Almost 15 years after they died trying to create an Indian record on Mt. Everest, a British mountaineer is seeking to help the three Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) heroes who remain unsung and even bereft of a last resting place.
Ian Woodall, a British climber who survived the darkest tragedy on Mt. Everest in 1996 when a freak blizzard killed eight people on a single day, is returning to the world’s highest peak in 2011 to ascertain if ITBP climbers Tsewang Paljor, Dorje Morup and Tsewang Samla actually reached the 8848m summit on that fateful day of May 10 or were misled by the growing fog.
The three men could be the first Indians to have summited Mt. Everest following the Northeast Ridge, the legendary route taken by British climber George Mallory and his partner Andrew Irvine in 1924 when they too vanished near the peak.
Whether Mallory and Irvine had summited the peak, well ahead of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, remains one of the biggest controversies in mountaineering history. The three Indians’ climb too remains shrouded in mystery.
The trio had radioed their team leader, Commander Mohinder Singh, that they had reached the top. Singh in turn conveyed the glad tidings to then Indian PM P.V. Narasimha Rao, causing rejoicing in India. Within hours, the triumph turned to tragedy as a snow storm and torrential winds engulfed the climbers, causing eight people to die of exposure. To add to the tragedy, the Indians’ claim came into dispute. American journalist Jon Krakaeur, whose account of the tragedy — Into thin air — is probably the most-read — claims they were misled by poor visibility and clouds into thinking they had reached the summit when they were still about 500m below.
Now Woodall, 54, is returning to the peak to search for cameras and other personal objects that could help throw light on the issue.