing its head against the parents’ chest. The parent then regurgitates the content of its stomach and the chick greedily gobbles it right from the parent’s throat.

Alain Hubert was beaming. “I can hardly believe my eyes,” he said, “the colony has definitely grown since the last time I was here. There are some 2000 chicks in this rookery. There are five rookeries of the same size. That means we have 20,000 adult penguins in the colony.”

We later counted not five but six rookeries full of noisy penguin chicks. One more than there was 2 years ago, this was wonderful news.

The sea leopards’ attack.

By the end of the season, when the ice breaks up, these youngsters will have moulted and must be ready to go to sea and fend for themselves.

“Let’s go to the edge of the ice,” said Alain, “you will see the adults queuing in a long line to take their turn to dive in to the water and go fishing.”

I drove my skidoo to the sea meeting many penguins on their way to feed their kid, overtaking others that were on the way back to the sea to go fishing again. They cover large distances – the rookeries are several kilometres away from the sea – sliding on their bellies propelling themselves with their feet and steering with their wings.

At the edge of the ice, I found many adults, but they were not queuing. They huddled together in a tight nervous band. It was obvious that no penguin was going for a swim today. The reason soon became clear. A large seal was patrolling the waters. Not just a seal: this was a leopard seal also called a sea leopard. This ferocious predator would catch any penguin that dove off the ice.

I noticed some small heads further out at sea. There were penguins out there that wanted to get back ashore and feed their chicks. They

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A field trip in Antarctica Jos Van Hemelricjk

would have to run the gauntlet and dodge the leopard.

I positioned myself close to the water’s edge hoping to film their attempts. I knew the sea leopard was close, but I never expected him to do what he did next. Suddenly he threw himself upon the ice, opened his mouth and went for my leg. I jumped back startled but he kept coming after me and tried to grab me. After a couple of metres, he gave up and left me standing perplexed. This animal was huge: more than 3 metres in length weighing 300 kilos or more. I am certain that if he had caught my leg he would have dragged me into the water.

“You were wearing black trousers, from the water he might have mistaken you for a penguin,” someone suggested later.

All I know is that this animal wanted me for his supper. And that was a sobering thought.

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Mount Fuji versus the couch potato

Robb Saunders 37

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Mount Fuji versus the couch potato Robb Saunders

Waking up at 6:00am in Tokyo, I honestly could not muster the excitement I should have been feeling about climbing Japan’s highest and most famous volcano. I met my father in the restaurant of the hotel for breakfast. I had a delicious bacon, capsicum and cheese omelette from an actual omelette station. I threw in a couple of warm and crusty hash browns and I was energized for anything.

We were staying in a very high end hotel for the week and I absolutely loved the luxury. My past six weeks in this beautiful country was mainly spent camping or staying in places that made Harry Potter’s cupboard under the stairs look like the Savoy. I was six weeks into my solo adventure walking down Japan, from Sapporo to Osaka. My dad generously paid for this week’s accommodation while he was here to tackle the climb with me.

So off we went to the Shinjuku train terminal. Two trains and a long bus journey later we arrived 2,300 metres above sea level at the Fuji Subaru Line fifth station at 12:00pm. The fifth station is the starting point for people attempting to climb the mountain, and is also a popular tourist spot for those who aren’t. The air was dry and cold, but the sun was bright and warm, the type of weather I am used to back in my home town of Melbourne, Australia.

After we played tourists by looking at all the lovely wares with Mount Fuji printed on every single item, we decided to check which trail we were going on, preferably the easiest. Since it was a couple of weeks before the official climbing season, there seemed to be only one trail up and down the mountain. We didn’t care, we felt so invincible that whatever trail we went up we would conquer with ease.

The trail we were climbing was called the Yoshida trail and is supposedly the easiest one to do. Around 15 minutes in, we realised that we had not been going up but instead walking down what seemed like a dirt road heading down the mountain. So, we started to wonder if we were going in the right direction. After pacing back and forth contemplating, we decided to head back just to be certain as we did not want to keep going and eventually discover we were back at the very bottom of the mountain. It was lucky we did decide

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on back-tracking because we were oblivious of a certain rule that stated, for obvious safety reasons, before attempting the climb each climber must register at the tourism information centre. There was a film crew there for NHK, which I suppose is the Japanese equivalent of the ABC or BBC. They filmed us talking to the guides and signing in at the centre and then we headed off again. It turned out we were going in the right direction to begin with, so it was onwards and upwards for the second time.

We arrived 2,390 metres above sea level at the sixth station just after 1:30pm. They had a toilet there so I thought it best to relieve myself while I had the chance, nothing worse than being caught with your pants down on the side of a cold icy mountainside (if you catch my drift).

After the sixth station, the trail started upwards. Most of the way to the summit was on a 45-degree incline. We hiked up a dirt path surrounded by low hanging trees and shrubs until we reached a lovely little shrine and decided that this would be an ideal spot to stop and have a break. The shrine was made of wood and stone statues, at night time they would be eerily scary to an imaginative mind such as mine. We decided to try our luck at bowing to the statues in the hopes of safe travels to the top. It began to rain and shortly after, the musky scent of petrichor was in the air. The path felt like it was going on forever. I was struggling and we had to stop quite a lot to recover. The altitude was the biggest challenge for me and the temperature was dropping significantly. My dad seemed to be doing better than me and was beginning to appear as a small silhouette in the distance.

We made 2,700 metres above sea level to the seventh station at around 3:30pm. From then on the trail up transformed from a dirt and loose gravel path to rocks, boulders, snow and ice. We bought some more water from one of the resting huts.

The struggle, the cold and the slight altitude sickness was worth it, thanks to the greatest view you could possibly see anywhere in Japan. It was amazing, particularly when the clouds cleared and I could look down at the impossibly green trees. It gave me the

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Mount Fuji versus the couch potato Robb Saunders

motivational boost I was searching for. As we were climbing the steep rocky path, two young British guys were coming up behind us. They were in T-shirts and shorts and a light backpack. We started chatting and discovered that they chose to climb the mountain after they saw Karl Pilkington attempt it on An Idiot Abroad. They had not booked a hut to stay in and were hoping they could pay with their credit card as they did not have any cash with them. They essentially just decided, “Hey! Let’s climb Mount Fuji today.”

At around 6pm we arrived at another hut. Luckily for the two Brits, the owners of the hut accepted their card, so to be safe they chose to stay there for the night, to avoid the risk of climbing a couple of hours further to a hut that might not and thus be forced to make the climb back down again. They also wanted time to have a few beers and a decent sleep to make it to the top before sunrise the next morning.

For us though, we had not reached our Hut and it was getting late, we did not expect to be climbing for this long, as we believed that the trek would only take six to seven hours to reach the summit, we had been climbing longer than that already and we were not even at the hut we booked for the night.

We also did not expect it to be this difficult. We assumed that given the height we were at and the hours we had already climbed, that we must be close. We had to make it before dark, so we pushed on. At around 7:15pm we saw what appeared to be lights up above. I could barely walk and I felt like I was coming down with vertigo. If it was not the hut we booked, I was going to collapse there anyway and call it a day. Luckily, it was.

We stepped inside the communal hall. It had three long, wooden tables, two of which were full of seated Japanese men and a couple of women. The smell of the room reminded me of an old high school gym changing room, but it was warm and comfortable nonetheless. The owners were extremely welcoming and brought us to the empty table, sat us down and gave us a hot meal and some hot tea. It was the best meal I have ever tasted, even better than the

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Mount Fuji versus the couch potato Robb Saunders

omelette from breakfast that felt like an eternity ago. It appeared to be some kind of meat with cold sticky rice and spices, but to me it tasted like salt and pepper calamari, hot chips and tartar sauce. I must have been delusional.

After the meal we were escorted to the next room and shown the bunks where we would sleep. It was a large ‘L’ shaped room with mattresses along the floor and another wooden level with the same set up. There were no lights so we put our bags down and tried to get some warmer clothes on and went to bed. Sleeping was difficult as the temperature dropped just below zero and there was no heating. At around 9:00pm I needed to go to the toilet, so I rolled off the bunk and headed outside. I had to make sure to take 200 yen and my torch, the last thing I wanted was to walk off the cliff that the hut was residing on.

Some hours later, we were woken up by a member of staff, violently shaking our legs to wake us up. I looked at my watch and saw the short hand on the three, I wanted to die. My chest felt like a sumo wrestler was sitting on me, and my head felt like an empty toothpaste tube being squeezed for its last drop of oral sanitary goodness. We shuffled into the communal hall and had some cold rice for breakfast. I felt like shite! I was shivering to my bones and I had altitude sickness, I did not think I could climb another 200 metres to the summit. We left the hut at 3:30am and started our journey up once more. It was incredibly dark, so our head torches were a necessity, although all we could see was the frost in the air.

The sub-zero night had caused an already rocky climb to change to a dangerously cold, icy path. A lot of the locals recommended us to have spikes on our boots, but as we did not have any, we had to disregard their concerns.

We finished the 3,776.24 metres above sea level climb to the summit just before 5am. The sun rose about 15 minutes prior but that did not matter, the view was spectacular! Even though my body felt like it was shutting down whilst simultaneously imploding, the scenery and feeling of accomplishment was more than worth it. I was soon jumping around with excitement in no time. We walked around the summit and peered into the abyss of the volcano. The depth of it

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Mount Fuji versus the couch potato Robb Saunders

was astounding. I would not have liked to be around when that behemoth erupted.

After spending enough time soaking in the scenery, we began our descent just after 6:00am. There was supposedly an easier, faster path to get back down but unfortunately, as I previously mentioned, the season had not officially started so it was still closed off. We had no choice but to head back the way we had come. Along the way down, we noticed that now the sun was shining bright, it was melting the ice and snow on the rocks, which in turn caused it to be more like a slip and slide minus the fun. It was also making the path longer to get down. Suddenly, the telescopic walking poles I was using for support collapsed in on themselves and I fell a metre down onto my back. I cursed and swore at the heavens due to the pain, but mostly the frustration in myself for not preparing more before attempting to tackle this mountain.

After that we decided it best to take a break. The clouds were below us, so we could not see how far we had to go, which made the trek feel like an eternity. The further down we went the easier it was to breathe, but with the constant downward climb and balancing on rocks, the pressure was taking its toll on our feet, ankles and knees.

I must have rolled my ankle about fifty times. Every time we reached a hut we were certain we must be past the rocks and as far as the dirt path, but we weren’t. We also seemed to be going slower than the other climbers coming down the mountain. The workers were climbing down like mountain goats. They would casually jump down from one icy rock to another like a child playing hopscotch. I hated them for that!

It was around 1:30pm and we were back at the seventh station. An American family were having lunch. There were about fifteen of them, loud and talking over each other. It reminded me of my family at Christmas, or any of my family affairs for that matter. The Japanese people who were guiding them, were too polite to say something but we could tell they were getting annoyed with them.

Sometime after that we finally made it to the dirt path again. We still had a long way to go and needed to be back at the fifth station soon.

The last bus off the mountain to get us on our way back to Tokyo

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Mount Fuji versus the couch potato Robb Saunders

was leaving at 3:30pm, if we did not make it on time then we would be stuck up there another night. It felt like the closer we were to the finish, the slower and slower we became, but we were determined to make it.

Our feet were sore and my knees were cracking at every step. My dad was beginning to worry me as he tripped and injured his foot.

He was in pain for the rest of the way down and after I returned back to Australia nine weeks later, I realised one of his toes was still black from the fall.

We finally arrived at the fifth station at 3pm looking like a defeated Harry and Marv from Home Alone. Our legs had turned to gelatine. We hobbled into the tourist information centre to let them know we were back, and to collect our stamp of completion. The film crew were still there. When they saw us they began filming again. They requested if we would like to act out scenes looking at maps and brochures and interviewed us on what we are doing in Japan. So, I mustered the best of my acting skills that I acquired from high drama and delivered an Oscar-worthy performance. A few weeks later I contacted NHK to try to obtain some of the footage but due to the large amount of shows and channels they have, they could not locate it without a name for the program, which I forgot to write down.

