Exploring "Other Everests" - One Mountain, Many Worlds

 

Probably the highlight of my year was receiving my copy of Other Everests: One Mountain, Many Worlds (MUP, 2024). This book is the culmination of one of the most interesting and enjoyable academic ventures I’ve ever been involved with. I feel very fortunate to have been able to add a small contribution to this collection in the form of an essay which helped me to find a focus and a framework for an idea which I had long been mulling over – the ‘Lost Horizon’ idea of the Himalaya as a home for imaginative geographies, utopian projections, and the realities upon which such notions where actually grounded. Now, having read the finished book in its entirety, I feel absolutely in awe of the company amongst which my chapter is collected. Hats off to my fellow Other Everests authors and the editors, who have all done a magnificent job in creating such a wide-ranging, thoughtful, thought-provoking, insightful, and immaculately edited collection.

 

Given my involvement with the project and the fact that I’ve authored one of the chapters, it would be highly inappropriate for me to attempt to write an in-depth review of the book here on my own blog. So instead, I have collated the abstracts for each chapter (see below), as these give a very good overview of what the book is all about – summarising its aims, its intentions, and the conversations and continuing work which it hopes to inspire. The book’s introductory essay, written by Paul Gilchrist, Peter H. Hansen and Jonathan Westaway, also does this in a much more connected, cohesive and coherent way, so I highly recommend beginning with this – it can be accessed and either read on-line or downloaded for FREE (as can all of the book’s chapters) from the publisher’s website here. I very much hope that libraries, academic and non-academic alike, will purchase physical copies of the book – so do please encourage any librarians you might know to consider buying a copy or two for their institutions!

 

Just to give a little extra background: my own involvement with the Other Everests research network began back in the summer of 2022, when I attended a two-day symposium held at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London. This was a really inspirational meeting which aimed at opening up hitherto little-known, unexplored or under-explored perspectives on Mount Everest/Chomolungma. You can read my thoughts and reflections on this genuinely horizon-expanding gathering here, and you can also hear some of the fascinating keynote lectures which were given at that event via the Other Everests webpage. I also wrote a review of an exhibition which was held at the RGS entitled Everest through the Lens in 2022-2023; this exhibition used archival material, early cinema documentary film, and artefacts associated with the Everest expeditions of the 1920s to highlight some of the ‘hidden histories’ of Everest from both Western and Indigenous perspectives. You can read my review here on this blog, or download a PDF of it from my personal website.

 

Lastly, there is an excellent discussion with editors, Jonathan Westaway and Peter H. Hansen, and essay contributor, Sarah Pickman, who very eloquently elucidate more about the Other Everests book and the themes it explores on The Alpinist magazine’s podcast, which you can listen to here.

 

Before closing, I hope it’s not too out of place for me to add a note here that my chapter for the Other Everests book was in fact only one half of a linked undertaking for me. An undertaking which I like to think of as my ‘Himalaya and Hollywood’ project. I wrote my Other Everests chapter in conjunction with another book chapter, which I hope will be published in a second edited collection in the coming year or so (I’ll post updates on the schedule for this as and when I know more about it). This second essay is also concerned with Western perceptions and depictions of the Himalaya on film, but seen from a slightly different angle to that looked at in Other Everests, having grown out of a blog post which I wrote a few years ago, and which you can read here. This future book chapter gives a much more detailed and academic analysis than the original blog post of the same topic of mountains and mysticism explored in my Other Everests chapter ... and, this time, also of monsters! – so keep ‘em peeled and watch this space – But, in the meantime, I very much hope you will enjoy exploring the chapters of Other Everests, as outlined below:

 

 Chapter Abstracts

Other Everests: One Mountain, Many Worlds (MUP, 2024) attempts to clear a space to engage the many worlds that share the same mountain, the multiple ways of being-in-the world, ‘a world where many worlds fit’. The book’s introductory chapter highlights some of these ‘worlds’ and overlapping themes in Everest’s many names, nations, genders, tourists, climates, and stories. Throughout this volume, the international and interdisciplinary array of contributors reactivate old and new archives, engage with multimedia and live performances, and participate in historical or ethnographic fieldwork. They shed light on the different ways of being in relationship with the mountain and how these are navigated by climbers and high-altitude workers alike, from ritual ceremonies to the mountain’s immovable goddess, through to contemporary digital practices as global adventure tourists and guides curate their Everest experiences. The authors in the volume contribute to a plurality of new histories and perspectives.

 

Chapter 1: The immovable goddess: The long life of Miyo Lang Sangma, by Ruth Gamble.

In the 1850s, Andrew Waugh, head of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India, named the highest peak in the central Himalayas after his mentor, George Everest. As Ruth Gamble describes in this chapter, Waugh’s decision obscured the mountain’s centuries-long association with Chomolungma, also known as Miyo Langsangma, a deity revered by the Tibetans and Sherpas who lived near it. By tracing this goddess’s history back through the centuries, Gamble places the goddess in the wider contexts of Himalayan sacred geography, demonstrating the role she and her sisters, the Tseringma Chenga (Five Sisters of Long Life), played in the region’s cultural history and the life stories of two of the Himalaya’s most famous religious figures, Guru Rinpoche (semi-mythical, eighth century) and Milarepa (eleventh century). By tracing this history, Gamble shows that the British claims that there were no local names for the mountain are incorrect, and the Tibetan and Sherpa communities have continued to venerate the goddess despite commercial imperatives to refer to it as Everest and Chinese and Nepali attempts to recast the mountain as nationalist symbols.

 

Chapter 2: Naming Mount Everest: Mountain cartography and languages of exonymy, by Felix de Montety.

Felix de Montety examines the nineteenth- and twentieth-century naming of Mount Everest from the perspective of critical place-name studies. In 1856, the surveyor Andrew Waugh proposed this place name for the world’s highest peak as a tribute to his predecessor, George Everest. Initial debates between Waugh and Brian Hodgson, a naturalist and linguist, echoed in later controversies over exonomy (the use of non-local place names by outsiders) in mountain toponymy and cartography. This chapter looks at the role of maps, instruments, philology, publications, and archives from geographical and mountaineering societies to examine arguments over proposed place names, including Mount Everest, Deodunga, Gaurisankar, or Chomolangma. Since the mid-twentieth century, China and Nepal have embraced Qomolangma or Sagarmatha as official names despite the enduring presence of Mount Everest as a mountain exonym in postcolonial societies. Mountain toponymy is a case study in modern mountaineering’s limited interest in local knowledge and blindness to political issues in climbing areas. The history of ‘Mount Everest’ as the product of Himalayan surveying, mapping, and mountaineering shows that place names can change and reminds us that alternatives exist and can and should be debated.

