Tagne 2001

Steve's Diary

Day 2 - Friday 29th June 2001

see also Dan's Diary for today

Waking early, we quickly dressed and went through to breakfast. A two-egg omelette, toast, butter and mixed fruit jam was washed down with "chai" - a name which conjures up mental images of exotic brews in expensive coffee shops in Britain, but which in India is the cheapest and most common way of making tea: the leaves are tipped into a kettle with water, milk and sugar and the whole thing is boiled up together. A recipe liable to bring tears to the eyes of a good Yorkshire housewife, but the result was usually surprisingly pleasant, with a sweet cinnamon tang. The cook spoke a few words of English with an incomprehensible accent, but we finally discerned that he was asking us to pay two thousand rupees for our accommodation. Reluctantly I peeled a few notes from my diminished roll (not wishing to be constantly diving into my pockets I had cunningly divided the money between us the previous night) and the transaction was recorded in a giant ledger. Our official briefing from the IMF was fixed for the afternoon, with a pre-briefing briefing from our agents before it, but the morning was ours, so we went to see something of Delhi. We walked out of the headquarters into the heat and humidity of the sub-continental plain in mid-summer. The driveway served several other estates in what appeared to be a desirable suburb. Passing what appeared to be a semi-permanent encampment of manual labourers, we reached the main road and two autorickshaws pulled up: these three-wheeled motor-tricycles infest the streets of Indian cities like flies, always on the lookout for potential clients. The grins on the faces of their drivers as they dropped us off at Connaught Place, the commercial heart of New Delhi, implied that the fares they had charged us were in line with the going rate for naïve westerners: another little contribution to local inflation had been made!

Not by accident had we come to the largest collection of shops in the city: Several of us wanted to buy lightweight cotton shirts for the walk-in, and Alan had suggested we supplement our supply of expedition books: on a six-week expedition, we expected to be spending a fair amount of time sitting at base camp. We tried an upmarket tailor's with an extensive selection of off-the-rack shirts and an armed guard at the door, but the prices were about ten times what we were hoping to pay, so we left again. We walked back to a bookshop near where the autorickshaws drivers had left us, and chose another book each to add to those we had brought with us. We also picked up a copy of the Lonely Planet guide to Delhi, which I started scanning, looking for somewhere to get lunch. Leaving the shop we were immediately accosted by a pair of Delhi-wallahs, trying to sell us a portable chess set. Our doubts over the provenance of this "locally made" piece of handiwork were justified when we found identical sets thrust at us all over India: our best guess is that they are imported from China by the lorry-load, which means that the people who make them must be some of the lowest-paid people in the world. A fair estimate would be that the people who make these products are paid only a few pence per set.

Their attempts to charm money from our pockets having failed, the touts proceeded to engage us in conversation: encouraged by Alan they assured us that the British Embassy, where we hoped to register ourselves, was within walking distance, and upon hearing of his ambition to visit the Taj Mahal, whisked him into a dodgy travel agent's in a trice. Choosing not to co-operate with this obvious con, Andy and I stayed outside, reading the Delhi guidebook and fending off further approaches from garrulous locals with subtly sarcastic retorts that utterly failed to traverse the language barrier. Eventually Alan returned, unconned, and we set off for a randomly recommended "dhaba" at a speed sufficient to throw off all but the most determinedly friendly locals.

The "dhaba" in India fulfils the same role as the "caff" in Britain: cheap, basic restaurants scattered throughout the country, sharing an essentially common menu remarkably similar to the food available in British curry houses. In a dhaba, the food cooks all day in a row of giant stew-pots; your order is ladled out for you, and more ingredients are added to the pot as necessary. Our choice at lunchtime that day proved to be good, because we escaped the travellers' diahorrea we were all expecting - for a few days, at least.

