My father did a 100,000-mile overland expedition between 1964 to 1966 in his wheelchair focused on assessing vocational rehabilitation methods to support handicapped people gain lifelong employment. He wrote his memoirs and the story of the expedition in his book The Unbeaten Track which was published in 1970. For my Heart Gift today I wanted to share the prologue which tells the story of his 12,700 hike through The Amarnath Pilgrimage in the Himalayas, strapped in his wheelchair to the back of a pony. On this hike, I believe he became the most elevated disabled person in the world at the time.
“On the far horizon, the rising sun was tinting with crimson the snows of the high Himalayas. It was 6 a.m., and I felt ravenously hungry.
‘Hey, surely that porridge must be smoked enough by now?’ I called.
Pinuri, our head porter and guide who had been up for the past hour, was filling the shepherd’s hut where we had camped for the night with clouds of acrid smoke.
‘Coming, Sahib,’ he said, whistling cheerfully as he spooned the steaming concoction into mugs. The porridge tasted wonderful, despite the grit. We wolfed it down, and followed it with tea, stewed black, as dark as the cauldron that simmered over the open fire.
The old woman who owned the hut came down the ladder from the garret where she had been sleeping, scratching her bottom energetically. Pausing a moment to review the scene, she cleared her throat, and spat from between her toothless gums.
‘Pinuri, how much should I pay her?’ I asked. Local custom allowed the traveller to seek a night’s rest in any hut, but the owner always charged something.
‘Three rupees plenty,’ Pinuri replied. I handed over the money, and calculated that the charge came to fourpence a head. But two scraggy goats had shared our lodgings, together with a cockerel which had crowed most of the night from a wicker basket a few inches from my head. Perhaps the charge was quite reason- able, after all. The old woman tucked the coins away inside her bodice. She watched with an expressionless face as we checked our kit, and prepared to move off.
We travelled light. Apart from our sleeping bags and a few warm clothes, we had only brought torches, cigarettes for the porters, and various basic foodstufifs that we knew would be unobtainable in the hamlets. Even so, two days out from base camp in Kathmandu, Nepal, each of our five porters was shouldering sixty pounds.
The prospect of the mountain before us was daunting zig-zagged up the stony path. Pinuri took the lead, climb the ease of a mountain goat. Every so often he would break into song, to be answered by the high-pitched yodelling of another Sherpa towards the rear, whom we had nicknamed American Wallah. Uncle Sam’s popularity was due to a pair of U.S. Army mountaineering boots and a windcheater which America Wallah had acquired on a previous Himalayan climb and of which he was immensely proud. As their voices echoed from mountain to mountain in the clear air, I felt glad to be alive.
We stopped for lunch on a grassy ledge, overhanging a valley deep below, but Pinuri would not let us rest for long. ‘Must go, Sahib. Must reach next sheep hut before night.’ After another hour’s hard climbing, I heard mutterings behind me.
‘My God, Arthur, this is killing me. How much farther?’ Julian Ingram, my companion and the expedition’s mechanic, was finding it hard to keep up. A few weeks previously, he had been sitting behind an office desk. He was puffing and blowing hard.
‘Cheer up, Julian,’ I answered. ‘It levels off quite soon.’ From my vantage point I could see that Pinuri had stopped ahead, and was pointing vigorously to some huts clinging to the flank of the mountain, a little below the path. The huts looked even more ramshackle than the previous night’s ‘hotel’; I wondered uneasily why he was stopping. By the time the rest of us had caught up, Pinuri was sitting on the ground outside one of the hovels. As we approached, I saw at a glance that the man he was sitting along- side was severely disabled, his legs bent and contracted in a rigid position.
I could also see from the look on their faces that they were wondering: what was I, a fair-haired, white ‘Englishman’ doing in this part of the world? Why was I being carried on the back of a Sherpa? They probably thought I was lazy.
‘Hey Sahib,’ Pinuri greeted me excitedly, ‘you ask me to find man no walk. No legs like you. Man here.’
It was quite true. Eight years previously, I had lost the use of my own legs through polio. My lower extremities were paralysed; whenever the going was too rough for my wheelchair, I had to be carried. One of our main purposes while on this expedition was to find others who had suffered a similar disability. So wherever we went, I made a point of asking if there were any disabled people in the locality.
Now the Sherpa who had been carrying me placed me on the ground, and Julian heaved me out of the conical basket, or bora, in which I had been riding. The assembled group looked on without a flicker of interest or surprise as I tucked my legs into a comfortable position with my hands.
‘Pinuri, please ask him his name and age.’