 

Chapter 3: Re-activating the expeditionary archive, by Felix Driver.

The centenary of the Everest expeditions offers an opportunity to consider the role archival collections have played and could play in histories of exploration and mountaineering. The history of these expeditions as told in word and image during the 1920s has weighed heavily on subsequent re-tellings across a variety of media. Yet the collections they generated have the potential to inform radically different versions of this history, foregrounding the role of colonial infrastructure, expeditionary labour, and Indigenous agency. To realise this potential, Felix Driver argues, requires developing an expanded vision of the expeditionary archive which recognises its multiple forms and affordances. This chapter explores the ways in which the story of the early Everest expeditions has been told and might be re-told using materials in the Royal Geographical Society’s collection, focusing particularly on the avalanche which killed seven Indigenous porters in 1922. The capacity of expeditionary archives to surprise and challenge, move and inspire – indeed, their wider significance as world heritage – depends partly on what they contain but also on the way they are approached; the questions which are asked of them; the methods used to research them; and the means by which they are shared more widely.

 

Chapter 4: The benefit of chocolate and cold tea: Equipping early British Everest expeditions, by Sarah Pickman.

What can packing lists and receipts tell us about the history of mountaineering on Everest? Sarah Pickman explores this question by examining the archives of the British Mount Everest expeditions of the 1920s. The materials used to outfit the expeditions reveal the social worlds that produced the early Everest climbers and the climbers' expectations for life on the mountain. British Everest climbers brought many items that might seem superfluous to the modern eye – from decadent foods to evening clothes – but that reveal Everest's connections to colonialism, the growth of Western consumer culture and advertising, British beliefs about class and status, and assumptions about expedition labour. What they carried also demonstrates that the idea of 'comfort' was part and parcel of expeditions to even the most extreme environments on earth. By taking seriously the quotidian gear and provisions carried on the 1921, 1922, and 1924 Everest expeditions, this chapter demonstrates that the study of material culture can be a fruitful approach for telling new stories about the world's highest mountain.

 

Chapter 5: Far-away frontiers and spiritual sanctuaries: Occidental escapism in the high Himalaya, by Tim Chamberlain.

Tim Chamberlain examines the allure which the Himalaya has long exerted upon Western adventurers, both in fiction and in real life. Drawing upon contemporary interest in the early British expeditions to climb Everest, this chapter shows how two novels blurred the line between imagination and authenticity, playing upon themes of escape and adventure. In response, travelogues fed back into Western notions concerning the remoteness of the Himalaya. Chamberlain demonstrates how networks of mobility for the Indigenous guides supporting Western travellers spanned the full extent of the Himalayan massif. Though portrayed as a distant and inaccessible region for Westerners, this interconnected landscape was, in fact, already well-known and consciously mapped by local polities. This network of knowledgeable and experienced Indigenes was essential for the travellers who wished to fulfil their aspirations ‘to step off the map’ and ‘escape modern civilisation’. Their search for a notionally ‘unexplored’ Shangri-La thereby created an abiding leitmotif for Himalayan exploration in the Western imagination.

 

Chapter 6: Seeing histories from the margins: An Indigenous labour force on Everest, 1921–53, by Jayeeta Sharma.

This chapter explores ‘ways of seeing’ the labouring infrastructure of the British Mount Everest expeditions from 1921 to 1953. Jayeeta Sharma juxtaposes photographs of mountaineering labour with first-person narratives from British mountaineers such as General C.G. Bruce and Indigenous Sherpa mountaineers including Ang Tharkay and Tenzing Norgay. A selection of first-person narratives from imperial and Indigenous mountaineers in dialogue with expedition photographs becomes a way to make visible and frame Indigenous histories from the margins of the British Empire. The sentient labour of Indigenous animals and humans provided the indispensable infrastructure for Euro-American mountaineers to realise their ambitions on Everest. The Mount Everest expeditions also relied on domestic infrastructures of Indigenous labour in places well beyond the mountain. The contribution of Sherpa women as well as men may be hidden in archives but is still visible in the margins of history.

 

Chapter 7: Women on Everest: A summit beyond, by Jenny Hall.

In 1975, Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei became the first woman to summit Everest and was celebrated as a symbol of women’s social progress. Since then, over seven hundred women have followed in Junko Tabei’s footsteps on Everest, representing over 11 per cent of all summiteers. Asian women played an important and pioneering role in these developments. Yet the representation of high-altitude mountaineering in popular culture still tells the story of adventure as white male middle-class masculinity that stubbornly resists diversity, as shown by Julie Rak’s False Summit (2021). This chapter explores how women navigated multi-dimensional inequalities concerning race, gender, and class through pioneering, women-centred approaches to high-altitude mountaineering. The analysis of memoirs and expedition accounts of and by women from the global South offers a critical reappraisal of women’s contribution to climbing Everest. Asian women built transnational support networks to tackle intersecting challenges through women-centred practices, infrastructures, and camaraderie. By showcasing the women-centred approaches of these Asian women pioneers, this chapter aims to diversify and balance the representation of mountaineering adventure as a shared cultural heritage.

 

Chapter 8: Rewriting Irvine into Everest: Audrey Salkeld and Julie Summers, by Anna Saroldi.

Anna Saroldi focuses on the role of women in the writing and transmission of mountaineering histories. The chapter focuses on the example of Andrew Comyn (Sandy) Irvine, who died on Everest in 1924 when 22 years old and while attempting a summit push with George Mallory. Saroldi highlights how Irvine had been sidelined in accounts of the British Everest expeditions and portrayed as a passive figure. Thanks to historians Audrey Salkeld and Julie Summers, Sandy Irvine has been recentred and his agency highlighted in more recent accounts. Audrey Salkeld (1936–2023) was also notable in pioneering the role of ‘expedition historian’ when she joined the 1986 Everest expedition led by Tom Holzel with the specific goal of finding Mallory’s and Irvine’s bodies. The presence and authority of women historians represents an important intervention in an environment such as mountaineering that is dominated by men in terms of both practice and ideology. Finally, Saroldi stresses the importance of choral and multivocal methodological approaches that go beyond the figure of the solitary male and white hero in favour of more inclusive and diverse portrayals of mountaineering history.