We made it just in time to get on the bus. There was only one seat left which I let my dad have due to his injured foot, and because I’m just such a good son. It was the longest bus ride I have ever been on.

We finally made it back to our hotel at 7:30pm, went to our rooms and collapsed on the bed. I woke up twelve hours later with all my clothes on, and one shoe.

It was the toughest and most rewarding experience I have ever embarked on, both physically and mentally. There were many times when I did not think I was going to make it, many times when all I wanted to do was give up and go home. The one thing I know for sure is that I would not have made it to the summit on my own without the help of my constantly positive and supportive father.

Thanks, dad!

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Hammam

Siffy Torkildson 40

Hammam Siffy Torkildson

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince

Glancing out the window of the Midnight Express train to Marrakesh, I watch the mysterious shadows dance across the night sky, and the flickering village lights pass by. There is the distinct smell of jasmine and paper fires in the air. I am traveling with Tor, a man I recently connected with, after 25 years. It is my first time in Morocco, a place I have dreamed of visiting since I was a child. We drink gin and tonics and stand in the aisle getting a little too amorous for the Moroccan conductor.

“Excuse me, but if you two can’t keep your hands off each other, go to your compartment!” He tells us in gruff French. We feel like teenagers.

In the morning, as the sun rises over the pink city of Marrakesh, we meander our way from the train station to our riad in the old Jewish quarter. The passageways are narrow and confusing, young children kick balls and old, wizened women stare at us from doorways.

Alleyway stalls sell spices, apricots, dates and colorful carpets, Arabian night-like lamps, leather goods and ceramic tagines. The spices temporarily transport me back to my life in Madagascar. In the Djemaa el-fna square we watch snake charmers, boxing matches, ornately dressed men selling water from their goatskin bags, epic storytellers, a blind violinist, colorfully robed women and old men in djellabas mumbling “Allah” over and over mantra-like. Tor recommends I try a traditional bath.

Curious, I wander alone to a hammam, tucked down a narrow corridor among merchants selling their wares. I pay 64 dinars to a skinny middle-aged man who waves me to the female section.

Recently divorced, starting out on a new life path, I feel in need of a good cleansing.

A short, bow-legged woman, simply wearing black underwear, takes me by the hand and leads me into a warm cement room. Her

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large breasts sag down to her stomach. She gives me the once over and seems slightly perturbed that she has to deal with me.

Another older woman, who wears a headscarf and gray djellaba, smiles at me. She is missing a tooth and gestures for me to sit down on a long narrow bench. The women do not speak English or French; I do not speak Arabic or Berber, so we communicate by hand signals and eye gestures.

The clothed woman beckons for me to disrobe. I take off my lightgreen djellaba which I had purchased earlier as I wanted to try to blend in to the culture. Tor thinks my mysterious dark eyes won’t give me away.

I carefully place my money and watch in the hood and she knots it for safekeeping. I lay my t-shirt, bra and sandals in a pile on the bench. I soon realize that women wear pajama-like pants under their djellabas. They probably think I am strange because I am naked underneath. I hope they don’t think I am a loose European.

From Marrakesh we head south to the snow-capped mountains, which tease us on our way to Mount Toubkal, the tallest mountain in North Africa, at 4167 metres. We meet up with our two American friends and Karim who will handle our logistics for the journey.

“Salaam alaikum.” He greets me with his hand over his heart. Tor calls him Dom, for Dom DeLuise, as he looks and laughs like him.

Tor’s acquaintance, Karim, is shaped like a bowling ball, has an infectious smile, and is a bit of a raconteur. Years ago, he stowed away on a ship bound for New York City with ten dollars, and a slip of paper with a phone number on it. Through a combination of hard work and street savvy, he had worked his way up from a dish washer to a used car salesman in Seattle.

“My first day I knew nothing about cars, and when my first customer asked my advice concerning one of the cars on the lot I had to be honest with her. I told her I had never sold a car in my life,

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only donkeys, for my father. The lady bought a car, my first sale, and after that I told everyone the same donkey story.”

His rotund belly shakes as he explodes in laughter. Karim is likeable, in a raffish kind of way, and I can tell he is faithful to his family and friends. Tor likes Karim, yet, keeps a close eye on him and corrects him when he embellishes the history of Morocco or the Koran. This seems to trouble Karim, as a large part of his success as a tour guide, is based on his authoritative persona. Karim is a driven man with his sights set on success. The thing I like best about Karim is that he makes me laugh.

The olive and orange trees are replaced by apple and walnut trees as we travel up into the mountains. It starts to rain lightly and there is a wonderful fragrance in the air. Imlil is the gateway town for our ascent of Mount Toubkal.

Mud houses on the upper reaches of the village remind me of my visit to the Himalaya the previous year and I am told the movie Seven Years in Tibet was filmed here. When I saw the movie many years ago, I thought of Tor, even though I hadn’t seen him in over twelve years then. Brad Pitt’s character, Heinrich Harrer, reminded me of Tor, with his toughness, adventurous spirit, interest in Buddhism and the Himalaya Mountains. Even Pitt’s looks, such as his thick lower lip and sandy blonde hair reminded me of Tor. Tor is a tall burly man with crystal blue eyes, wide nose and gapped teeth (he would cringe if he read this).

This is Karim’s first time on a major climb and he is a little nervous.

He wears a used backpack he purchased in Seattle, hiking books from Tor, and a pair of trekking poles borrowed from a local guide in Imlil. Karim is certainly geared up, yet does not fit the image of a mountain climber. I notice Tor eyeing him up and down with a smirk on his face. “Off we go in to the wild blue yonder, off we go in to the sky.” Tor sings his mountain mantra and sets off at his usual fast pace.

In the morning the five of us hike up the trail, which begins as a dirt road. I wear my silk hiking skirt and I feel a kinship with Karim as

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we both wear floppy looking hats to keep the sun off our faces (I have noticed Tim Cahill, adventure extraordinaire wears a similar hat). Tor, hatless, makes fun of our practical sunhats. We see a few European trekkers on the trail and all the women wear pants. I prefer to wear a skirt in more traditional societies and it is easier to be more discrete when I have to pee in the bush.

Trail-side stands sell rocks, fossils, carpets and ceramics. A glimmer of white snow sparkles high in the mountains. The lower elevations are lush with trees, however, as we climb higher and leave the river valley the landscape is dry and desolate.

We encounter donkeys with overloaded baskets, weighing heavy on their bodies, and carrying a robe clad person side-saddle. The wide river slowly narrows and we cross it into a small village. A twostory high white painted boulder sits beside a pink minaret.

“Why is that painted white Karim?”

“A man died here and now a holy man lives here.” He seems afraid and says the holy man is evil.

I presume he is a medicine man as Karim tells us he uses healing herbs.

Maybe there is a curse; soon thereafter I look back down the trail, and I wonder where our friends are. Tor, Karim and I stop to wait for them. Ten minutes later our friend comes up to tell us her husband is vomiting. We are not sure if it is the altitude or the food we have been eating. Tor has been moving extremely fast and not considering the elevation gain.

“Siffy, you and Karim keep going up. I am going to make sure they find a place to stay and are ok. I will catch up.”

I lead Karim up the steep slope. He is doing well for his first foray into the mountains, but he is tired.

“Oh an orange juice stand! Let’s stop!” I want to keep going, but I

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comply.

We drink our juice while a tired donkey guzzles water from a barrel.

The mountains are now cloaked in clouds, but we can see down the rock strewn valley beneath us. A herd of goats grazes among the rocks. I smell tea and again Karim wants to stop.

“Karim, that looks like Tor down there!”

Tor quickly approaches and is grateful to have a break.

“I found a basic room and the locals will take good care of them.”

Less than an hour later we arrive at the refuge les Mouflons de Toubkal. Visions of Count Dracula’s castle come to mind, especially, in the low lying clouds. There are no windows inside this stone building which adds to the effect. I realize we are at 10,521 feet, so will have over 3000 feet to climb the next day to the peak.

Several men work at the hut and serve us a tagine and vegetables for dinner. Tor and I sit next to a sweet young Czech couple who practice their English with us. Karim, always gregarious, chats with the Moroccan alpine guides while pouring over maps.

After breakfast we trudge up the trail and collectively move up the mountain. Two hours later and we are second guessing our route; Karim speaks with several men traveling with donkeys and asks about the trail route.

We are on the wrong trail!

I reflect on the many paths in life and how I had followed the wrong route, or so I felt, so many times. But what is a wrong path?

It was the way I took, so it must have been the correct route, I muse. All I know is that Tor and I are finally together, after several failed attempts to connect over the years, and I am on the correct path now.

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Tor, Karim and I return to the hut at 10 a.m., a two hour detour. We are all a little discouraged, but we decide to keep pursuing Mount Toubkal. It is windy and cold and I am thankful for my many layers of clothing. The sky is clear and deep blue. Karim wraps a lightpurple scarf around his head for a hat. Clouds roll in, as does an occasional raven, and the weather is ominous looking.

Tor, in an agitated state, quickly marches up the mountain, as if obsessed, leaving Karim and I in the dust. His frustration with the earlier error seems to be fueling him up the mountain, despite the shale that is difficult to climb on. He is quickly out of sight. Karim and I plod up through boulder fields. An occasional plant struggles to survive in this harsh environment. A few hikers are on their way down; they look exhausted, barely looking at us when we pass.

I am growing concerned about Karim’s ability to climb Mount Toubkal and the weather keeps deteriorating. He mentions that he never even played soccer as a boy. Karim is huffing and puffing, he quickly runs out of water, and he seems exhausted. Fortunately, his strong Moroccan stomach can handle the stream water that we occasionally encounter. I sit with him for breaks, which I also appreciate, and try to encourage him.

Karim groans behind me. “I think I pulled my groin muscle!”

“You can turn around and meet us back at the hut. Really it is no problem.”

“No, I will keep going.” His face cringes in pain.

I admire his determination and I suggest several times that he can wait for us. Most likely, it is his male ego, and he does not want to be outdone by a female; he is ten years younger than I am.

Finally, the summit ridge comes in to view; Karim seems to be on his last leg and after taking several steps slumps on a rock breathing heavily. He stubbornly refuses to give up. I decide to quickly move ahead and I encounter two young German men suffering from altitude sickness; I earnestly begin to worry about Karim’s

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condition.

I have an incredible view when I finally reach the ridge, great cumulous clouds blow swiftly over the snow covered mountains to the south and there are patches of snow near me. All of a sudden, like an apparition of a mythical Viking warrior, Tor appears out of the clouds above me.

“Did you make it to the summit?” I ask.

“Yes, I am on my way down, but I am not feeling well now and bad weather is rolling in. We need to go down.”

“Oh how much further?”

The clouds clear for a few seconds revealing the metal pyramid marking the summit. I realize it will be at least another hour to go up and down with Karim, whom I feel responsible for. I am content just to look at the peak, as the view will be worse higher up, due to the weather. It is the journey, not the destination that matters, I tell myself.

Tor and I head back down and meet Karim. We are starving. We eat the bread and cheese that we had packed. Tor takes out Kairu, his traveling stuffed frog, to cheer up Karim. Suddenly, energized by thoughts of the warm hut and heaping piles of couscous, Karim quickly leads the way down the mountain. We are stunned by this rapid change in his energy levels.

I find a detailed map on the wall in the hut. Karim and I had reached ‘Tizi’ the col, which is at 12,926 feet, just 700 feet below the summit.

I am glad my highest point has a name. We sit at a long table next to some Spaniards, eating a tagine of chicken, potatoes, and tomatoes, as well as lentil soup. Dessert is orange slices in cinnamon.

“Siffy, time to get up!” I feel Tor’s arm on my shoulder.

I am in the middle of a dream and deep sleep. As we open the door to leave the hut, we are met by rain, and gusty winds. I quickly get

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chilled as I hike, but decide to keep moving onward and experiment with Tummo. I imagine my body in a warm fire.

Tor, leading the way, finally stops under an abandoned tea stand; we all bundle up and put on our raingear. The local green bushes are vibrant in the rain, bringing to mind giant tribbles from Star Trek.

