Ripcord Adventure Journal 1.2 Second Edition

Volume 1 | Number 2 | Second Edition 

RAJ 1.2

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 © 2015 of the respective Authors and Photographers. 

Second Edition © 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 

ADVENTURE 

JOURNAL 

1.2 

Editor in Chief 

Tim Lavery 

Featuring 

Shane Dallas 

Jos Van Hemelrijck 

Robb Saunders 

Siffy Torkildson 

Fearghal O'Nuallain 

Kieran Creevy 

Ruth Illingworth 

Second Editon 

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 

A field trip in Antarctica 

Jos Van Hemelricjk 

Mount Fuji versus the couch potato 

Robb Saunders 

Hammam 


The land beyond the forest 


Terroir: Morocco 

Kieran Creevy and Claire Burge 

Charles Howard-Bury 


Contributors and credits 

1 

23 

33 

49 

79 

95 

109 

139

The tribes that time 

forgot 

Shane Dallas 

1


Shane Dallas 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

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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Shane Dallas 

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. 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

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 

2

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Shane Dallas 

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. 

4

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 


Shane Dallas 

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 

5

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Shane Dallas 

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 

7


Shane Dallas 

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 

8




Shane Dallas 

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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Shane Dallas 

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. 

12


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. 

13


Shane Dallas 

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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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 

16




Shane Dallas 

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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Shane Dallas 

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. 

20

"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" 

21

A field trip in 

Antarctica 


25 

22

“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. 

23

24 Image: 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 

25



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. 

26

27

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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? 

29



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 

30

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. 

31

Mount Fuji versus 

the couch potato 

Robb Saunders 

37 

32




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 

33


Robb Saunders 

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 

34




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 

35

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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 

37


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 

38


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! 

39

Hammam 


40



Hammam 


“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 

41

42

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 


Hammam 


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, 

43

Hammam 


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 

44



Hammam 


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 

45

Hammam 


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. 

46



Hammam 


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 

47

48

49

Hammam 


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 

50

Hammam 


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. 

51

Hammam 


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 

52

Hammam 




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 


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 

54

Hammam 


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. 

55

The land beyond 

the forest 


79 

56


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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58





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 

59



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. 

60

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62



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 

63



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 

64



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 

65

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67



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. 

68

"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-Exupéry 

"The Little Prince" 

69

Terroir: Morocco 

Kieran Creevy 

Photos by Claire Burge 

95 

70

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 

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


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 

72


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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74

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Kieran Creevy 

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 

76


Kieran Creevy 

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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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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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 


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. 

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



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. 

82





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. 

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



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.” 



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



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

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.” 

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



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 Howard- 

Bury died. 


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

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





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. 

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



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. 



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





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 Howard- 

Bury'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. 

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



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.” 



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 Howard- 

Bury. 

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, 

90





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. 

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



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. 



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 

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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, Howard- 

Bury 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.” 

93



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, Howard- 

Bury 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). 



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



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

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. 

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



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. 



Having established the camp at Kharta, Howard-Bury and his team 

continued their reconnaissance work. August 6th saw Howard- 

Bury 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



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 


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.” 

The climb that day was very tough but after six hours Howard- 

Bury 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 Howard- 

Bury 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



volunteered that the tracks must be that of 'The Wild Man of the 

Snows', to which they gave the name metoh-kangmi.” Howard- 

Bury 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! 



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





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. 

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



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 Howard- 

Bury’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.” 



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



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. 

101

102 

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 

103

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. 

104

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). 

105


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. 

106

Contributors 


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 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 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. 

107

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. 

108

“People do not decide to become 

extraordinary. They decide to 

accomplish extra-ordinary things.” 

Edmund Hillary 

109

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