 

Chapter 9: Expecting hypermasculinity from a woman mountaineer: Wanda Rutkiewicz’s ascent of Everest, by Agnieszka Irena Kaczmarek.

Agnieszka I. Kaczmarek examines expectations of hypermasculinity when Wanda Rutkiewicz broke gender barriers in high-altitude mountaineering as the first Polish mountaineer and first European woman to scale Mount Everest in 1978. The chapter discusses why male team members in the German–French Mount Everest expedition diminished her achievements and held Rutkiewicz to high expectations of hypermasculinity during the climb. Utterly determined to stand on top, Rutkiewicz did exhibit hypermasculine patterns of behaviour while climbing and had similar expectations for Marianne Walter, a German woman climber whom Rutkiewicz criticised for her dependence on her husband and lack of self-reliance. Tough on herself and her companions, Rutkiewicz also commented on her own fear and loneliness. Rutkiewicz oscillated between behaviours and attitudes too often regarded as embodiments of either femininity or masculinity. The chapter presents Rutkiewicz as a woman who embodied a mountaineer with a hybrid identity, not binary, blending attributes of gender as multiple, not just one.

 

Chapter 10: The ‘Slovenian’ Everest 1979: A small nation and the highest mountain in the world, by Peter Mikša & Matija Zorn.

Peter Mikša and Matija Zorn focus on the 1979 Yugoslav Everest expedition and the environment in which Yugoslav and Slovenian mountaineering operated in the 1970s. On 13 May 1979, Andrej Štremfelj and Nejc Zaplotnik became the first Slovenians (and Yugoslavs) to climb Mount Everest. They reached the summit after forty-five days of climbing the challenging West Ridge Direct, the most difficult route on Everest to that time. The ascent represented the success of a twenty-five-strong Yugoslav team, of whom twenty-one were Slovenes. The majority of Yugoslav ascents before the breakup of Yugoslavia were made by Slovenian mountaineers. Critical to their success on Everest was the wealth of experience gained from a series of past Yugoslav Alpinist Himalayan Expeditions with several ascents of 8,000-metre peaks. Since 1979, Slovenian ascents of Everest have included three noteworthy achievements: the first married couple, an ascent without supplemental oxygen, and the first continuous ski descent from the summit. Another legacy of the Slovenian mountaineers in 1979 was the founding a climbing school for Nepalis at Manang, Nepal.

 

Chapter 11: Reclaiming Everest: Discontents, disasters, and the making of a Nepali mountain, by Ian Bellows.

Mount Everest endured a series of high-profile disasters and disruptive incidents during the 2010s, including a violent 2013 confrontation between high-altitude workers and professional mountaineers followed by the deadly 2014 Khumbu Icefall avalanche which sparked protests that ended the climbing season. In both cases, demands by mostly Indigenous high-altitude workers for greater rights and recognition brought renewed scrutiny to the structural inequities of the Everest industry. This chapter situates the tumultuous 2013 and 2014 Everest seasons within a century-long struggle for respect and better working conditions on the world’s highest mountains. From strikes and labour organising during the expeditionary period to the increasing prominence of Nepali expedition operators, guides, and alpinists on Everest and in Himalayan mountaineering over the past decade, acts of resistance and reclamation have marked critical junctures in Everest’s history. While Nepali alpinists have achieved global recognition for climbing accomplishments and Nepal-based companies have claimed a growing share of the commercial mountaineering market, this chapter argues that recent transformations have left the foundational mountaineering modality and moral economy of Everest relatively unchanged. This raises critical questions about what it means to ‘reclaim’ a mountain like Everest and the long-term sustainability of the Himalayan mountaineering industry.

 

Chapter 12: Sherpa’s Everest and expedition conglomerate, by Young Hoon Oh.

Complexly patterned hierarchies dictate the various roles and ideal behaviours of Sherpa and other Nepali employees in Himalayan mountaineering expeditions. Drawing on ethnographic research throughout the 2010s, Young Hoon Oh considers Sherpas’ perspectives on the industrial practices in mountaineering expeditions to Himalayan giants such as Mount Everest. The workforce on Himalayan expeditions has been diversely stratified and pyramidally governed to uphold what Oh calls expedition conglomerate – a mega-sized expedition that efficiently supports large numbers of client-members and their pleasurable Himalayan experiences. The workforce ordinarily consists of a variety of positions including team guide, base camp manager, climbing Sherpa, trekking Sherpa, kitchen staff, and porters. This chapter offers observations of climbing Sherpas’ wage structure, dissecting the multiple and often irregular income sources, including daily wage, equipment fee, carry bonus, summit bonus, tip, and significant payments from by-work. A brief analysis of the patterns of these expeditionary practices sheds light on the transformative nature of the guiding industry, which is, Oh concludes, a function of colonial legacies and unchecked neoliberalism rampant on the Himalayan slopes.

 

Chapter 13: The numbers game on Mount Everest: New ‘lows’ on the world’s highest mountain, by Pradeep Bashyal & Ankit Babu Adhikari.

Mountaineering traffic on Everest frequently breaks records and the numbers game has several elements. Increasing numbers of climbers result in more employment opportunities in adventure tourism and rising revenue for the government of Nepal. The Nepali Ministry of Tourism charges a summit fee of USD 11,000 for a permit to climb Everest. Climbing permits and tourism revenues contribute significantly to Nepal’s economy. Growth of tourism on Everest has also transformed the lives of Sherpas and other local communities. The shift to a commercial business model that promotes adventure tourism on Everest has led to over-tourism above 8,000 metres – increasing risks of overcrowding, injury, and death. Commercial outfitters de-emphasise these risks when seeking customers and increasingly offer a range of commercial packages based on different consumer price points. High-end adventure travel companies in the 2020s offer luxury expeditions, requiring Sherpas to carry unnecessary Western consumer items to higher camps, significantly increasing the associated risks. Government regulation has failed to manage these crises of overconsumption on Everest.

 

Chapter 14: Digital media on Everest: Practices, imaginations, and futures, by Jolynna Sinanan.