We eat breakfast in the village where our friends had been holed-up.

As we descend, the sky clears, and it quits raining and warms up.

In the Marrakesh hammam, the woman wearing only underwear, with the large drooping naked breasts, gray hair tightly bound to her head, gestures for me to follow her. She slowly waddles into the next room as I walk behind her wearing only my panties. The rough cement constructed room is empty except for a copper spigot.

The door opens into the bathing room, which smells soapy; the air is moist, and the feeling is exotic. Overhead, holes in the dome let in light. A few naked women and young boys sit quietly on towels.

They are surrounded by buckets. I can hear the pouring of water as they bathe. The women are short, plump, young and well endowed.

Since I am very tall and thin the only thing I have in common with them, is my dark hair and eyes. I catch the women stealing glances at me while soaping, scrubbing, and pouring water over themselves.

My bather leads me to the back of the room and into a small enclave. I am the only one getting special treatment today; everyone else is attending to themselves. I don't have a towel to sit on as the others do, so after I remove my panties and hang them, I sit naked on the tile floor.

The old woman hands me a chunk of soft dark-green glycerin soap.

I lather up as she meanders slowly across the long room weaving between the other bathers to fill a bucket of water. Another bucket sits in front of me. I grab the glove scrubber and proceed to scrub myself and my past away. When my bather returns she chastises me and grabs the scrubber out of my hand and gives back the soap.

Feeling her looming presence, I lather prodigiously hoping to satisfy her. That seems to pacify her.

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Hammam Siffy Torkildson

The moon rises in the warm clear evening as I mount my camel near Merzouga, on the western edge of the Sahara Desert, near the border of Algeria. Although I am an avid horse-woman, this is my first time riding a camel. Tor is the only one in our group of five, including Karim, who has ridden a camel before. My camel, named Jimmy Hendrix, has charming big eyes and long eyelashes and seems to be smiling at me.

I mount my sitting camel from the right side. It doesn’t feel right as horses are always mounted from the left side. Hopping up on a horse takes a little effort, yet with the camel I just slide my leg over the saddle and I am aboard. My Berber guide motions to Jimmy to stand up with a concentrated pull on the rope attached to his lip, and a verbal click, similar to talking to a horse.

The attractive Berber guides are young, have light complexions, and thick curly black hair. They all wear cobalt blue djellabas; one of them smiles constantly and one young man grins occasionally.

Jimmy’s long front legs move to a kneeling position, then his front legs extend, followed by the back legs in a jerking sort of motion. I hold on to my saddle’s metal horn. It is a rather odd feeling, to be almost thrown over Jimmy’s head, and suddenly find myself seated high above the ground and my guide.

My camel loves to be scratched behind his ears; he wiggles his head and groans and bats his long eyelashes at me. The fur on his head is thick, as I imagine a buffalo’s would be. Jimmy is darker than most of the other camels.

The saddles are made of a plastic or metal oval frame around their hump, held on with a girth. Over the frame are piled blankets. I feel more like I am riding bareback, than on a saddle. Stirrups would be a wonderful addition and make riding camels much more comfortable.

One camel carries our baggage and is tethered behind my camel; during our ascent and descent of the dunes Jimmy almost topples over multiple times. I am delighted to be leading the caravan and

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feel like galloping off into the desert.

I note that my camel rocks forward and backward, as if in time with its upward and downward movement, I feel like I am in a dinghy drifting across the undulating dunes. After riding horses my entire life, getting used to Jimmy’s unique stride will take some time.

I try squeezing my legs around my camel, as if on a horse, keeping my heels down; this had been ingrained into me as a young girl learning to ride a horse. In a flashback I remember my riding instructor hollering at me “Heels down! Eyes straight ahead; don’t look down! Do, there is no try!” I catch myself looking down, especially since a camel’s head is much lower than a horse’s. I glance at my guide’s head wrapped in a gray scarf as he leads my camel along; he seems so at peace.

In the darkness the dunes are magical silhouetted against the full moon. The night is silent and I can only hear the footsteps of my barefoot guide and camel. A tall sensual dune looms above us to the north. The desert mystique is starting to rub off on me.

“Karim, you can ride my camel and I will walk. You must be in pain.”

Karim’s eyes reply with mixed emotions; he is a proud Berber, however he is in extreme pain. I feel sorry for Karim, dismount my camel and offer Jimmy to Karim. I tell Karim that my back is sore from riding my camel and that I would rather walk. Inside I smile, as I know Karim has had to let go of his ego yet again. I stride across the dunes smartly wearing my sandals.

Karim giggles constantly atop my camel. “Which is worse, riding a camel or walking?” I ask.

“I am not sure!” He laughs in his Dom DeLuise cackle.

I notice Tor eyeing our hats. I smile within, knowing the scorching Saharan sun will take a toll on his exposed face. Before sunset we set up our Berber tents. The tents are made with wooden poles, covered

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Hammam Siffy Torkildson

with thick blankets and colorful carpets, have a slanted thick roof, and a carpet doorway.

In a moon washed evening, Tor leads me to the dunes; I feel the cool sand on my bare feet as if walking on an ocean beach. The scene reminds Tor of the movie the Sheltering Sky one of his favorite movies.

“I have always wanted to make love out here in the sand dunes like in the movie.”

Tor leads me by the hand to the top of a high-crested dune. We make love under the full moon and Jupiter. Our hearts beat in rhythm with the Berber drums off in the distance.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, wrote, “I have always loved the desert.

One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing.

Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...”

In the Marrakesh hammam the old woman sits with her legs splayed. She indicates for me to lie down on the floor, face down between her thighs. She drags my slippery body across her lap so that my body is draped over her. She scrapes me roughly, with a hand scrubber, and pulls and tugs me in various directions.

When I don't understand, she seems to yank harder, and her dark feisty eyes look disgusted. She places my hand on my chest so that I can feel the grit she has scrubbed off. In my nakedness, I feel I am being stripped of my former life; joyously I feel I am headed into unknown territory.

Sitting up, the bather scrubs my lower legs and feet, metaphysically washing away the grit of my previous life. She hands me the washing mitt and gestures for me to scrub my face and neck.

Brusquely, she has me lie on my stomach and gives me a quick back massage. Afterwards, the old woman waddles back to the spigot and returns.

Satisfied that I am finally clean, the old woman grabs my hand and

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Hammam Siffy Torkildson

motions for me to stand up. She pours hot rinse water over my naked body, as I bend my knees so she can reach my head. I feel baptized into my new life. The woman brings me a towel and leads me in to another room. Happy, yet confused, I dry myself with the towel. A few minutes later the old woman returns, arms waving in outrage and points to another room.

“La, la, la! (No, no, no).” This room is not for drying.

I go back into the room where my djellaba is to dry off. The clothed old woman says “Souvenir Madame.” I give her some change and she is happy. I hope she shares it with my bather who did all the work.

I feel cleansed here in the hammam and I know the journey across Morocco, up the mountains and across the desert has prepared me to face my new adventures.

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The land beyond the forest

Fearghal O'Nuallain 79

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The land beyond the forest Fearghal O' Nuallain

Footsteps along the Cerna.

At 2am the train breaks its metronomic, clickety-clack and jolts to a stop. “Orsova,” the voice on the tannoy announces. The voice reaches deep through my sleepy haze and slowly I realise that this is my stop. I hurriedly shoulder my pack and lurch down the aisle, trying not to catch sleeping passengers with the snow-shoes protruding from the sides of my 80l pack.

The train has already begun to move by the time I reach the door.

At the small stations along the Danube, regional trains run by CFR stop just long enough for passengers to alight. I pause at the door and confirm with the stone-faced ticket collector that this is Orsova.

“Da,” he says, in the expressionless tone of bored transport workers the world over. “Mishka,” (hurry) he adds and motions to the night outside with his torch. The beam shines past the pool of warm light emanating from the carriage and points me into the wintry darkness outside. The train is gaining momentum, so I throw my pack and jump. There’s no platform. I land on all fours on the gravel after a four-foot drop. I lie prone as the train clicks off into the night.

Alone in the world, I watch the lights and metallic clicks ebb into the distance. For a moment, I feel like a commando on a mission behind enemy lines. Then I remember I’m just an adventurous fool, looking for ways to learn about the world. I grope around to locate my pack then lay my head on it and stare up at the stars for a bit. At this stage of the journey, the feeling of escape burns strong. I stand up and take stock of my surroundings. The wending waters of the Danube are not far away. I can see lights twinkle in Serbia, on the far shore of the mighty river and barges silently carrying loads from Budapest to the Black Sea and a multitude of places in between.

I'm tramping in Romania; hiking and hitching my way through a bitter mid-winter. I came here to hike along the Faragas mountains and explore one of Europe’s last wild spaces, Transylvania. A place replete with bears, wolves and old Saxon villages with quaint wooden churches and vast tracts of virgin forests that have changed little since medieval times.

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My eyes attune to the moonlight and my mind focuses on the task at hand.

I need somewhere to sleep. Farther up the tracks I see the silhouette of what appears to be Orsova station ahead. Heavy boots scuff and crunch on the rough aggregate as I walk along the train line. The station unlocked. The taxi sitting outside with its engine running its exhaust fumes rising dreamily in front of the red tail lights would lend the scene an incongruous air of urgency, if the driver wasn’t lying with the seat thrown back, asleep at the wheel. The heavy door has a large crack running diagonally across the glass, it creaks as I open it. Inside is cold, silent. A mausoleum to communist ideals, the station embodies the values and aesthetics of a time past.

A single circular light on the wall emits a dim glow that gives a ghostly aura; providing enough light to see the form of the waiting room and ticket desk but not enough to discern textures or colours.

To avoid unwanted attention, I do not use my head torch. The taxi still sits outside, its engine running like a sanguine metronome. I roll out my sleeping bag beneath the ticket booth, in the pale light. A long fumble around my rucksack locates my toothbrush, I brush my teeth taking care to spit into tissue, take off my boots and slip into my sleeping bag. The marble floor beneath is cold and hard.

Undressing in the sleeping bag I collect my clothes and use them for a pillow and lay down to sleep.

The surroundings infuse my thoughts as I drift asleep. The hubris and brash optimism that inspired the peeling futurist mural of a brave & purposive cosmonaut has long since faded but the patina of utopia still shrouds the building. 25 years after 1989 it feels foolishly naive. But so do all the best-laid plans of men. Someday, someone will come across a dilapidated building and laugh at the capitalist messages advertising phones and Facebook.

I lie here, on the cold floor watching my breath dissipate into the faint sodium lights shining through cracked window and I can’t help thinking of Marx. In the Communist Manifesto, he wrote that “all that is solid, melts into air.” I think he meant that all that we take for granted, all the certainties, the securities of any time, will one day

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The land beyond the forest Fearghal O' Nuallain

melt and fade away. Just like the once “modern” train station that I’m sleeping in. Once it must have been a symbol of progress. A representation of the power of Communist ideals. Now it was tired, dilapidated, and sad, its brave cosmonaut putting on a brave face as he peels away.

Waking somewhere that you fell asleep after dark is always interesting. The sun was up when I awoke to a line of people quietly queuing around me. Men in cheap ski jackets stamp and blow steam on rough and calloused cupped hands, women wrapped up in shawls and scarves shuffle and chat. No one appears bothered by the bleary-eyed man awakening beneath the ticket window until the shutter is raised and they politely usher me to the side. I dress and pack up my gear under the indifferent gaze. My station looks more faded and less romantic in the cold light of day. And high thoughts of communist ideals, give way to the current reality of proletariat struggle, in a still developing and deeply unequal capitalist economy.

In the cold light of day, the station isn’t a symbol of faded glory, it is a testimony to the lack of investment in basic infrastructure.

The Danube still looks impressive, its deep waters moving with a slow power. In the morning sun, I can see movement in Serbia, on the far bank. I follow its flow upstream in search of breakfast and find its confluence with the river Cerna, a tributary that will lead me northwards into the mountains. I find a truck stop next to the river and order food. I drink cold water from my pack as I wait for their stove to light and my meat and chips to cook. Def Leppard plays on the stereo and I enjoy the sound of logs crackling to life.

