The (Unbelievable) Kindness of Strangers
September 1992. After about ten days of rickety Indian buses, army checkpoints, and trekking through dense, humid forest we reached our base camp at 4,000m, below the imposing and alluring unclimbed peak of Tupendeo. It’s a beautiful mountain, referred to by some as the ‘Dru of the Kishtwar’, lying in the border area of Jammu and Kashmir, in a remote valley that sees few western visitors.
After a few days’ acclimatisation, my climbing partner, Angus, and I set off to climb the mountain. Access to it was barred by a steep, boulder-strewn moraine field that led to a small glacier at the base of the main face at 4,900m. We established a cache of gear at what we over-enthusiastically dubbed ‘ABC’. After the first day of climbing we’d made good progress and passed what, from below, looked like the crux section of the wall and were about two-thirds of the way up. The next day it snowed hard and we decided to sit it out on a relatively comfortable ledge; big enough for one of us, with the other perched a few metres above.
The striking peak of Tupendeo (5700m)
The next day was better and we set off up the last section of difficulties, following a steep, snow-filled couloir that led to the summit ridge. As Angus pulled onto the ridge he dislodged a football-sized block. I was not in the fall line but, nonetheless, ducked and got as close to the rock as I could. The very first thing I recall was the sound of a dull thud and then an all-embracing sensation that is hard to describe. It was like every nerve in my body was screaming at me. And then I just started shouting, over and over, ‘my leg, my leg’. The lower part was hanging there, swinging and looked like it was only held on by the clothing. The rock had severed my tibia and fibula and removed a large piece of the front of my shin. Blood was pouring out and I was unable to really comprehend the situation for some time. Eventually, I understood. Yes, I really was mortally injured, incapacitated, and near the summit of an unclimbed peak in a remote part of the Indian Himalaya. Rescue seemed somewhere between improbable and impossible.
Angus put me in a sleeping bag and started the abseil down to get help. It took four days to get me down the mountain and onto the glacier. From here the treacherous, steep and loose moraine field barred our way. By day five I was delirious with gangrene and blood loss and had no idea what was going on. Several people from the local hamlet, Kaban, which was about six hours down the valley, arrived with a makeshift stretcher. It was not until many years later that I learned of the heroic, unprompted effort they had made to carry me down to flatter, safer ground where a helicopter could land.
The recovery was slow and there were many difficult times and dark moments. I’d lost quite a bit of bone and flesh and it was all badly infected alongside frostbite in my foot, which went through my Achilles, all the way to the bone. I had nine operations and was on crutches for four years, but slowly, ever so slowly, I was able to do a little bit more each year.
Making the return to the mountain
Ten years after the accident, two days before my 40th birthday, I ran a local half-marathon and won by a slim two seconds. That felt like one skeleton I could put back in the closet but there were, for sure, others lurking in the deepest, hard-to-reach parts of my psyche. While the fact that I could still run and still compete felt amazing, there were many things I couldn’t do because of physical and psychological barriers. I did climb (not mountaineer) again with Angus. For our first route together, for reasons passing understanding, we decided to climb the Pat Littlejohn ‘ultra classic’ Crow (E3) in Cheddar Gorge. It sounded amazing but in reality was quite loose and chossy in places, the last thing we wanted after our previous outing together!
Thirty-two years after the accident, in September 2024, I found myself visiting the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore and, as part of that trip, I took part in some fieldwork on a glacier in Ladakh. The week before, myself and a colleague from IISc (my unofficial guide) got on a bus from Jammu-Kishtwar before taking a car to the roadhead from where we hiked up to Kaban. I was met by a welcome party of villagers, several of whom had been part of the original rescue. They placed a khata (a traditional ceremonial scarf) around my neck and I spent three days in the village, meeting my rescuers and being treated like a long-lost son or brother. It was one of the most heart-warming, life-affirming experiences I have ever had. These people owed me nothing, more the reverse, yet they were so pleased, so happy to see me, alive, well and whole. At first, when I tried to explain to them how grateful I was for everything they had done and for saving my life, the words wouldn’t come out, I was so overcome with emotion.
Jonathan with his khata at the foot of the peak
With locals in Kaban
People talk about closure. I don’t really understand what that is when you’ve lost something important to you. There is no such thing for me. It’s about acceptance; embracing a new way of being and a new, different path. Not necessarily worse or better, just different. My journey back to Kaban was not about closure, although we did make a shrine to the gods below Tupendeo, but about accepting and embracing my new path and the beauty in and of the people who saved my life.
by Jonathan Bamber