Everest has always been mediatised and its appeal as an idea has existed historically in part through technologies of visual cultures. Twenty-first-century tourist experiences and mobile livelihoods also depend on configurations of fixed, dispersed, and mobile digital infrastructures. Drawing on fieldwork in the Solukhumbu region of Nepal with guides, porters, and tourists, Jolynna Sinanan argues that digital practices create gradients of visibility in visual narratives of Everest. The production and circulation of images through digital technologies shape how tourists imagine and experience Everest. At the same time, the digital practices of guides and porters can be strategies for livelihoods and aspirations for recognition and intergenerational mobility that have the potential to create alternative Everest narratives based on regional knowledge and experiences of work. Guides and porters in Everest tourism were formerly Sherpa but are increasingly from Tamang and Rai ethnic groups, which have been historically at the margins of Nepali society. Sinanan interrogates the relationships of power in representing Everest through contemporary digital practices and the tensions between the valorisation of regional knowledge and neocolonial imaginations.

 

Chapter 15: Thin ice, thin air, by Yvonne Reddick.

In this creative piece, Yvonne Reddick visits the melting Khumbu Glacier at Everest Base Camp and reflects on climate change. She meets trekking guide Hem Raj Dharmala and asks him about the climate change impacts he has seen in Nepal. Global heating is leading to increased avalanche activity, disappearing lakes, and landslides in the region. However, new areas are also becoming available for Nepali farmers to grow crops. She reflects on her own conflicted position, as a concerned citizen committed to understanding climate justice, while still benefiting from fossil-fuelled transport that contributes to the problem. What are the trade-offs between tourism and thinning ice at the world’s ‘third pole’? What do the dwindling glaciers mean for mountain communities and mountaineers? With a nod to Jon Krakauer’s Everest classic Into Thin Air, Yvonne Reddick looks at the process of glacial sublimation whereby high-altitude glaciers change state directly from solid to vapour – literally vanishing into thin air.

 

Chapter 16: Everests on stage: Contemporary theatre’s contribution to decolonising the mountain, by Jonathan Pitches.

What can theatre offer the cultural record of Everest that has not already been expressed in literature, music, photography, or film? Less visible than these media, the dramatic record of Everest on stage is nevertheless rich, extensive, and long-lived. In this chapter, Jonathan Pitches focuses on the staging of Everest in the 2010s and early 2020s, considering three performances to establish what they reveal about the changing significance of Everest in the contemporary world. Drawing on insights from newly conducted interviews with four artists (Matt Kambic, Carmen Nasr, Gary Winters, and Gregg Whelan), the selection of recent performance work serves as a paradigm of the ways in which Western contemporary theatre has engaged with the history, culture, and geopolitics of the world’s highest mountain. Each of the live acts and performances uses varied means to render Everest’s cultural complexity, contradictory reception, and historical density with a lightness of touch which belies their rigour and import.

"Everest Through The Lens" - Exhibition Review

 

Climbing Mount Everest. Under the auspices of the Mt. Everest Committee: the cinematograph record of the Mount Everest Expedition of 1922. EE/6/5/60 (RGS-IBG Collection)

Exhibition Review: Everest through the lens (Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), 1 Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2AR, UK: 5 October 2022-20 January 2023) - this review was originally written for the Other Everests Research Network. 

NB - the exhibition is currently back on display at the RGS from 20 January 2025 - 15 April 2025 (10.00am-5.00pm, Monday-Friday), free entry. Click here for more information.

Everest through the lens was an exhibition marking the centenary of the first two British attempts to climb the world’s highest mountain in 1922 and 1924. It examined the expeditions as seen through the lens of official expedition cinematographer, Captain John Noel. Focussing on the two films he made, Climbing Mount Everest (1922) and The Epic of Everest (1924), the exhibition set out ‘to unpick the uncomfortable and complex social, racial and geopolitical dynamics that shaped the expeditions – from their beginning to enduring legacy.’ Utilising a range of photographic and documentary sources, as well as a handful of well-chosen objects – such as a kinomatograph camera, similar to the one Noel used at high altitude, and Noel’s own Remington portable typewriter – exhibition visitors were guided through the various stages of the two expeditions, from their meticulous preparation, through their actual execution, to their final presentation in both print and film media.

 

As a documentary filmmaker, Noel’s lens was far from an objective one. The narrative of both films gives a distinctly colonialist view of the ‘heroic’ exploits of the British climbers, whilst the far larger entourage of local porters and other indigenous labourers who were key to enabling the endeavour are lost somewhere in the flickering side-lines, obscured by the simultaneous glare of the white snows and the reflected imperial glory bestowed upon the films’ British protagonists. Viewing the expeditions in the context of their times, this was a period when empires and nations vied to best one another in epic feats of exploration in harsh and extreme environments. Notably the British had lost out in the races to be the first to reach the North and South Poles, hence the summit of the world’s highest mountain – or the ‘Third Pole’ as it was then dubbed – represented a last chance at attaining pre-eminence. Together, the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club formed the Mount Everest Committee, which tasked itself with recruiting a team of elite mountaineers and geographers. Naturally these men were all British born and bred, privately educated and recruited through a network of mutual contacts. Letters and medical appraisals show that social considerations of class and military background counted as much as aptitude and experience in mountaineering. We are told that George Finch, as an Australian, was a lone exception to this rule, but that consequently he ‘was looked down on by some team members.’

 

A far more overtly condescending view was expressed with regard to the indigenous communities whom the expeditions encountered as they made their way through Tibet. An intertitle card from one of Noel’s films gives a clear example, stating that: ‘The men and women exist from the cradle to the stone slab, on which their dead bodies are hacked to pieces, without a wash the whole of their lives.’ The British expedition members were genuinely fascinated by the cultures they encountered in the Himalaya. Noel filmed scenes described in another intertitle as: ‘the weird and fantastic devil dances at the sacred monastery of the Rongbuk.’ A Tibetan cymbal brought back by the expedition leader, Brigadier-General Charles Bruce in 1922, included in the exhibition, shows how the British climbers were particularly struck by Tibetan music which must have seemed very different to their unaccustomed ears. Climber and surgeon, Howard Somervell transcribed Tibetan folk songs into Western musical notation, and Noel later had bands perform this music as an evocative accompaniment to the screenings of his silent films.