I’m here for adventure. Adventure is almost a plastic word today.

Mostly it is used to advertise the least adventurous things that occupy our consumer driven lifestyles. Such as the latest latte offered by a coffee corporation that doesn’t pay its taxes or a new entertainment bundle by a satellite TV company that wants you to spend more time indoors sitting down watching ads. But, Adventure’s plasticity shouldn’t rob the word of its import. It still means something; excitement, uncertainty, risk, endurance, novelty.

All of these things are bound up in the spirit of Adventure and can be in short supply in modern 9-5 industrialised living patterns.

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The land beyond the forest Fearghal O' Nuallain

Sitting here on a plastic chair next to the Danube at the start of a journey with an uncertain outcome that spirit is strong.

Hot Water

After breakfast, I’m walking into a cold wind with the river Cerna at my side. A tributary of the Danube. It will take me north into the Carpathian Mountain range. I walk till dusk stopping at a village with muddy streets to drink powdered hot chocolate next to a drunk in an unlit concrete room that passes for a cafe. Snow is falling as I set up my tent. It falls in fat flakes. I lay down with my boots still on and listen to dogs bark and watch the light fade then fall asleep.

It is morning. The tent is weighed down with powder. My hands are wet as I pack it up. The wind numbs them. I put them down my pants to get the feeling back. Then follow the river again. The snow falls in fat feathery flakes. The river continues upstream, its flow increases and the valley narrows. I arrive at Baile Herculane where hot springs heat the river briefly. I following in the footsteps of Leigh Patrick Fermor who passed here in 1935 and, if you believe the legend, Hercules, by stripping off and bathing my limbs with other Romanians in concrete baths of steaming spring water on the river bank. Few feelings can compare to lying in a steaming bath of water as snow falls on your face. The restorative properties of the hot springs at Baile Herculane were renowned throughout the Roman Empire. The town was also popular with tourists during Austro-Hungarian times.

After Baile Herculane, the valley narrows and settlements sparser and the forest thickens. The snow continues to fall in fat flakes. My water freezes and I run out of food. I keep walking. Darkness falls.

At each building I pass, the dogs charged with protecting it, growl and challenge me as I pass. Sometimes they are in a pack. On several occasions I have to beat them off with my walking sticks. I tire. I stumble across a hunting lodge and brave the dogs, to knock on the door. There are no lights on and it appears to be closed for the winter. The dogs snarl and bare their teeth. Finally, as I am about to slink off back into the darkness, a light switches on and the door

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The land beyond the forest Fearghal O' Nuallain

opens and I negotiate a room for 5 and an extra 1 for hot water.

The lodge is closed for the winter but the caretaker is happy to open for money at any time.

Snow

I pad up and down the main road. The muffled crunch of my boots on snow breaking the clear blue and white silence. Snow makes anywhere seem like a dream with the volume turned down.

At the Jesus Icon, I meet a man with an axe and a heavy waistcoat made from a sheep’s fleece. His bare hands gripped the axe, apparently immune or inured to the incisive cold. He was chatting to a woman, who was wrapped up in so many scarves only her eyes were visible, and if it wasn’t for the sounds and the steam rising from somewhere in the scarf bundle I could have easily imagined that she had no mouth. I ask if there is a shop, using one of my five words of Romanian to strike up a conversation. Cerna Sat looks too small and quiet for a shop.

I judged Cerna Sat too quickly. It does have a shop and a bar. And, I can sleep on the terrace if I like.

At the cafe, I drink hot chocolate next to the porcelain stove with Luksa; the owner. We share nods punctuated by long periods of silence. He reminds me of my grandad; having a certain and considerate manner and a judicious geniality. It is cold outside and I want to sit next to the green tiled stove a little longer so I ask for another hot chocolate. He stands next to me as we look ahead together, and ponder in silence. Both grateful, I think, for the other’s insouciance.

Eventually, it is time to move on. Employing the universal, if infantile gesture, I ask about somewhere to sleep, pressing my two palms together for a prayer and laying my tilted head against them and closing my eyes. He motions that there is a pension 300m down the road on the left-hand side. I say an awkward thanks, put on my gloves, attempt to zip up my jacket, take off my gloves, zip up my jacket, and put on my gloves again. Lukso watches patiently as I

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The land beyond the forest Fearghal O' Nuallain

fooster.

The pension is closed for the winter, so I trudge back to the Cafe with high hopes of sleeping on the concrete terrace. I knock on the door. The lights are off, so I pull up my hood and wait in the cold wind for the barking dogs to attract the old man’s attention. I wait for half an hour. The dogs keep barking but there is still no sign of life in the house. The guy with the axe reappears, he has shed his waistcoat. It is at least -10 degrees. I’m shivering in my big down jacket. He shouts something and the lights came on. My old friend opens the door, ushers the axe man in and welcomes me with warm eyes. I motion to him that the pension was closed, and ask if I can sleep on the porch. He thinks for a second, then motions for me to sit down, and makes me another hot chocolate. All three of us; the old man, the axe man and sit in silence next to the stove and stare into space. I’m not sure what we’re looking at.

The axe man finishes his wine, he bids us goodnight, shoulders his axe and disappears into the darkness outside. My friend locks the door behind him and ushers me into the back of the house and into his living room. Images of the violent riots in Bucharest play over on the old television in the corner. We exchange a few words of exasperation over the universal pointlessness of politics.

We sit down to eat; plates of sausage, pork fat and a moist black pudding garnished with sliced onion and fresh cheese and chunks of bread expertly matched with wine from the collective winery. The vintage was light bodied, slightly sweet, tannic and fizzy. Its quality lay in the context, and in this context it is a fine wine. We clinked glasses and ate in silence. I ask about his family, he has three kids, two drive taxis in Bucharest. His wife has passed away. When or in what circumstances I can’t tell.

We sit chewing and watching events unfold on TV. After the meal, he insists I use the hot water heated by the rough iron stove, for a bath in the outhouse. When I return he showed me his photos.

Black and white and faded snaps of him and his wife; getting married, having a picnic, looking optimistic with their young family.

I hand them back to him and fat tears run down his cheeks. He

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pinches the top of his nose and the drops ran down to his knuckles and splash in little puddles on the ground. I want to say something, to give him a hug.

It’s now clear what our unspoken bond is; loneliness. His, the simple uncontested loneliness of a man who merged his heart with another when he was young and then watched his other half die too soon. Mine, the loneliness of a wanderer, the urbane heartlessness of a city dweller who loves everything but not enough, and is wed only to a furtive sense of self. His, a twilight sense of loss. Mine; the sense of having everything beyond my grasp and nothing to lose. Both of us were solitary, he in-situ, me on the move and both briefly sharing space and silence over dried pork fat and sliced onion.

I sat with this kind old soul, watching TV and drank rustic wine, and something became clear. When we travel, we don’t just pass through places, we pace through people’s lives. This is a rare gift.

And connecting with place and people is only possible when there is no economic motive, no contract to provide an artificial bond in lieu of the virtuous human connections that are the most important things of all.

There is no bus to Luksa’s house in the snow muffled village next to the lake. No local busybody to arrange a homestay for an appropriate fee, along with the buzzwords “sustainable tourism,” and “people helping themselves” and facades of stage-managed “real experiences” with “real people” for a fee. It is a simple and even experience, we both had a walk-on part in each other’s story.

The point is, it was only by doing something silly, walking alongside a river for 80 km or so until my feet blistered and my shoulders hurt that I got an opportunity to have a brief insight into someone’s life. And that, I think, is a little bit special. I left the next morning after a breakfast of bread and wine, and a parting shot of cherry brandy. Fuller for having glimpsed a small part of the whole through a thin slice of a life.

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"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

Antoine de Saint-ExupĂŠry "The Little Prince"

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Terroir: Morocco

Kieran Creevy

Photos by Claire Burge 95

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Terroir: Marrakech Kieran Creevy

The French have the brilliant word Terroir, used to describe the subtle yet important role that landscape has in shaping the flavour of foods as diverse as wine and salt, olive oils and plums, cheese and rice.

The variety of landscapes is what attracts us as adventurers to explore, to see what's behind the next fold in the hill, or to ride the unknown offshore break, to test our physical limits - linking 3 Alpine North face routes in one day, or 3 Himalayan giants and to share those experiences with our partners, friends and wider audiences.

For me, as both an international mountain leader and homeschooled chef, those two elements of the landscape are inextricably linked.

We remember our journeys as a mish-mash of sensory information, the sparkle of dawn light reflecting of fresh snow, storm clouds rolling in, the shouts from market hawkers, the thump and roar as your stove catches, the smell of recently tanned leather, goat meat grilling over charcoal, the back of the throat tickle from 20 varieties of powdered spice. The flood of saliva with your first bite of spiced and smoked meat after two weeks of freeze dried meals.

Morocco

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Round wooden spoons sit poised on the rim of deep bowls. The smell of Harira soup and warm Khobz redolent in this enclosed space. In open air spaces and cafes across cities and villages, this tableau is replicated, as the faithful wait for Iftar - the break of fast.

The final murmured prayers of the Maghrib Salat seem to hang for a few seconds in the air, then like swimmers clearing their blocks, spoons dive into a hearty soup, bread is torn and soaked in juices rich with spice, then gobbled swiftly. From my seat I can see the waiter, perched on the serving counter, almost hoovering his soup.

Finally, replete, he leans back on his chair, pauses with contentment and downs a glass of water. Turning to face the clientele, there’s a renewed spark in his eyes. We try to catch his gaze, but there are too 71

Terroir: Marrakech Kieran Creevy

many locals clamouring for more food. As foreigners, we’re well down the line of clients to be served, but no matter. We’ve learned that time here can be infinitely flexible and need to relax

Then, it’s our turn, no time for hesitation now. Harira of course, followed by Kefta and Chicken tajines with plenty of bread and pots of the ubiquitous Atay B’nanna - Mint tea. Dipping into the soup, the flavours come in waves. Sharp hits of lemon, salt and turmeric at first, then the heat of ginger and pepper, finally the stomach filling thickness of chickpeas, tomatoes and lentils. Then our tajines arrive, carrying with them wisps of cumin, harissa, lemon and olives, hidden under pyramid like earthenware covers. There’s no need to stand on ceremony here, no knife and fork to bother with, just bread and our right hands to scoop up the thick stew.

It’s after 10 by the time we leave the cafe, but it looks like the place is just coming alive. Packed to the rafters, there’s enough tea being swilled, and enough gossip doing the rounds, to make a coven of Irish mothers green with envy. What seems like a few short hours later, we’re woken by the drone of a nearby loudspeaker system crackling to life. Soon the city will ring with dawn calls to prayer.

It’s time for us to get on the road.

As the sky shades from black to pale blue, we’re parked on a gravel verge, dizzy and a little lightheaded from hyperventilating. We suck in great whooping gasps of air. Trying to calm breathing and racing hearts. I collapse on the steering wheel, glad that we pulled over.

Through a haze of tears, I glance across to the passenger seat. Keith too is equally affected, lying almost prone on the dash. The car rings with snorts, hiccoughs, giggles and outright belly laughs. The kind of laughter that comes along all too rarely in adulthood. The one that makes your stomach and facial muscles hurt, but leaves you with this enormous rush of endorphins.

I guess it’s just a side-effect of all the adrenaline coursing through our systems. The amped up ‘flight or fight response’ coming from being witness to dozens of near misses, mere feet from the hood of our car. First impressions of surprise give way to slight tendrils of fear. Fear is soon replaced with moments of hilarity, finally leading

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Terroir: Marrakech Kieran Creevy

to hysterical laughter, making the car jerk and judder on the narrow road. For the past few hours, we’ve had ringside seats to a game ripe with unwritten rules. The game seemed to be called, “who can overtake the most vehicles on a twisty 2 lane road with fast approaching traffic?”

