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From KC on 09-28-08 Below are emails from Janet who is in India for month – she is sponsored by Mountain Hardware and is being videoed and photographed while rock climbing.
Also Read> Excerpt of Blog from Pat Goodman, one of Janet’s climbing companions
KC
This is already quite a story and they haven’t even arrived at the climbing location yet! Janet is on yet another awesome adventure. Linda
Sept. 28, 2008 – Greeting from Manali, India!
Here is the play by play on our three day journey, if you care to read
it:
September 10: After a late night at the Mahoney’s, Freddie and I had
success making it to our bus in Newburyport, then into Boston, then to
Chicago. Freddie picked Ben Ditto out of a crowd while we sat at a bar
waiting for our overnight flight to Delhi, and the group was 3/4
complete. Ben, though, was on his way to the counter to find out if they
would hold the Delhi flight for our 4th, Pat Goodman, who was delayed in
Charlotte. They refused to hold the plane, so eventually we boarded and
nested in for our long overseas flight. As they announced closing the
doors, Pat suddenly appeared! Yeehaw! But would his bags?
September 11, minus about 12 hours of our life from the time change:
Arrive in hot Delhi around 8 pm. All the bags show except, you guessed
it, Pat’s. Freddie entertains himself by sitting on the conveyor belt
behind a Mountain Hardwear duffel bag, filming (part of our assignment
on this trip is to use our recently acquired film school skills). We
think the shot will go well with Jaws music later on. Pat runs around
trying to find someone to help him locate the bags and eventually with
many phone calls and near tantrums, he has a promise of the bags arriving
in Manali within a few days.
We all head through customs, with the mission of finding a taxi to leave
immediately for Manali, 16 hours away. This is a challenge, it being 8
pm and us knowing no one and being deleriously out of place and
exhausted. We eventually get roped in by the guy who talked the loudest,
and within an hour we have the bags strapped on the roof of the Toyota
SUV and we are on our way, with our man, Mr. Pal in the drivers seat. We
all go in and out of consiousness, due to exhaustion, even as we witness
one of the most wild driving any of us have seen. A combination of a Mr.
Pal’s lead foot; big trucks to dodge from both ways; skinny, winding,
unkempt roads; and the occassional obstacles of mopeds, people, cows and
rivers to deal with.
September 12: We all crack a beer to toast the fact that we are actually
here at around 9 am. Mr. Pal asks us if this is normal. We keep driving.
We arrive in the late afternoon at the Tourist Hotel in Manali, a true
retreat at the bargain deal of 200 rupees ($5) per night. We meet the
wonderful host Gupka. Dinner and sleep quickly follow.
September 13: Motived to get planning and packing for the next stage,
climbing int he Manikaran towers. On our first errand in town, we that
there is no isobutane, ANYWHERE in town. And we have three isobutane
stoves and no whisperlights (which take unleaded fuel among other fuels
if necessary) between all of us (All of us, as it turns out, had
actually packed the whisperlight at home and then unpacked them at the
last minute). Grr.
Still waiting for Pat’s bags too. None of the phone numbers they gave
him were working, no information found.
We decide these two issues were cause to take the rest of the day off.
So we wandered the town snapping photos, found some cool bouldering,
went to yoga class, watched the wild monkeys and had many many cups of
chai tea.
September 14 (today): Ben wakes up and writes home to get info on making
a stove out of two tin cans like his family did when we was a kid, and
starts creating prototypes. This inspires us to then start bribing local
treking people and anyone else we can think of for butane cans and
pursuing other ideas for cooking in the mountains. We also still have to
shop for food and eventually head to the market. The boys are quickly
sidetracked at a barber shop where they stopped for a shave. This
quickly turned into facial massages, cold creams, steam baths, face
masks, shoulder and back massages, knuckle, shoulder and neck cracking
and lots of laughs (a GREAT video footage of the ordeal by yours
truly!). Not your typical spa, as you can imagine. The pictures and
video may do the whole ordeal more justice than mere words.
So that brings us to now.