 

Trailer for Noel's "The Epic of Everest" (BFI)

              

Social hierarchies shaped the expeditions. Base Camp was effectively a small village, run by the British along familiar colonial lines, with clear demarcations according to social, racial and class considerations. The selection process for local porters may have been less careful to note down details, but everyone recruited – ‘from bootmakers to botanists’ – had a role with set expectations and was renumerated accordingly. Ranked highest in this hierarchy were the high-altitude porters, who were very skilled and often more adept mountaineers than the British, who nicknamed them ‘tigers.’ It is notable in many of the photographs of the expedition that there is a marked discrepancy in the size and weight of the loads which these men were charged with carrying compared to the British members of the team. Without their efforts, lugging huge quantities of supplies, equipment and oxygen tanks to the various camps ascending the mountain, the British climbers would have struggled in their attempts to reach the summit. These efforts were not without genuine risk, as a disaster in 1922 made only too apparent. Seven porters – six Sherpa, Thankay, Sangay, Temba, Lhakpa, Pasang Namgya, Pema, and one Bhotiya, Norbu – lost their lives in an avalanche. George Mallory, seen as the hero of Noel’s films, felt himself responsible. Writing to a friend, he stated that the men who died were ‘ignorant of mountain dangers, like children in our care. And I am to blame.’ However, the loss of these men’s lives was dealt with in a bureaucratic manner, with their families in Tibet, Nepal and Darjeeling being financially ‘compensated.’

 

In Noel’s film, the disaster was edited out of the final cut for fear of a negative backlash from viewers. A poignant memorial of this fact is embodied in a small bronze figure of the goddess Tara, which was on display in the exhibition. This was given to the British climbers on their return from Everest by Dzatrul Rinpoche, the Head Lama of Rongbuk Monastery, to commemorate the lives of the seven men who died. This action was filmed by Noel, but in the final version of his film Noel edited and placed these scenes at the start, representing the exchange as though it were a gift given to bless the expedition when it was first setting out.

 

Similarly, Noel appears to have had no qualms about appropriating an image of a deity depicted in a mural at the monastery in order to accentuate the sense of drama. A deity which the British stylised as ‘a mountain goddess angrily destroying the bodies of white climbers.’ As it is well-known, the 1924 expedition resulted in the loss of the lives of climbers, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, who disappeared from view while making a bid to reach the summit and never returned.

 

The names of Mallory and Irvine, like those of Robert Falcon Scott and his men in Antarctica, were of course duly added to the roster of ‘heroic defeats’ which now characterise the annals of British Imperial exploration. A vision of heroism and self-sacrifice which Noel’s films did much to crystallise. As the final sections of the exhibition showed, this was not without controversy however.

 

Noel very actively sensationalised Tibetan culture as a marketing ploy for his films. He was personally invested in them, having funded much of the 1924 expedition himself in order to retain the rights to his footage. He hired and brought to London a troupe of seven Tibetan dancers to perform at screenings. These ‘dancing lamas’ were in fact Tibetan novice monks rather than lamas. The publicity stunt deeply offended the Dalai Lama and Tibetan government, such that they banned all Westerners from entering Tibet to climb Everest for the next ten years. Despite the fact the British mountaineering community knew that the controversy of the ‘dancing lamas’ was the real cause of the ban, the Everest expeditions were meticulously stage-managed operations, consequently they drew ranks and found a convenient scapegoat in John Hazard, who undertook an unauthorised survey expedition in Tibet also in 1924, pinning the blame on his activities instead.

 

For a small exhibition, Everest through the lens, explored a number of less well-known faces of the two earliest attempts by British mountaineers to ‘conquer’ the world’s highest peak very effectively. It elucidated a number of often overlooked themes, incorporating a rich array of written and visual documentation; particularly Noel’s film, The Epic of Everest, which was screened on a continuous loop as part of the exhibition. Shining a light on the lives of those whose names are well-known to history, such as Mallory and Noel, but more importantly it also highlighted the indigenous team members who have stood, obscured in the background for far too long. Recovering some of those names which otherwise might have been lost to history in the panel and label texts, as well as listing them in the leaflet accompanying the exhibition. In doing so, Everest through the lens showed that there is still much to be learned about cultures of imperial exploration. By taking a closer look, information which has lain hidden in the archival shadows cast by the official record which the two British expeditions carefully created as their own legacy can begin to emerge. Much like the unnamed Sherpa who can be seen steadying the camera tripod, if one looks very carefully, at the well-known photograph of John Noel, seated on a kit box, shooting the first of his films at high altitude in 1922.

Captain Noel kinematographing the ascent of Mt. Everest from the Chang La [one of his Sherpa porters can be seen steadying the tripod] MEE22/0602 (RGS-IBG Collections)

~

'Other Everests: One Mountain, Many Worlds' Edited by Paul Gilchrist, Peter H. Hansen & Jonathan Westaway (MUP, 2024)

For more information on my involvement with the 'Other Everests' Research Network, and my chapter in the forthcoming (open access) edited volume of essays which the network will publish in 2024, see here.

Also on 'Waymarks'

'Other Everests' - A New Research Network

Himalaya - The Heart of Eurasia

Betrayal in the High Himalaya

The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas (1957)

Exploring "Other Everests" - One Mountain, Many Worlds

Research Note - Kalon Lama Champa Tendar / Jampa Tendar (1870–1923)

 

Kalon Lama Champa Tendar, from 'China in Turmoil' by L.M. King (1927)

This post is intended to be a useful note for Tibet Researchers interested in the Kalön Lama Champa Tendar / Jampa Tendar (Byams pa bstan dar, 1870–1923).

 

I noticed a photograph posted recently on Twitter (10 May 2023; see here) which mistakenly identifies the Kalön Lama (bka' blon bla ma) Tenpa Jamyang (Bstan pa ’jam dyangs, 1888–1944) as Kalön Lama (bka' blon bla ma) Champa Tendar / Jampa Tendar (Byams pa bstan dar, 1870–1923).