The game seems to accept innumerable players - Honda 50’s, overladen trucks, buses, grand taxis and cars new and old, some years past their last service date, all are welcome. Cyclists appear and disappear, wraith-like in the periphery of our vision. Unlit they push or pedal laden bikes uphill on the rutted, gravel strewn road verges, playing chicken with far bigger opponents. Faith it’s said can move mountains. After witnessing 2 straight hours of this chaos, visible on minor roads and motorways across many continents, we are coming round to the opinion that faith in a higher power can at the very least move cars the few feet needed to squeeze into gaps - in the nick of time to avert disaster. Maybe, it’s simply a case of when it’s not your time, it’s not your time.

Wheels skittering slightly on the gravel verge, we weave back into the stream of traffic. Peeling off the main road south, we turn left, heading deeper into the mountains and back in time as the surface takes a turn for the worse. These potholes could give rural Ireland ‘bohareens’ a run for their money. In the back, we hear clanks and jangles from pack and duffels crammed with trekking and mountaineering equipment. Dawn is lighting the summits and slopes of the High Atlas as we arrive at the road head, and immediately head out in search of strong coffee.

Despite our early arrival, we look positively sybaritic in comparison to the village locals, most of whom are already hard at work. Just up the trail, a nail-studded wooden door beckons with gas light and cooking smells emanating. Cautious about intruding, I poke a head round the door. Mixing Arabic and French I ask if they’re open.

“Come, come, what do you want?”

Two plates of beghrir pancakes arrive, positively dripping with melted butter and a pot of brilliantly pink rose petal jam. Then the

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scent of coffee and spices. Noses twitch over the pot, pouring into the filigreed glasses we take a quick slug for second opinions. The green and earthy tones of cardamom and cinnamon elevate this coffee beyond the mundane to something special that works in counterpoint with the sugar rush of fresh jam and pancakes. This combination, the soft yet dusty texture of beghrir, the perfumed smell and taste of fresh rose petal jam speaks to me of dusty trails between mountain villages in the Atlas. Fruits drying, laid out flat on roofs facing the sun.

Moving back outside, the mountains seem to have receded, drawn away in the washed-out brightness. We park the car on a dirt strip beside the guesthouse, and get to loading packs for the days ahead.

Before we’ve thought of shouldering our loads there are numerous offers of guides, porters and mules. Just like chairlifts in the Alps and Rockies, sometimes it makes sense to keep your energy reserves for higher up the mountain. Shortly we're on the trail, packs loaded on a mule, encouraged upwards by his owner. Pausing at the Mouflons refuge, we bid M’a’salama to the muleteer and his charge, and drop in to book beds for tonight and a week hence.

Dumping our loads, we head slowly up towards Tizi n’Ouanoums, conscious that we’re already over 3,000m high. Rocks and boulders hold onto and reflect heat. Breathing feels like we’re close to an oven, the air hot and dry. Packing waterproof pants now seems like folly. Attitudes and long held opinions are being questioned. We mentally repack our bags for the coming trip.

Turning towards our home for the night we stand slack jawed as a kid, no more than 10 years old, dances down the scree towards us and past. Wearing jeans and old dress shoes, he’s as agile on this terrain as any professional ultra-runner in full regalia. By comparison we look lumpen and bovine.

Inside, the refuge is thick with stories in a medley of languages.

Guidebooks, maps and topos swamp table tops, pens and magic markers make notations, plans get adjusted on the fly.

Sunset. The local team head off for prayers. At this altitude in dry

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air temperatures fall swiftly. Shortly after dinner there’s a slow but inexorable drift of bodies towards dormitories and private rooms.

Sleeping in a busy refuge takes some skills, a willingness to persevere in the face of snores, flickering head-torches, grumbles and other night-time noises. And crucially, a set of ear plugs.

Nevertheless, we sleep well and wake in the wee hours, gearing up in the pre-dawn darkness, crisp breaths steaming. This is what I love about alpine starts, not the “10 minutes more”, “I must be nuts getting up at this hour” times. When we head out of the door of a refuge, stars gleam brighter in the firmament because we’re at altitude and away from bright city lights, the slight dusting of snow on high above ridges draw sharp outlines of where we want to be this morning. The lines of perception and possibility seem endless.

Here, high in the Atlas Mountains we start upwards, lifted by soft calls from mountain people prostrate on rugs, calling towards the morning light.

Warqa and Rose Petal Jam Pastries

Ingredients: Warqa: Makes 8 large sheets 200 g strong plain flour 2 tbsp fine semolina flour 200ml water 1 tsp argan oil (readily available in Morocco, can be substituted with good olive oil) 1 tsp lemon juice ½ tsp salt 1 tbsp vegetable oil for brushing

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Terroir: Marrakech Kieran Creevy

Rose Petal Jam: makes 2 x 350g jars 200g rose petals - grow them yourself, make 100% sure they’re grown organically or buy food grade rose petals online. N.B Never use roses that have been sprayed with pesticide.

Juice of 1 lemon 600ml water 600g sugar

Method: 1 week to 1 day in advance: Gently rinse and pat dry the rose petals.

Place them in a large bowl with a 1/4 of the sugar and all the lemon juice.

Gently mix the rose petals with sugar and juice until the petals are a sort of paste.

The petals should remain whole, not torn, but they will release colour, perfume and wilt slightly.

Add the remaining sugar to the water and heat in a large saucepan until the sugar dissolves.

Add the rose petal paste and bring to the boil.

Boil for approximately 30 minutes until the syrup thickens, stirring occasionally.

As this jam is made from flower petals it will look more like a syrup than a chunky jam.

While still hot, place the jam in clean, sterilised Kilner or Mason jars and allow to cool.

1 day in advance: Sift the two flours and salt together in a large bowl.

Add the flour mix to a food processor, turn onto a low setting and add the lemon juice and 100ml of water.

Once the dough is smooth, add the argan oil and mix for 30 seconds.

Slowly pour in the rest of the water in and blend until it forms a liquid batter.

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Terroir: Marrakech Kieran Creevy

Store in a Nalgene bottle or Tupperware container overnight in the fridge.

On the day: On a campfire or at home, heat a large pan of water to boiling and place a well-seasoned cast iron skillet, or a flat non-stick pan on top.

Grease the pan with a tiny amount of vegetable oil using some kitchen paper Once the pan is hot - using a soft pastry brush, quickly paint the batter thinly onto the pan, in circles starting from the outside.

Apply another coat of batter to any areas that seem thin.

Allow the Warka to cook for about 2-3 minutes until it starts to peel at the edges.

Peel the Warka from the pan using a thin flexible spatula or your fingers (taking care) and brush the cooked side lightly with vegetable oil.

Dab with a piece of kitchen towel to remove excess oil.

Stack in layers separated by greaseproof paper.

To serve: Spread a thin layer of rose petal jam onto a sheet of Warka while it’s still warm and pliable Roll into a cylinder.

Cut into sections and layer onto newspaper or greaseproof paper.

Scatter fresh rose petals for effect.

As the jam is quite sweet, this breakfast/snack/dessert works really well with some strong, bitter Moroccan cardamom coffee. Unless of course you love the sweetness, which means mint tea works well too.

Fresh Warka is available in most large towns/cities in Morocco.

Alternatively, serve the jam with Beghrir, the lovely spongy Moroccan breakfast pancakes, or some freshly baked Khobz.

79

Charles Howard-Bury

Ruth Illingworth 109

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In 1921, the first reconnaissance of Mount Everest was made by a team of mountaineers and surveyors. The leader of the reconnaissance mission was an Anglo-Irish Army officer from the Midlands of Ireland called Charles Howard-Bury. He was one of the most remarkable figures in the history of early 20th-century exploration. During his long and varied careers as a soldier, intelligence officer, politician, landowner and charity worker, he worked and lived on three continents, spoke 27 languages and travelled through areas which had yet to be mapped or surveyed.

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Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury was born in London on August 15th, 1883. His father, Captain Kenneth Howard, was a British Army officer serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. Captain Howard had travelled extensively in India, Canada, Australia and Ireland. In 1881, he had married Lady Emily Bury, daughter of the third Earl of Charleville. Captain Howard-who added his wife's surname to his own on marriage, was himself of aristocratic lineage.

He was a grandson of the 16th Duke of Suffolk and was also descended from Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, and a major figure at the Tudor Court of King Henry VIII. Through his mother, Charles Howard-Bury was connected to the Scottish aristocratic family, the Campbells, Dukes of Argyll.

Charles Howard-Bury was only an infant when his father died.

Captain Howard left his baby son a moving letter: “My darling boy, I am afraid there is no chance of my being permitted to live long enough for you even to remember me, and this I need not tell you is a very great grief to me, as I had been so looking forward to having you as my companion in my walks and telling you all about the birds and plants, flowers and fishes like my father did when I was a little boy, and I want you to grow up a manly boy, fond of all these things as well as of your books.�

After the death of his father, Charles Howard-Bury's cousin, James Fitzmaurice, Lord Lansdowne became his guardian. Lansdowne was one of the most important political figures of the age, serving as 81

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Viceroy of India, Governor-General of Canada, Secretary of State for War, Foreign Secretary and Opposition Leader in the House of Lords during a long and distinguished career. He and Howard-Bury were very close, with Lansdowne referring to him affectionately as “Charlie.”

Howard-Bury grew up in the fine gothic castle at Charleville in Tullamore, County Offaly in the Irish Midlands which was his mother’s family home and which he would later inherit. He was at first home schooled by a German governess before being sent in 1897 to that training ground for so many of the British ruling class, Eton College. At Eton, he was good at sports such as rowing and football and showed a talent for languages - winning the French Prize.

Holidays were spent visiting relations including Lansdowne at Dereen, Co Kerry, his grandmother, Lady Louise Howard, at Hazelby, Berkshire, or his colourful and flamboyant cousin, Charles Brinsley Marlay at Belvedere House near Mullingar in Co Westmeath, not far from Charleville. Marlay, whose major collection of Italian art can now be seen in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University, was a brother in law of the Duke of Rutland and a cousin of the great 18th century Irish statesman, Henry Grattan In his teens, Howard-Bury also spent holidays at a chalet in the Dolomites owned by his mother. He learned to love climbing and hill walking and spectacular mountain scenery as well as travelling extensively across the Continent.

INDIA 1906-1912 While he was at Eton, Howard-Bury was a member of the Officer Training Corps and, on finishing school, he went to Sandhurst Military Academy. When he graduated in 1904, he joined the King’s Royal Rifles and was soon posted to India-then the glittering jewel in the Crown of the British Empire. His military career in India gave him plenty of opportunities to indulge his passion for travelling, exploration and hunting. Within a short time of his arrival, he got himself into trouble with the authorities when he entered Tibet without permission.

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Britain was engaged in delicate negotiations with the Tibetan Government at the time and the country was off limits to British visitors. Howard-Bury was rebuked by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, although his career did not suffer. The following year with the support of Lord Lansdowne he got permits from the Russian authorities allowing him to enter the region of the Pamirs and Turkestan, (now Tajikistan and Uzbekistan). This journey would prepare him for his letter exploration of the Tian Shan Mountains and of the Himalaya.

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His superiors noted his gift for languages and his stamina and he was marked down as “a splendid candidate for diplomatic or intelligence work, or for any missive of secret service requiring a clever brain and active body.” One may assume that Howard-Bury became an intelligence officer at around the time, this report was written in 1908 when he was also promoted.

Howard-Bury kept diaries of his time in India between 1906 and 1912, which have been edited by Marian Keaney, former County Librarian of Westmeath. The diaries offer an entertaining and fascinating picture of India and other parts of Asia in the early years of the 20th century. Howard-Bury travelled widely throughout the sub-continent and further afield.

He learned many of the numerous local languages and visited the holy places of India, Burma, China, Sri Lanka and Indo-China.

Although a devout Anglican all his life, he showed an unusual (for his time) open-minded interest in and respect for the religious beliefs he encountered. As Marian Keaney noted; “he loved to meet the lamas, high priests and guardians of these shrines and sacred waters.”

Howard-Bury was an excellent photographer and he took many beautiful pictures of Buddhist and Hindu temples in places such as Mandalay, Kandy, Beijing and Angkor Wat. On one occasion he actually joined Hindu pilgrims on a pilgrimage along the river Ganges, anointing himself with scented oils and listening to the teachings of scholars of the Hindi Sanskrit scriptures at Badrinath.