We heard about the bombings in Delhi and we, and the locals we’ve talked
to, are certainly alarmed. Delhi is a sad place as it is, the poverty
and struggle is so obvious there. But the reality is that we feel almost
as removed from the tragedies as you all might in your homes.
A quick word on the people here in Manali: the people are so
friendly and positive and comfortable. They are willing to help and seem
happy to share. Case in point was one of the shop keepers today: We had
a vague list of what we needed for nearly three weeks in the
backcountry, but were definitely winging it overall (I miss you Sarah!).
He rolled his eyes at first, but then started pitching in ideas of what
we might be forgetting and what we had too much or too little of. He
even sold me chick pea powder and told me the recipe to make chickpea
pancakes as a yummy snack. This guy had no reason to help like he did,
it really would have been more appropriate for him to be pissed at us
for filling up his little shop for so long. But when I thanked him for
his time, he said that he wanted to make sure we were prepared. He said
the mountains are cold this time of year and he does not want people to
go out there and be unhappy. That generosity is everywhere (but I still
also feel like I am more often and commonly looked at like a big stack
of money to be taken advantage of).
As I write, Pat’s bags arrived, leaving our last big challenge of
finding a way to cook in the mountains before we finish repacking and
actually head into the mountain.
Tomorrow morning we will resolve that somehow and take a ride for the
last three hours of road towards the Manikaran Spires, our objective.
Freddie and Pat took us to the picture that actually formulated this
trip…it is a postcard sized photo in a basement shop on the edge of
town. The photo is truly inspiring, as they had been promising us the
whole time we planned the trip. It looks like clean white granite spires
– all unclimbed as far as we know – that will keep us busy for weeks.
There are no trails to get there, no established camps to reclaim, no
good maps, etc, making this a real adventure, and I am very very excited
to see what unravels.
So the next you hear from me will likely be after we come out of the
mountains in early October.
Love to you all,
Janet
Updated on 10-04-08 from Janet. See her first entry below dated 09-28-08:
Greetings from Dharamsala:
I am writing with scabs on the backs of my hands and legs still sore, so
the short of it is, yes, we did get to climb! As luck has it, I do not
have to get into all the nitty gritty details of the account, because
Pat already did, for the backcountry.com <http://backcountry.com/> blog (who supplied us with
oodles of freeze dried dinners and gu’s!):
Read> Excerpt of Blog from Pat Goodman, one of Janet’s climbing companions
Did you read it? OK, here are my comments to add:
Our all-out-light-and-fast-town-to-town style of ascent (vs our original
plan of establishing porter-supported camps along the way) was quite the
adventure, and one of the most challenging physical undertakings I’ve
ever had. Our choice to go ultra light (e.g. single set of cams per
team) limited the lines we could choose, meaning easier climbing, but
less optimal rock conditions (e.g. snowy, icy, wet, loose) and
protection options. Freddie was, excuse my language, like a pig in shit
on this type of terrain, while I was, at one point, squealing that I
wanted to go wee wee all the way home. Too many seasons on good
Cathedral, Yosemite and Patagonia granite I guess. It was my first time
participating in this type of first ascent, and I remain in awe at the
amount of experience Freddie (and Ben and Pat for that matter) has
accumulated on every conceivable type of alpine terrain.
I did thoroughly enjoy myself; it is so unexplainably, incredibly
beautiful up there. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world to shiver
through a sunset and star bright night at 16 k, sharing one sleeping bag
with my man, on a mountain no one is known to have set hand or foot on
top of.
So yesterday we parted ways, and he is on his way to Nepal for another
adventure with Kevin and Ben, while Pat and Ben (Ditto) stayed in the
Kullu region for some more climbing.
I only have 5 days left, so I took an overnight bus last night here to
Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Gov’t in exile. I
am taking Ashtanga and Hatha yoga classes for the next few days with an
incredible instructor named Vijay, and am completely inspired after just
one class with him.
I’ll be home in less than a week now…I trust I haven’t missed too much
besides the near collapse of our economic system…
Love to you all,
Janet