 

The photograph was sourced from The Tibet Album: British Photography in Central Tibet, 1920-1950, which is a fantastic on-line resource jointly created quite a number of years ago now (c.2006?) by the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the British Museum in London. It seems likely that the error was derived from the biographical record which is incorrectly connected to the image on the Tibet Album website. None of the eight images associated with this biographical record are of Champa Tendar, who died in 1923. They all appear to be of Tenpa Jamyang, who succeeded him as Kalon Lama, as the range of dates given for each photo (between 1936-1937 & 1940-1941) on the Tibet Album would seem to suggest. None of the records/transcriptions given alongside these images actually specifies which Kalon Lama they depict, although, the ‘Glossary of Terms’ which they all link to (see here) states: “Kalon Lama. He was the ecclesiastical Cabinet Minister in the Tibetan government. The post was held by Jampa Tendar at the time of the 1936 mission.” – which, given Champa Tendar/Jampa Tendar’s date of death (1923), is evidently incorrect.

 

I first noticed this error several years ago and I did mention it to Frank Drauschke, from whom the Tibet Album’s biographical information for Champa Tendar was derived, and also to my former colleagues at the British Museum, who were involved with the creation of the Tibet Album, but no one at that particular time seemed to know who was then maintaining the website.

 

So, having been reminded of it by seeing this error pop up again recently, I thought I would post some information here in the hope that it might act as a useful signpost to researchers who are interested in the lives and biographies of these two Kalon Lamas, mainly in order to point such researchers in the direction of a relatively recently published paper which gives the best information on these two individuals, and so thereby help to clarify their identities. The article is titled: Monk Officials as Military Officers in the Tibetan Ganden Phodrang Army (1895–1959), by Alice Travers in Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, Vol. 27 (2018), pp. 211-242 (See, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/asie.2018.1512 | JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26756586) – NB: the article is in English, and is freely accessible on-line (via the DOI link).

 

In posting this short research note here on my blog I do not mean to criticise or detract in any way at all from the hard work and great effort which many people far more qualified and knowledgeable than myself contributed to the AHRC funded Tibet Visual History 1920-1950 project. Indeed, the Tibet Album, as I have acknowledged above, is a truly fantastic and authoritative resource which is and continues to be immensely useful to Tibet researchers everywhere. And it has certainly been a great help to me in my own research. Nor do I wish to criticise the Twitter account that I have referred to above, which also posts very valuable information concerning the visual history of Tibet via that social media site. It is clear that the errors of association and attribution which I point out here were unintentional mistakes.

 

My own interest in the Kalön Lama (bka' blon bla ma) Champa Tendar / Jampa Tendar (Byams pa bstan dar, 1870–1923) derive from two angles; firstly, from my PhD research concerning Western explorers in East Tibet, and, secondly, from my family connection to Tibetan writer, Rinchen Lhamo (1900-1928) and her husband, British Consul, Louis Magrath King (1886-1949). King knew Champa Tendar personally and wrote about him in China in Turmoil: Studies in Personality (London: Heath Cranton, 1927) – Chapter 15: A Frontier Incident, as Travers discusses in her article, along with a number of other primary and secondary sources regarding both Kalon Lamas. Travers also correctly identifies the images of Tenpa Jamyang on the Tibet Album, reproducing one as part of her article, and includes three very clear images of Champa Tendar sourced from books by Eric Teichman, Rinchen Lhamo and Louis Magrath King. This makes it very easy to distinguish the respective visual likenesses of the two Kalon Lamas.

 

Kalon Lama Jampa Tendar (via Wikimedia Commons)

See also: Jamyang Norbu's "Shadow Tibet" - 'Black Annals' (19 July 2008)

& Alice Travers, Marching into View: The Tibetan Army in Historic Photographs 1895–1959 (Tethys, 2022), p. 64, Plate 39

 

Related posts on ‘Waymarks’

China & Tibet – Through Western Eyes

Rinchen Lhamo – A Woman of Kham

 

And information on my PhD research & related publications:

"Empirical Adventurers: Science and Imperial Exploration in East Tibet, 1900-1949"

Tim Chamberlain – Birkbeck College, University of London (2015 onwards)

Edge of Empires, The British Museum Magazine (2010)

Books of Change, Journal of the RAS China (2013)

"Closing the Gap" on the Yarlung-Tsangpo River

 

The Heart of the World: A Journey to the Last Secret Place by Ian Baker (Penguin, 2004)

This is a good, pacey and engaging travelogue, which – in the tradition of ‘an American abroad’ – reminded me a little of Peter Hessler’s River Town.

 

 

F.M. "Eric" Bailey & Frank Kingdon Ward

I read The Heart of the World primarily because I am interested in the lives and travels of Eric Bailey and Frank Kingdon-Ward (who could almost be this book’s co-author, given how often he is quoted throughout!). And also because I am interested in how the Tibetan Buddhist concept of ‘beyul’ (sBas yul) has been co-opted and adapted into the Western idea of ‘Shangri-La’ – for which this book offers a number of interesting insights and points to other literary works which it might have been hard to find or trace otherwise. The journeys made over several years which Baker recounts are tough trials of stamina, both physical and spiritual, with obstacles which are both natural, seemingly supernatural, and, of course, bureaucratic. However, I do agree with the comments (made on GoodReads) regarding the authorial persona; which, perhaps ironically for someone who presents himself as an aspiring Buddhist practitioner, comes across at times as somewhat egocentric. Similarly, while Baker is often at pains to stress that he is not a privileged white-man of the old explorer mould – this is exactly what he is at most points in the text, especially when, towards the end of the book, he and his companions are attempting “to close the gap” on the “last unexplored” five-mile stretch of the Tsangpo, utilising indigenous labour to enable them to do so (not that there would be any other option, of course).

 

There is a clear desire to complete (or exceed?) the endeavours which Bailey and Kingdon-Ward failed to achieve themselves; and, in the closing pages of the book, there is an equally palpable desire to beat a large Chinese expedition to find and measure ‘the last’ major waterfall on the Tsangpo. Although Baker is very evidently self-aware of these particular flaws, and perhaps understandably circles around them uneasily and inconclusively. No matter how well informed he is about the region, its spiritual geography and local traditions, he cannot escape the fact that he is an outsider. However deeply he manages to enter this remarkable place in all its forms, he always has to reconcile himself with the fact that he must ultimately leave again at the end of whichever trip it is he is narrating. Naturally, the reader is drawn to empathise. But the book does also indulge time-and-again in poetic and spiritual flights of fancy which skate a little too close to cliché in places (e.g. – to give but one example, how often it seems that the weather brightening up is attributed to the possible intervention of divine favour, or a lama happening to appear on the scene at the moment the sun comes out), which, for me at any rate, raised a bit of a barrier between reader and author.