After an entirely satisfactory lunch, we hailed autorickshaws and headed back to the IMF. Insufficient firmness in determining the price before we set off proved relatively costly, as the drivers immediately demanded four times the value shown on the rare working meter that one vehicle happened to possess. (Not that the meter value has any relation to either the price you pay or the theoretical fare - to translate from the first to the last requires a copy of some enormously complex official tables, and to translate from the first to the second requires either a pessimistic nature or considerable negotiating skills.) As an IMF employee came out to side with the drivers, I sat down on a nearby boulder to avoid giving the impression of being in a hurry. Mere seconds later our negotiating team caved in, however, on realising that they were arguing over less than a pound. (Of course, in any argument about how much one should be bargaining down local would-be-extortionists this realisation is entirely irrelevant, but standing in the sun at midday in midsummer in mid-India, moral debates can frequently take a back seat in the decision-making process.)

It was time for our pre-briefing briefing, and Rahul met us, accompanied by a formally dressed Indian lady: another Eco employee and, incidentally, a national ski champion. In the air-conditioned library, Rahul told Andy what to expect and what to say, and mentioned that the owner of Eco Adventures, Colonel Singh, had invited us to dinner at his club. Oh yes, and we'd need to buy shirts on the way!

At 3pm, we filed into an air-conditioned boardroom, and sat down. We politely stood up again as the deputy director of the IMF walked in. Tea was served, the hot cups badly damaging the polished surface of the mahogany table. I decided I didn't envy the cleaner. It turned out that the briefing was essentially a formality. It transpired that our maps were considerably better than those of the IMF, and they seemed surprised that our destination, in which only one mountain was shown on their map, was a river valley surrounded by unclimbed mountains ranging in height up to the low 6000s (assuming it was our map that was accurate). The full horror of the situation regarding maps of the Indian Himalaya would add at least a page to this already lengthy diatrabe, so I'll spare you. Suffice it to say that I have little respect for the generations of cartographers who have based their work on the results of previous generations without examining the original survey data (dating from 1851, in most cases!), and none at all for the original British cartographers who made up entire mountain ranges to fill in uncomfortable blank spots in the survey data.

Anyway, that little outburst of mine has taken us through what was a fairly dull meeting. We'll rejoin the story at the meeting's end, where we're asked to pay the IMF another $18 to cover the bank charges incurred in sending them the $2,350 they demanded in advance to cover peak fees, and environmental levy and their costs in lending our Liaison Officer the equipment he would need. (Incidentally, Narinder himself was understandably shocked when he learned much later that it had cost us the equivalent of a year's wages just to provide him with some mountaineering equipment for a few weeks.)

Some complicated financial transactions ensued as we paid the IMF $18 in singles (from our "tips" fund of US dollars), they paid us (via Eco adventures) a Rs. 2000 refund of our accommodation fees (which we'd been under the impression had been prepaid when we paid them again that morning) and Rahul organised a pair of taxis to take us, via the British High Commission, to a market selling shirts.

An hour or so later, freshly showered and dressed in brand new shirts in varying shades of lurid check, our taxis drew up at the entrance to the Delhi Gymkhana Club. An imposing colonial edifice, we strolled through the atrium into a plush waiting area discreetly screened from a large open area that we took to be the dance floor, pausing only to admire a century of Presidents inscribed in gilt upon wooden notice boards in the hallway. A succession of Lords and Earls smoothly segued into a string of Indian names around the time of Independence, we noticed. Around ten minutes later, Colonel Singh himself turned up: a friendly Sikh in middle-age, who greeted us all warmly and led us through to the bar. We ordered drinks: beer seemed to be the uninspired choice of all the expedition members save myself. I chose Gin & Tonic, and quickly regretted it: to my amazement and horror, it was served neither chilled nor with ice! Standards have obviously slipped since the days of Mountbatten! (I doubt He'd have tolerated the serving of lager either, for that matter...) An evening of pleasant conversation ensued; hunger being staved off by a succession of Tandoori snacks. We left at around eleven: an early start for us the next morning would see us, barring accidents, in the mountains by evening.