While they were talking, I looked at their pathetic hovel, bare of furniture of any sort, except for their two brightly polished brass cooking pots, their most valuable possessions. Apart from some turnip peels drying in the sun a few feet away, there was nothing to be seen. From the look on their faces I felt I knew the story, even before Pinuri began to translate.
‘He says his name Blon of Tamang people. This wife Sailee, this daughter. Age he not know.’
Despite Pinuri’s rudimentary English, we gradually pieced together the story. Blon had once managed to eke out a precarious living, working in the fields. But about seven years ago, over the space of two days, his left arm and both legs had become totally paralysed.
‘He say Lama come to pray, chase it away,’ Pinuri added. ‘But Lama no help.’ Pinuri was obviously enjoying his new role as translator. Julian, on the other hand, was visibly shaken. ‘But why doesn’t someone call a doctor?’, he asked me quietly.
‘Because the nearest doctor would be back in Kathmandu. And even if they could find one prepared to make the two-day trek, what would they pay him with?’
To make sure, I checked with Pinuri, who confirmed that the nearest doctor was in fact in Kathmandu. I worked it out that even if Blon had been fit and earning, the doctor’s fee would represent a whole year’s wages. But now Blon could barely drag himself about painfully on his bottom.
‘When did they last eat?’ I asked Pinuri.
‘Three days ago. But Sailee says today they eat.’ he added, pointing towards the turnip peels. Evidently they could not afford whole turnips. Sailee and the daughter went out regularly to look for work, labouring in the fields for two rupees a day. But there had been no work now for two months, and they were reduced to begging in the village. ‘She just come back from village,’ Pinuri said. ‘For five days nobody give her anything.’
‘What a life,’Julian murmured, looking up towards the majestic span of the Himalayas. ‘What hope have they got?’ ‘None at all, this side of a miracle.’ Pinuri was urging us to get going again. As I thought of some way to say good-bye, some word of comfort to these people in their barren, hopeless situation, I could only think of those words from Virgil’s Aeneid Una salus Victis nullam sperares alutem. ‘The only peace for the damned lies in hoping no more.’
I had faced this moment of departure many times before. It had defeated me every time. What could I say? Blon was not unhappy, but resigned to fate, to his lot in life, his karma. There was nothing to say. I merely looked at him full in the eye, hoping that in some way I would pass on to him some of my own faith and hope. The path grew steep again. As I looked back at the huts I could see Blon lying where we had left him. Suddenly America Walla started cursing me from below. ‘No move, Sahib. Me fall.’ ‘Sorry, America Wallah.’
Obviously it was getting tricky, even in American boots. I sat as still as I could in the lurching basket, hanging on to the sides with my hands. I thought again of Blon, condemned to a slow and miserable death. Surely something could be done? Surely there was something that even I, with my own disability, could do for such people, even on a modest scale. But what? That was the problem we still had to solve.
The sun was now setting, and the temperature falling sharply. I began to worry a little as to whether we were going to make it to the next hut. The thought of camping out in a temperature of eight degrees below zero centigrade was alarming. I grew more worried when I realised that we had to cross a series of torrents. The water gushed down with such fury that it sent up a cloud of spray on to the paths. The spray was freezing, and the paths and narrow log bridges were becoming dangerous. The stars were out by the time we reached the last bridge. In the dim light I could just see a swollen torrent about forty feet below, and the outline of the hut on the far bank. Julian was the first across, bouncing over the narrow plank bridge. But instead of carrying straight on, he turned, cupped his hands round his mouth, and shouted back. His words were lost in the roar of the water, so I waved to him, signalling that he would have to come back.
‘Hey, look out,’ he muttered. ‘That plank is dead lethal.’
It was a nasty situation. The slightest movement on my part could send America Wallah and myself down into a very cold bath. I could control everything except my legs.
‘Julian, I think you had better strap me down.’
Taking a long piece of string, Julian wound it round and over my legs, dangling over the side of the conical basket, strapping them down firmly.’
‘There, that should do the trick,’ he said, finishing a tight knot. ‘Off you go.’
America Wallah heaved me up, and put one foot gingerly on to the plank to balance himself. Then, taking dainty steps like a ballet dancer, he crossed swiftly to the far side.”
* Heart Gift is a community of people who give from their hearts. You are invited to join to be inspired and, when ready, to share your favorite quote, letter, joke, prayer, advice, music, art piece, story, song, ritual, Grandma’s recipe — anything. We can all help create a more beautiful world when we are Permissionaries — giving each other permission to be authentic, vulnerable and heart led.