 

 

That said though, I have read a particularly mind-numbing Chinese book (in translation; The Yarlung Tsangpo Great Canyon: The Last Secret World, by Zhang Jimin) about the enormous Chinese expedition (that features in the closing chapters of Baker’s book), which mangles all its references to Kingdon-Ward, including something as simple as getting his name right. Baker is by far a much better guide. But both books give rise to complicated and seemingly unresolvable feelings. One can’t help but sympathise with the local Tibetans’ conflicts of interest in wanting Pemako to remain unviolated by outsiders, whilst also being acutely aware that they need to make a living in such an ‘out-of-the-way place’ by acting as porters to comparatively affluent external interlopers. No matter how difficult or sacred the terrain, in the covetous eyes of such outsiders (Baker as much as the Chinese), the lure to conquer and possess these ‘unknown realms’ – real or imagined; physical or spiritual – in the end amounts to the same outcomes.

 

All too often, it’s simply a matter of time until others encroach and transform a place into something other than what it once was to those who have gone before, and even moreso to those who have always called such places home. Perhaps in this sense, Baker is an eloquent witness to the completion of a process which was begun long ago by those whom he has sought to emulate (i.e. – Bailey, Kingdon-Ward and Cawdor). Hence, one can’t help but feeling both forlorn and perhaps vicariously a little complicit too (having very much enjoyed the narrative of Baker’s journeys), when closing this book after reading its concluding chapter. – The truth of ‘Shangri-La,’ perhaps, is both its mutability and its transience; because even here change is the only constant thing.

Ian Baker

Also on 'Waymarks'

Exploring the Land of the Blue Poppy - Frank Kingdon Ward & Tibet

 

See also: 'A Man Who Heeded The Call of Shangri-La,' by Susan Salter Reynolds in Los Angeles Times (7 January 2005).

'In Search of the Hidden Lands: The Hero’s Journey of Explorer Ian Baker,' by Rebecca Wong in Buddhistdoor Global BDG (12 December 2024).

And the Tibet Hidden Falls website by the Gillenwater brothers, who travelled with Ian Baker in the 1990s.

Plus, Hamid Sardar-Afkhami, ‘An Account of Padma bkod: A Hidden Land in Southeastern Tibet,’ Kailash, Vol. 18, No.3 (1996), pp. 1–21

The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas (1957)

 

A month or so ago I happened to catch a screening of The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas (1957) on Talking Pictures TV. It’s a movie which I’d never heard of before, but I’m quite a fan of old movies and there are a lot of ‘lost’ or long forgotten gems to be found on this particular UK TV channel. This one naturally piqued my interest because I was intrigued to see how it depicted Tibet and the Himalaya.

Directed by Val Guest, the film is based upon a BBC TV play titled The Creature (1955), written by Nigel Kneale, which Kneale adapted for the famous British horror filmmakers, Hammer. The Abominable Snowman tells the story of Dr John Rollason (played by Peter Cushing), a British scientist, who is staying at a remote monastery high up in the Himalayan mountains, with his wife, Helen (Maureen Connell), and his assistant, Peter Fox (Richard Wattis). They are nearing the end of their expedition. Rollason and Fox are introduced to the viewer via an extended scene in which they talk with the Head ‘Lhama’ of the monastery (Arnold Marle). It is clear that Rollason and his companions are respectful of the Head Lama and they thank him for letting them stay at the monastery while they have gone about their work, collecting plant specimens, and the like. But as the conversation continues and Rollason is left alone with the Lama, the Buddhist cleric begins to talk cryptically to Rollason, hinting at some sort of deeper clairvoyance. The wise old Lama quizzes Rollason about his real motives and intentions in coming to the Himalaya, telling Rollason that he knows Rollason hasn’t yet finished all of his work in the mountains. The Lama says some men are coming and Rollason intends to join them. Rollason tries to deny this, but the Lama craftily manages to tell just enough of his suspicions to Rollason’s wife, who is naturally upset because she is keen for them to leave and return to their normal life, far away from the mountains. It’s also revealed that Rollason was once an expert climber, but that he’s given up the dangerous sport; hence another reason why his wife is both concerned and upset by the Lama’s revelation. But there’s something strange about the way Rollason receives all of this information, because it seems as though he himself is not fully aware of all the facts the Lama has alluded to with such assurance, along with an edge of definite disapproval.

Cushing & Connell

It soon turns out that the Lama is correct. A party of Americans arrives at the monastery. They are on their way up into the mountains, heading far above the snowline in search of the Yeti – the much fabled ‘Abominable Snowman’ of the film’s title. They’ve already conveniently cached their supplies at various staging posts along the way during the summer months, and so everything is set for the intentionally small group of explorers to embark upon the adventure which lies ahead. Against his wife’s wishes, Rollason is persuaded to join the expedition led by brash American, Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker), along with his companion Ed Shelley (Robert Brown). There’s a third member of the party, a young Scottish photographer, named Andrew McNee (Michael Brill), who seems very different from the rest. And, of course, they take with them a local guide, a Sherpa by the name of Kusang (Wolfe Morris), who says he has actually seen the Yeti.

Cushing, Brill, Morris, Brown & Tucker

Rather than pick apart the fanciful plot of the movie, I’m more interested here in penning a few thoughts on the stylised representations of Himalayan mountaineering and exploration as they are depicted in this film. Naturally, it is very much “of its time” (as current euphemistic parlance might describe it). All of the local Tibetans – mainly monks mumbling their sutras in the background, and rowdy porters shouting angrily about their lack of pay, along with a small group of easily disbursed bandits, plus a mystical (and perhaps Svengali-like?) Lama, who talks like a gnomic grandfather of Master Yoda (a familiar figure in the later Star Wars franchise) – are racist caricatures. But then, so too are the Westerners stereotyped in their own peculiar ways. The British are decent, level-headed sorts, who believe in fair play and talk with clipped and flinty British accents. The Americans are brash, selfish and insensitive, ‘gung-ho’ manly-man-types, loud and uncouth. Dr Rollason represents the quintessential disinterested-nobility of pursuing science for its own sake, although he is also susceptible to an innate sense of Romanticism which is naturally implicit in such a quest. McNee turns out to be a character who is similarly flawed, but in a different manner to Rollason. McNee is not up to the quest, but there is something spiritual about him, something which drives him with an equal sense of passion and destiny – he too, like the Lama, seems to have a telepathic connection to the region and to the Yeti in particular. There are quite a few allusions in the film to mystical powers and psychic connections, thought transference, and the like, but interestingly none of these points is too heavily implied or overplayed. We get the sense that the Yetis might be higher beings, not so much a ‘missing link’, but a more of a co-evolutionary lineage, who might somehow be better than humans.