In one diary entry he described a group of pilgrims he came across 83

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along the road.

“The pen of a Zola is wanted to describe the varieties of pilgrims that are ever passing by the halt and the maimed, old men and women, young men and maidens, some taking life very seriously, others as on a holiday picnic, all passed by, from every part of India, speaking different tongues, they all travel the same path together.”

He became a local hero when, in the holy city of Amarkantak, he shot and killed a man-eating tiger that had carried off twenty-one holy men. Like most men of his class and occupation at that time, he enjoyed shooting and hunting and he recorded in his diaries many hunting trips. He was, as Geoffrey Moorhouse put it, “a member of that strange breed who can follow an animal for hours, while admiring its grace and being fascinated by its behaviour, as a preliminary to shooting it dead, very often to decorate a wall. Yet no-one will more surely be able to distinguish phlox from aquilegia when he finds them growing in a mountain pasture, more readily measure the dimensions of a fallen tree, more unerringly come up with a botanical or zoological name in Latin when writing up his journal.”

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Howard-Bury’s journals are filled with descriptions of flowers, plants and trees. He had a life-long passion for flowers and was an enthusiastic and accomplished naturalist. Everywhere he went on his Asian travels, including Kashmir and the Karakorum deserts, he noted the flora and fauna in great and vivid detail along with descriptions of the cultures of the peoples amongst whom he was travelling.

THE MOUNTAINS OF HEAVEN: MAY-NOVEMBER 1913.

In 1912, Howard-Bury inherited Belvedere House in County Westmeath from his cousin, Charles Brinsley-Marley. He was now a rather wealthy young man and was able to retire from the Army, although he remained on the reserve list. He now decided to travel to an area rarely visited by Europeans-the Tian Shan mountain range on the borders of China and what was then known as Russian Turkestan-now Kyrgyzstan. The help of his influential cousin, Lord 84

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Lansdowne secured him all the necessary permits and he set out from London in May 1913.

The first stage of the journey took him from Warsaw (then part of Russia) across European Russia and Siberia, travelling by train, horse-drawn carriage and boat. As always he took careful note of the flora and fauna of the places through which he journeyed and took a keen interest in the customs and culture of the local peoples.

In Moscow, he watched pilgrims visiting an Orthodox Christian shrine and was moved by their deep faith. He admired the Kremlin and the various churches with “their picturesque jumble of architecture, their gilded domes and their multitudinous colours.”

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He was not so impressed by Russian bureaucracy, noting that “Everyone in Russia is a Government official, from the meanest clerk to the office boy, and all of them take precedence over the ordinary traveller.”

Accompanied by his Sri Lankan valet, John Pereira, who acted as his cook, interpreter and “general factotum” and an immense quantity of luggage, Howard-Bury travelled across the Urals by train as far as Omsk in Siberia and then by boat up the River Irtysh to Semipalatinsk, a journey of 600 miles which took five days. At stops along the way he photographed and visited the nomadic Kirghiz and Kazak people of the region and admired their comfortable and warm yurts. At Semipalatinsk (From where the Sputnik spacecraft would be launched in 1957), Howard-Bury transferred from boat to a horse-drawn cart called a tarantass. This vehicle brought him on the next stage of his journey as far as the Chinese border. Along the way he kept a record of the numerous species of plants and flowers he saw, as well as noting the Russian peasants who were, at that time, settling in large numbers across Siberia and Russian Central Asia.

Now he had his first glimpse of his destination. “The road now led through grassy meadows up to a pass nearly 6,000 feet in height from the top of which we had a magnificent view over the Ili valley. This broad valley, hot and dusty looking, lay at our feet and far beyond on the horizon towered up the giant peaks of the Tian Shan. The air 85

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here is of a marvellous clearness, just as it is in Tibet and allowed us the first glimpse of the promised land, though there were yet many weary miles to be traversed first.”

Howard-Bury crossed into China at the town of Kuldja, where he spent a week. While there he bought a three-week old bear which he called “Agu”- the Kazak word for a bear. Agu accompanied Howard-Bury during the whole trip through the Tian Shan and back across Eurasia. The bear would be installed by his owner at Belvedere House, where he resided in the arboretum for a time. In later years, Howard-Bury used to keep fit by holding friendly wrestling matches with this, by now, seven-foot pet! Agu would eventually go to a zoo to live out the rest of its days after HowardBury died.

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In his first diary entry concerning Agu, Howard-Bury recorded that “The first thing he did was to give me a bad bite and he turns out to be a regular little savage. He ran off too with my lunch, which I had put down for one second and he was a perfect little demon when I tried to get it back. He every now and then gives the pony a bite on the back which makes things lively. We made quite an imposing spectacle riding down the streets of Kuldja and there was much amusement over the bear.”

Accompanied by ten ponies carrying the luggage and the bear, Howard-Bury and John Pereira and the locally hired labourers, headed along the Ili valley and up through a mountain range into the Tekes Valley. They were now 6,000 feet up and Howard-Bury enjoyed the fresh mountain air. As always, he noted the variety of the surrounding flowers, trees and plants. He also continued to note the local inhabitants and their customs and culture; Kirghiz and Kazak nomads, Uzbeks and even a settlement of Nestorian Christians - descended from missionary work carried out a thousand years earlier by the Assyrian Church of the East.

From the Tekes Valley Howard-Bury forded the Big Kursai river and “climbed up steadily through glorious forests to the grassy meadows at the edge of the tree line which is here a little over 10,000 feet.” He admired the “superb views of distant snowy chains, 86

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stretching from far beyond Kuldja, past the headwaters of the Kash river and on in a great semicircle towards Manass.” The next stage brought him down into the Kurdai valley and then endured a tough climb through the snowfalls of the Kurdai pass into the Jirgalan valley, travelling as high as 13,000 feet at this stage. Another pass the Sarytin, at 12,600 feet, brought him down into the great plateau known as the Yalduz Plain. It was now July and Howard-Bury and his party now moved down the Kok-Su valley to Sary Tur and on to Kinsu. He then climbed up the Agias valley with its 20,000 feet high peaks. In front of him “were the mighty peaks of the Chalyk Tau, the gleaming ice of whose glaciers showed up against the pure white of the snow and the dark rocky precipices.” Few Europeans had ever seen these views before Howard-Bury.

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Mid-August saw him in the Eastern Mustamas valley. To the south he had “a magnificant view of a range of snowy peaks of great height for fully 100 miles.” He moved on through the Kair Bulak and Alpes Ochak valleys. In September he reached the beautiful Akbulak valley and took photographs of what he described in his diary as “the most beautiful lake that I have ever seen; its colour was of the blue of the true old Persian turquoise and surrounding it was a circle of magnificent peaks. Immense cliffs thousands of feet high came steep down into its blue waters. Hanging glaciers in places almost overhung the lake.” The lake was 13,000 feet up and not actually marked on any map of the day. Climbing up a spur Howard-Bury was able to see the watershed of the central Tian Shan Mountains “consisting of a series of snow and rocky peaks of the most fantastic shapes; glaciers and cliffs of ice showing everywhere on their slopes.” Not for the last timer in his career, Howard-Bury had walked off the map of the known world.

Howard-Bury spent the next few weeks traversing the Alpes Ochak and Koksu valleys. He had a difficult and dangerous journey across the snow-bound Karasir pass in a blizzard at a height of 13,600 feet.

As he noted, “camp at 13,000 feet in deep snow in October is no joke.” He made it safely down to the Kustai plateau and back eventually to Kuldja. He stayed for a time with a Belgian missionary, Father Raemdonck and then began his return journey across the Russian Empire leaving behind a Chinese region which 87

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was, as he noted, in a very turbulent and disturbed condition following the Revolution of 1911-12 which had ended the monarchy and made China a republic. While the purpose of Howard-Bury’s trip to the Tian Shan region was for leisure, it is quite likely that he may have reported back on the volatile political situation in that sensitive region to the British political and military authorities.

Howard-Bury’s return trip brought him across the steppes of Central Asia. He travelled through Samarkand and Tashkent, admiring the historic buildings such as the Registan in Samarkand and the tomb of Tamerlane. He also visited the historic cities of Merv and Bokhara, buying carpets and other presents in the bazaars. He particularly liked the Turcomans, describing them as being “honest and truthful and their principles are very high.” In these last years of the Romanov Empire, he also noted the Russian colonists in the area, including Cossacks on horseback.

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By early December he had crossed the Caspian Sea and was in Baku, where he observed the oil industry. He also visited the Georgian capital, Tbilisi and travelled through Georgia, meeting German settlers and travelling through “broad and fertile valleys,” observing what he described as “the great snowy chain of the Caucasus.” A rough crossing of the Black Sea brought him to Constantinople and from there he headed back to England. A tramp steamer brought the bear, Agu home. The bear was now growing and was the object of much interest during the journey. Writing about his journey, Howard-Bury stated; “The most abiding joy of travel will always lie in the retrospect. The memories of some days, of some scenes where the world appears altogether too beautiful for us, where we can only gaze in awe and rapture at some marvellous creation of the Almighty, such treasures as these are truly a possession which we can treasure as our own and which will remain always to us as a source of inexhaustible pleasure and delight when we look back upon the days of our travelling.”

WORLD WAR ONE: 1914-18 On his return to the United Kingdom, Howard-Bury began to 88

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prepare the diaries of the Tian Shan expedition for publication. Fate would, however ensure that the diaries would not be published until 1990 when they finally appeared in a volume edited by Marian Keaney, entitled “Mountains of Heaven”. The reason why the account of his travels did not appear in his lifetime was due to the outbreak of the First World War. The war also curtailed HowardBury's political ambitions. In the spring of 1914, with a General Election in the offing, Howard-Bury was seeking a nomination to run for parliament in the Conservative interest. Lord Lansdowne, at that time Conservative Leader in the House of Lords was seeking to give him an introduction to Edward Carson, the then Leader of the Irish Unionists. But the outbreak of war in August 1914 would put Howard Bury’s political career on hold for a decade.

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He returned to his old regiment, the King's Royal Rifles, in which he would rise to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. From 1915 to 1918, Howard-Bury would witness the very worst horrors of the war on the Western Front. He saw the first use of flamethrowers and survived poison gas attacks. He led his men at Arras, Loos, the Somme, Passchendaele and Ypres. His diaries offer a stark account of the decimation of his battalion, of which there were only about fifty survivors. He saw hundreds of his men killed and wounded in an unnecessary and suicidal attack on a heavily fortified German position from which the Germans withdrew of their own accord a few days later. On his thirty-third birthday, he had the horrific experience of leading a party of his men through No Man’s Land, under enemy fire to dig a communication trench, during which the men uncovered the rotting and dismembered corpses of their own comrades and of German soldiers killed a few days earlier. His diary entries refer tersely, time and again, to “horrible sights and smells.”

He was mentioned in Dispatches several times and awarded the D.S.O. (Distinguished Service Order) for bravery.

By the end of 1917, he was in a state of despair at the war and bitter about the staff officers and politicians safe behind the lines who were, as he saw it, sending his men to futile death and prolonging the conflict. His survival was a statistical miracle and was probably only due to the fact that on the first day of the great German Offensive of March 1918 along the Western Front he was taken 89

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prisoner. The Germans respected his military rank and aristocratic background and he was reasonably well treated. Sent to a P.O.W camp in Germany, where he pretended not to be able to speak German while paying close attention to all that his interrogators were saying, he tried to escape but was recaptured after eight days on the move across Germany. Returned to prison he enjoyed listening to a clergyman preaching “gloomy descriptions of life in Germany.”

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After the war, Howard-Bury was freed and returned to Britain. He spent time at Belvedere House in Ireland sorting out estate affairs and serving as a Deputy Lieutenant for Westmeath. In January 1921 he was appointed High Sheriff of Kings County (now Offaly). He would be the last holder of that office. He cannot have had much time to attend to his duties in connection with this post as for most of 1921, he would be exploring the approaches to Mount Everest.