Rollason deplores the two Americans’ commercial greed in their hunt for the Yeti, but the Americans flatter Rollason that having him on-board as a member of their expedition will lend it some scientific credibility, and they persuade him that, ultimately, they are working towards the same ends in the pursuit of knowledge – and, in particular, the desire to understand mankind’s place in the world. At the end of the movie (spoiler alert!) Rollason is the sole survivor. He returns to the monastery because, as the Lama hinted at the beginning of the story, his fate would be decided by what was most essential within him – that sense of decency innate to his character has seen him through (whereas, by the same token, the misadventures of his companions has brought about their demise). And so, having looked into the face of the Abominable Snowman, Dr Rollason says that there is no such thing as the Yeti in existence. The ending is very ambiguous. Perhaps Rollason has been hypnotised by the Head Lama, or perhaps he has realised that some mysteries in life must remain just that, mysteries.

It is worth bearing in mind that this movie is a melodrama. It is a Hammer horror movie which was primarily intended to shock and thrill, and to excite and entertain its first audiences. As a morality play about the psychology of paranoia, all the movie posters for the film ‘ham up’ those frights, challenging the viewer: “We dare you to watch it alone!” – Claiming it is “More terrifying than The Curse of Frankenstein.” The Yeti is described as the “Demon-Prowler of Mountain Shadows … The Dreaded Man-Beast of Tibet.” – But for all the fanciful elements which are embellished throughout the course of the movie, there are some aspects which are to certain degrees grounded in fact.

The set-dressings in the monastery scenes are reminiscent of genuine Tibetan monasteries, although I don’t recall if in the film the story’s location is explicitly referred to as being Tibet per se (except perhaps for a joking reference to the ‘awfulness of Tibetan tea’). The architecture is similar, with trapezoidal windows; Tibetan butter churns and a mani stone can be seen in the monastery’s courtyard; and there are quite realistic thangka paintings hanging up in the interior rooms, but these are also adorned with strangely stylised Southeast Asian-looking Buddha statues (though more scowling than serene); the monks’ robes are fairly generic, and their religious dances seem pretty perfunctory. As already mentioned, the Chief Lama appears to behave more like an Indian guru-figure, one who perhaps The Beatles might have befriended in the subsequent decade, rather than a genuine Tibetan cleric. And, in many ways, it is hinted that he is a kind of deus ex machina, operating with a pseudo-all-seeing supernatural effect, possibly even guiding events behind the scenes throughout the film. 

The mountain scenery is certainly the most impressive aspect of the movie. While many of the scenes were clearly filmed in the synthetic mock-ups of a studio, these are nevertheless blended into some impressive long sweeping shots of diminutive figures wending their way through realistically wide Himalayan-looking vistas (filmed in the French Pyrenees). On the whole, the characters’ contemporary mountaineering gear looks credibly authentic; and there is even a passing reference to Eric Shipton in the initial dialogue.

In the context of this movie’s times, the hunt for the Yeti was not such a far-fetched idea for a cinematic plot either (although if you tune into certain TV channels today, such as Blaze, you’d be forgiven for thinking that such quests are still widely held to be credible even now!). Sir Edmund Hillary, after his first ascent of Mount Everest (Chomolungma) in 1953, subsequently returned to the Himalaya on just such a scientific quest himself. Consequently, it is worth watching this movie with an eye to the cultural insights it might suggest – not so much about Tibet, Tibetans, or the Himalaya – but rather, about the psychological perceptions, prejudices, and peccadillos of British and American movie audiences, and the piquantly picturesque elements of these pseudo-Himalayan themes which it was thought by the filmmakers would most appeal to movie-goers at the time.

It’s a topic which certainly appeals to me. Having spent so much time studying genuine travel accounts written by Westerners who ventured into this part of the world during the first half of the twentieth century for my PhD thesis, I am keen to continue my studies, looking at the way in which the ostensible realism of this genre was subsequently transmuted and later valorised into such fictional representations. In many ways, it was a genre which began with the making of a movie version of James Hilton’s bestselling novel, Lost Horizon (book 1933, movie 1937), and continues on through later cinematic outings, such as Eddie Murphy’s The Golden Child (1986), to Brad Pitt, starring as Heinrich Harrer, in the Hollywood version of Harrer’s memoir, Seven Years in Tibet (book 1952, movie 1997). 

The Himalaya remains a region of perennial fascination for cultural outsiders. Ever since writers such as Alexandra David-Neel and Charles Bell took an interest in interpreting Tibetan Buddhism for a Western audience and perhaps inspired novelists such as James Hilton, the Himalaya has become a kind of spiritual and geographical backcloth onto which popular tropes of solipsistic questing can be projected. Yet the continuing ubiquity of such clumsy metaphors and cultural misappropriations which seem to abound in Hollywood’s fascination for the Himalaya as an always remote, hidden and inaccessible region seem to attest to a continuing need to locate an ‘orientalising’ search for the self through tests of spiritual, psychological and physical endurance in this notion of esoteric mysteries persisting somewhere far away. In this sense, the Himalaya as it is seen in Hollywood remains a place which is pristine and untouched by modernity, a place located beyond the ordinary mundane nature of our own humdrum lives, somewhere lost perhaps in someone else’s or some other culture’s past whether real or imagined. As a meta-myth it has become a cliché, a cultural trope in and of itself which only serves to occlude and evade a deeper and far more intriguing question: why does such a need to culturally appropriate as a means of mediating inwardly with ourselves by projecting our own perceptions through such a process of ‘othering’ continue to persist?

Original Movie Trailer

Watch The Abominable Snowman (1957) on BFI iplayer

Also on 'Waymarks'

Himalaya - The Heart of Eurasia

'Other Everests' - A New Research Network

NB - I am currently in the process of re-working this blog post as a proper academic paper for inclusion in an edited volume of film studies, due to be published in 2024. For more info, see here.