THE EVEREST RECONNAISSANCE: 1920-21 With the North and South Poles reached in the early years of the 20th century, Mount Everest remained the one great unexplored challenge for explorers. No European had been nearer than forty miles of the world’s highest mountain. Plans were made to mount an expedition but the World War put everything on hold. In 1919, however, the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club joined forces to plan a reconnaissance of the mountain to be followed by an attempt to reach the summit. The first challenge to be faced was a political one. Everest was located along the border of two countries off limits to Europeans: Nepal and Tibet. It was decided to try and secure permission from the Tibetan authorities for the proposed expedition to approach Everest from the north through Tibet. The person chosen by the RGS and the Alpine Club to visit Tibet and get the required permission was Charles HowardBury.

Howard-Bury was chosen because he had knowledge of the region, good linguistic and organisational and diplomatic skills and was prepared to pay his own expenses. He was able to convince Sir Francis Younghusband, President of the RGS of his suitability,

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pointing out to him that he had been in Tibet before and was planning to go to India anyway. There was a meeting between a delegation from the RGS and Alpine Club and the Secretary of State for India and Howard-Bury was asked to explain their wishes to the British authorities in India and obtain the permission of the Tibetan leaders to allow the expedition entry to Tibet.

Howard-Bury spent six months in India and Tibet in 1920 negotiating with the Viceroy (Lord Chelmsford), the Governor of the province of Bengal (Lord Ronaldshay), the Commander in Chief (Lord Rawlinson) and, most importantly, the British Political Officer in the autonomous state of Sikkim, (Sir Charles Bell.)

Sikkim was important because it bordered Tibet and Bell knew more about the culture and politics of Tibet than any other British person of the time. Howard-Bury kept a diary of his time in Sikkim and Tibet between August and October of 1920. This diary was first published in 1991 as part of a new edition of “Everest Reconnaisance”, edited by Howard-Bury’s biographer Marian Keaney. As Ms Keaney noted, the diary “offers an interesting prologue to the expedition the following year.” As with all his writings, the diary is filled with vivid descriptions of the landscape, the flora and fauna and the people he encountered.

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On September 26th, for example, his diary entry reads: “We kept high up, about 18,000 feet all day crossing the northern spurs of Chomiomo and we had the most wonderful and magnificent views to the north over Tibet. The view extended for hundreds of miles over broad valleys, across range upon range of mountains, all touched with the most fascinating changes of light and shade. In the evening far away the peak of Mount Everest stood up against the setting sun. There was a most lovely sunset of all colours and the wonderful clearness of the atmosphere seems to bring out all the colours more fully.”

Howard-Bury was successful in his negotiations and secured the necessary political support for the expedition with the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama giving his sanction. In January 1921, the RGS was informed that the expedition could proceed. Howard-Bury 91

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received a letter from Younghusband: “Dear Colonel Howard-Bury, I have been desired by my Council to convey to you an expression of their high appreciation of the valuable services you rendered to the Society in securing through the Government of India the consent of the Tibetan Government for an expedition to proceed through Tibet for the exploration and ascent of Mount Everest.

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The Council and I are confident that it was due to your tact and address that the negotiations on our behalf achieved their object and desire to thank you for having represented us so successfully.�

The plan now was for a two-stage expedition. The first stage would be the reconnaissance. This would take place in 1921 and would be followed in 1922 by an attempt at the summit using whichever route the reconnaissance had pinpointed as being the best way to the top.

General Charles G. Bruce, a military man with extensive mountaineering experience and a great knowledge of the Himalayas was the first choice of Younghusband to lead the Reconnaissance.

Bruce was not, however, available for the 1921 expedition.

Younghusband, therefore, asked Howard-Bury to be the Leader and he accepted. His organisational and linguistic skills were a major factor in his being offered the job. The Reconnaissance would involve surveyors and climbing experts. The surveyors were Major H.T. Morshead and Major O.E. Wheeler and Dr A.M. Heron of the Survey of India. The Alpine Club appointed Harold Raeburn to take charge of the actual reconnaissance. Two experienced young climbers, Guy Bullock and George Leigh Mallory were also appointed. Mallory would later die on Everest in 1924, along with another young climber, Sandy Irvine. Because the 1921 expedition would be climbing higher than any human being had climbed before two medical men were appointed to measure the effect of altitude on climbers. These doctors were A.M. Kellas and A.F.R. Wollaston.

The Expedition departed from the Indian city of Darjeeling on May 19th, 1921. The team members had little of the equipment and 92

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clothing now used by mountaineering teams. Howard-Bury and his colleagues wore tweeds and greatcoats, woolly scarves and cardigans to combat the cold. Photos show Howard-Bury in Donegal tweed with his “Kashmir puttees neatly wound.” George Bernard Shaw would memorably describe the team as looking, “like a picnic in Connemara surprised by a snowstorm.”

On May 27th, Howard-Bury sent a telegram to Francis Younghusband to announce the arrival of the Expedition in Tibet, a telegram which actually reached London in time to be read out at the RGS Anniversary dinner. The party then moved through the Chumbi Valley onto the Tibetan Plateau. Along the way, they stayed at Tibetan monasteries and villages. As always, HowardBury was open to and interested in the spiritual beliefs of the peoples he encountered. At the Galinka monastery, he was pleased when he and his colleagues were allowed to turn a prayer wheel, “I hope the many million prayers sent up may benefit us,” he wrote.

Howard-Bury took many photos of the Tibetan monks and monasteries which remain as a valuable record of a now almost lost culture.

One of the most treasured presents he could give to local people was a photo of the revered Abbot of Shekar Cho-te. This gentleman had lived at Shekar, one of the most important sacred sites in Tibet, for sixty-six years. Howard-Bury photographed him in his “Robes of beautiful golden brocades.” Across Tibet, the Abbot was looked upon as a saint and worshipped. Howard-Bury was pleased to see the copies of the photo he took of the revered holy man being put in shrines and incense burned in front of them.

By the time the expedition party reached Sheker in mid-June, they had already suffered one major blow with the sudden death of Dr Kellas on June 5th. His death from dysentery and heart failure deprived the expedition of the man with the greatest experience of climbing at high altitude. He was buried at Khampa Dzong within sight of Everest - the mountain which he had photographed many times. It was, as Howard-Bury noted: “a fitting resting-place for a great mountaineer.”

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When the party left Khampa Dzong and the grave of Kellas they travelled towards Tingri through countryside which was unknown to European surveyors and cartographers. As George Mallory would memorably inform his wife in a letter: “We are about to walk off the map.” As they travelled along, the expedition members had “clear and distinct views of Mount Everest.”

The journey brought them through Tinki to Chushar Nango. At the Tinki Pass Howard-Bury climbed a hill and could see “far away to the East to Chomolhari.” To the South-West “was a range of sharp granite peaks rising up to 22,000 feet.” While staying overnight in the village of Rongkong, Howard-Bury noted “a very beautiful and lofty peak to the South. The villagers called it Chomo-Uri (The Goddess of the Turquoise Peak).” After much discussion, HowardBury wrote, “we decided that this could be no other than Mount Everest.” The name they had heard was a local name for what in Tibetan was known as Chomolungma (Goddess Mother of the Country).

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The following Daykin the Bhong-chu valley, Howard-Bury separated himself from the main party and explored a peak at the North end of the valley. A climb of 3,000 feet brought him a wonderful view. “The view extended to the East from beyond Chomolhari to Gosainthan, a distance of some 250 miles. In the centre Mount Everest stood up all by itself, a wonderful peak towering above its neighbours and entirely without a rival.”

On June 19th, a month after leaving Darjeeling, the expedition reached Tingri. This was to be their first base for reconnoitring the Northern and North-western approaches to Everest. Howard-Bury, who was in charge of logistics for the expedition, noted that Tingri made a good base because “Stores, supplies and transport were always available here as it was the headquarters of the district.”

From a hill outside the town, Everest could be clearly seen, and also Cho-Oyo, the 26,800 ft. peak just to the west of Everest. On June 24th, Mallory and Bullock left to reconnoitre the North and North western slopes of Everest, although Howard-Bury considered that “from this side it looks too steep to be climbed.” Howard-Bury was 94

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busy helping to develop photos along with the surveyor, Wheeler.

He was ill for a few days after being accidently gassed by sulphur fumes from the acid hypo (sodium thiosulfate), used in the development process, but he soon recovered. Another member of the expedition, Raeburn, had to return to Gangkok suffering from dysentery.

Illness weakened the expedition as Howard-Bury noted with frustration. They were short of medical men and experienced climbers now. However the remaining members carried on with their work - often now moving off to do various different tasks such as surveying, climbing and developing the pictures. Howard-Bury was kept busy organising food supplies and was also sending back regular written reports to The Times in London. He continued to take a close interest in the plants, trees, flowers and animals of the area. Many new species of plant and flower were discovered and brought back to Kew Gardens. A species of white Primula was named after him, Primula buryana. He brought copies of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer with him to Tibet and some dried Everest flowers remain pressed in the pages.

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On June 26 Howard-bury headed south from Tingri. He climbed a hill 17,700 feet high which gave him a wonderful view of Everest and other mountains in the Himalaya range. Looking north he could see up to the watershed of the sacred Brahmaputra River.

Amidst all this spectacular scenery he was also delighted to see “my old friend the dwarf blue poppy and many pretty white, blue and yellow saxifrages that grew on the rocks.” Along with Heron and Wheeler, Howard-Bury then set out to climb the Khombu Pass which led to the Khumbu Valley in Nepal. They approached the pass by way of the Kyetrak Glacier, a fiercely challenging journey at some 19,000 feet, climbing up on mounds to take photos of the glacier. At times Howard-Bury was floundering up to his knees in soft snow and water while shouldering a big camera. The top of the pass offered fine views though somewhat obscured by cloud.

By July 2nd, Howard-Bury was encamped at a village called Zambu with a clear view towards Everest. As Howard-Bury observed: “From this side its precipices looked most formidable and there was 95

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also a magnificent ridge which we had not seen before.” After a couple of days in the Rongbuk valley, Howard-Bury and Heron met up with Mallory and Bullock again, who were training their Tibetan porters in snow and ice work. By now they were little more than six miles from Everest and they could clearly see its immense cliffs 10,000 feet high. On July 5th, Howard-Bury and Heron headed down the Rongbuk Valley in order to reach the Kharta Valley which Howard-Bury believed would be the best site for a base camp from which to explore the approaches to Everest from the East side.

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Having established the camp at Kharta, Howard-Bury and his team continued their reconnaissance work. August 6th saw HowardBury in a place called Tangshan. He spent the whole afternoon gazing at “the immense cliffs of Chomolonzo” and Mount Everest right across the Kama Valley from where he was camped. On August 20th, following further reconnaissance, Mallory and Bullock returned from exploring the Upper Kharta Valley to report that they had found a possible route up Everest from this valley.

Howard-Bury continued exploring many more of the valleys and passes, climbing to heights of 15,000 feet in places and, at one place, a pass called Popti La, he was able to look into Nepal.

September saw Mallory and Bullock make their attempt to get as close as they could to the summit of Everest - becoming the first Europeans to set foot on the mountain and moving up to some 26,000 feet on the ridge they called the North Col, before bad weather and altitude sickness and snow blindness forced a retreat.

On September 5th, Howard-Bury, along with Wollaston, Raeburn (who had recovered from his sickness) and twenty-six Tibetan porters, headed up the Kharta Valley to join the climbing party, making an “Advanced base camp” at 17,350 feet. On September 8th, Bullock, Mallory and Howard-Bury made a short excursion along a ridge in order to keep fit. Howard-Bury commented that: “I found these gymnastics at a height of over 10,000 feet to be very exhausting, but Mallory did not seem to mind them in the least.”

On September 17th, Howard-Bury, along with Mallory and Morshead, set out by moonlight to climb a peak to the South of 96

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their camp called Kama Changri. Howard-Bury what he witnessed:

“To the West, and close at hand, towered up Mount Everest, still over 8,000 feet above us; at first showing up cold, grey and dead against a sky of deep purple. All of a sudden a ray of sunshine reached the summit, and soon flooded the highest snows and ridges with golden light, while behind the deep purple of the sky changed to orange. Makalu was the next to catch the first rays of the sun and glowed as though alive; then the white sea of clouds was struck by the gleaming rays of the sun, and all aglow with colour rose slowly and seemed to break against the island peaks in great billows of fleecy white. Such a sunrise has seldom been the privilege of man to see, and once seen can never be forgotten.”

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The climb that day was very tough but after six hours HowardBury and his companions reached the top, 21,300 feet and were rewarded with a superb view with Makalu directly opposite them.

“Glaciers, cliffs of ice, rock peaks, fluted snow ridges and immense mountains towered all around us above a vast sea of clouds which stretched for hundreds of miles away to the plains of India,” he noted in his diary.

Howard-Bury took many photos during the three hours on the top of Kama Changri. His pictures remain a vivid and beautiful record of the Everest Reconnaissance even now, almost a century after they were taken. The day after the climb bad weather prevented any movement and the men kept themselves from going to sleep too soon by playing bridge. As Howard-Bury noted, “I do not suppose that bridge has often been played at so great a height.”

By September 20th, the team had made a new camp at a place called Lhakpa La. It was now much colder and windier. The reconnaissance work went on and a climb one day gave HowardBury another superb view right across the Himalaya down into Sikkim and Nepal. On September 22nd, Howard-Bury noticed what looked like human footprints in the snow and commented in his diary that they “were probably caused by a large 'loping' grey wolf, which in the soft snow formed double tracks rather like a those of a bare-footed man,” although his Tibetan porters “at once 97

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volunteered that the tracks must be that of 'The Wild Man of the Snows', to which they gave the name metoh-kangmi.” HowardBury regarded this figure as a sort of Tibetan “bogey-man,” a creature invented to scare naughty children. Following interviews with the team when they eventually returned to Darjeeling after the Reconnaissance Expedition, the story, with the help of the journalist, Henry Newman, took wings and became an encounter with the “Abominable Snowman.” The story fascinated people across the world and upon his return to Europe, Howard-Bury found himself being quizzed about “this new race of people” that had been discovered!

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Howard-Bury managed to climb to a height of 22,350 feet to a point just opposite the North Col which joins Everest to Changtse (the North Peak). He concluded that “from this col was, as far as we were able to judge, the only route to the summit.” (at least from the Tibetan side.) He braved the intense cold to take as many photos as he could. Over the next couple of days, Mallory, Bullock and Wheeler would make their reconnaissance of the mountain itself to see how high they could get. Howard-Bury later wrote about how he and the rest of the party were: “Able with our glasses to see black specs appearing on top of the Lhakpa La. These were the Alpine climbers and their coolies returning after their strenuous efforts on Mount Everest.”

The expedition was now ready to turn back, having got as close as they could to the summit and worked out a route to the top of the world's highest mountain. Howard-Bury was able to fulfil one personal ambition. On September 27th, he crossed the Kangshung Glacier and, from a spur was able to see Makalu, Everest and Chomolonzo. He could also see “a few thousand feet of the Southern slopes of Mount Everest which we had been unable to see from any other point before.” He took more photographs there and further down as the party headed back down to Kharta which the expedition reached on September 30th. By October 11th they had reached Khamba Dzong and on October 25th, with winter coming down they reached Darjeeling. On the journey back across Tibet and Sikkim, Howard-Bury continued to take a great interest in the 98

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customs of the Tibetan people, whom he seems to have quite liked.

He was bemused by their habit of referring to distances in terms of cups of tea - that, for example, some place was three cups of tea away!

The 1921 Reconnaissance expedition was a total success. The whole north side of Everest was mapped and explored and a feasible route to the summit via the North Col at 23,000 feet had been established.

The expedition accomplished all that it had set out to do.

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Furthermore, Howard-Bury and his team had truly, as Mallory had told his wife, “walked off the map.” Howard-Bury set out what they had achieved, quite apart from working out a route to the summit of Everest: “Our travels had taken us through much unexplored and new country. A new part of the country has been opened up to human knowledge. It has been photographed and described. The surveyors have made an original survey at a scale of 4 miles to the inch of an area of some 12,000 square miles; a detailed photographic survey of 600 square miles of the environs of Mount Everest has been worked out, and besides this, the maps of another, 4,000 square miles of country have been revised.”

Howard-Bury returned to Britain to find that he and his comrades were now famous across the world. When the RGS and Alpine Club united in welcoming home the expedition party at an event in the Queen's Hall in London, the hall was packed out. There was also huge interest in a display of a selection of the over 600 photographs taken by Howard-Bury and his colleagues put on by the Alpine Club in January 1922. Howard-Bury's picture of the revered Abbot of Shekar Chote was especially popular. The King and the Prince of Wales also were keen to meet the Expedition team and in the case of Bullock and Mallory, the first Europeans to set foot on Everest.

Howard-Bury now set about preparing an account of the expedition for publication, in collaboration with Mallory and other members of the team. “Mount Everest, The Reconnaissance, 1921” was 99

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published by Edward Arnold in 1922. A special limited and numbered edition was published in America, while a French edition, “Á La Conquete du Mont Everest” was published in 1923 with a preface by Prince Roland Napoleon which addressed HowardBury’s achievements in the context of his famous contemporaries, Amundsen and Shackleton.

Howard-Bury was awarded the Founder’s Medal of the RGS on March 20th, 1922, “for his distinguished services in command of the Mt Everest Expedition.” Plans were now advanced for the second expedition in 1922 which would make an attempt on the summit by way of the route mapped out in 1921. Howard-Bury was considered as a possible leader of this new expedition but the RGS and Alpine Club wanted an experienced mountaineer and appointed General Charles Bruce. Howard-Bury was disappointed not to be given a chance to complete the work he had begun and concerned that the Expedition was becoming purely a climbing venture with no interest being shown in anything else. But he paid a gracious public tribute to Bruce as someone, “whose unrivalled knowledge of climbing and climactic conditions in the Himalayas, specially fitted him for the work.”

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Howard-Bury’s place in Everest history is assured, as Audrey Salkeld, an expert on the mountaineering history of Mt Everest, has acknowledged. Walt Unsworth, also an expert on Everest, has said, “I would say that Howard Bury's background knowledge of people in power made a firm foundation for the first three expeditions (1921, 1922,1924). He was undoubtedly a good expedition leader.”

The Leader of the successful 1953 expedition, Sir John Hunt, in the Foreword to the 1991 edition of “Everest Reconaissance” made this assessment of Howard-Bury: “We who first climbed Everest thirtytwo years later, have much for which to thank our predecessors and, in particular, Howard Bury and his team.”

It is believed that when the summit of Everest was finally reached

by Hillary and Tenzing in 1953, Howard-Bury, along with the Queen Mother, was the first to be told the news that Everest had finally been conquered. No higher tribute could be paid to 100

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Howard-Bury’s significance and achievements in the Everest story.

To the end of his life, Howard-Bury retained his interest in the world of mountaineering and exploration. He was an honoured guest at the Centenary Dinner of the Alpine Club in 1957. On one occasion he invited Noel Odell, a member of the 1924 Expedition and possibly the last person to see Mallory and Irvine alive as they climbed towards the summit, to lunch at his home in Belvedere House, Westmeath. Odell recalled how Howard-Bury took him and his wife on a tour of the fine gardens, “and with considerable pride showed us his lovely Chumbi roses, then in full bloom, derived from those he had collected in the Chumbi valley in 1921.”

Charles Howard-Bury died one month after his 80th birthday, on September 20th, 1963. He is buried in the Bury family vault at St Catherine’s Church in Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland.

A new edition of “Everest Reconnaissance,” edited by Marian Keaney was published in 1991. The Tian Shan Diaries were edited

by Keaney and first published in 1990. A complete biography of Charles Howard-Bury: explorer, intelligence officer, politician, photographer, hunter, landlord, charity worker and soldier is still to be written.

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Charleville Castle, Ireland

“If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life.

We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.�

George Mallory Climbing Everest: The Complete Writings of George Mallory

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Contributors

Credits: All articles and images are the copyright of the their respective authors. Ripcord Adventure Journal is grateful to all our writers and photographers for permission to publish their work.

Images on pages 42, 48, 49, and 55 courtesy of Siffy Torkildson; page 24 courtesy of Karl Clinger; pages 27, 28, and 31 courtesy of the International Polar Foundation (IPF) - Princess Elisabeth Station; the cover image, pages 3, 6, 10, 11, 15, 18, 19, 22, and opposite Contents courtesy of Shane Dallas; pages 58, 61, 63, 66, and 67 courtesy of Fearghal O' Nuallain; pages 70, 74, and 75 courtesy of Claire Burge; page 102 courtesy of Tim Lavery.

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Editorial Team

Editor in Chief

Tim Lavery is the founder of the World Explorers Bureau, the global speakers agency for adventurers and explorers.

Series Editor Shane Dallas is a professional adventurer, travel blogger and speaker with an unquenchable passion for travel.

Design & Quality Lead Paul Devaney is a freelance consultant offering professional services in UX/UI Design, Web and Visual Development. Paul has a strong background in aerospace and as a mountaineer.

Technical Editor Dr. Terry Sharrer is a former Curator at the Smithsonian amd current Editor of Tagline (Medical Automation).

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Fearghal O' Nuallain Fearghal has a passion for geography and adventure. An experienced educator, writer, and active geographer, he has captivated audiences with stories about cycling around the world, walking across Rwanda, tramping through Transylvanian winter and hiking, hitching and biking across the Balkan peninsula to explore an ancient Roman road.

Fearghal founded Revolution Cycle with inventor Simon Evans to complete the first Irish circumnavigation of the globe by bike. The expedition covered 31,000km over 18 months passing though some of the highest, driest and intriguing places on the planet.

Fearghal’s most recent journey followed the Via Egnatia - an ancient Roman road - across the Balkan peninsula. Following the footsteps of crusaders, legionaries and Ottomans he hiked, biked, & hitched, over 1,000 miles from Istanbul to Albania.

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Contributors

Jos Van Hemelricjk Award-winning Belgian journalist, environmentalist and polar explorer reporting for the International Polar Foundation at the Princess Elisabeth Station in Antarctica.

Robb Saunders Adventurer, Writer, Couch Potato. Recently completed a solo trek down Japan from Sapporo to Osaka.

Siffy Torkildson Siffy Torkildson is a geographer who has lived and has worked in several states, Canada, Madagascar and Germany over the past thirty years. Torkildson’s research specialisation is in the field of environmental science, in particular sea level rise, water resources, bio-fuels, and light pollution; cartography and GIS; and the history of women in exploration.

Kieran Creevy Freelance outdoor and expedition chef specialising in creating gourmet outdoor dishes. I.M.L and expedition guide with 12 years experience leading groups on various treks and climbs.

Ruth Illingworth Ruth Illingworth is a Historian and Tour Guide. Ruth has lectured at NUI Maynooth, served as an elected representative of Westmeath County Council and is the author of two books and numerous articles on local and Irish history.

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Publishers

Ripcord is the adventure travel arm of Redpoint Resolutions, a travel risk and crisis response company specializing in comprehensive global travel solutions. They serve government agencies, corporations and organizations that require employees to travel or live abroad. The company is owned and operated by special operations veterans and physicians who practice wilderness medicine and understand the challenges of medical and security emergencies in remote environments.

Ripcord’s global intelligence, evacuation services, essential benefits and 24/7 operations center has your back no matter where your adventures takes you.

The World Explorers Bureau (WEB) is a speaking agency that represents 100+ explorers and extreme adventurers, men and women who have lived with cannibals, dived the deepest seas, rowed the oceans, cycled the globe, lived underwater, climbed the highest mountains, explored unmapped caves, walked, skied and cycled to the Poles, walked in space and continue to explore the unexplored.

WEB Speakers inspire audiences around the world with captivating tales of their adventures encapsulating themes which include pushing boundaries, leadership, teamwork and motivation.

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“People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extra-ordinary things.�

Edmund Hillary

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Published by Redpoint Resolutions & World Explorers Bureau www.ripcordadventurejournal.com