Chomolungma, every mountaineer’s pinnacle, is one goddess which any climber would like to scale down once in their lifetime and it would be every adventurer’s dream to call this their ‘Path of Glory’ , a brilliant piece of artefact written by Jeffrey Archer. The Everest expeditions began at the time when India was fighting their first war of independence and it was conquered a century later.
The Britishers known for their enthusiasm of conquering the whole world during that period were quite adventurous too. Delve down into the history pages of the Royal Geographical Society and you would know why!
George Mallory |
Guy Bullock, Geoffrey Young, Simon Odell, George Finch, Edward Norton, Noel Odell, Sandy Irvine to name a few fit into the characters really well (mind you these names are for real though!)
The final expedition team from the RGS |
George Leigh Mallory began his final expedition with Sandy Irvine being his partner for the final climb on a Sunday morning of June 8th 1924 and never made it back and his body was finally discovered in 1999, 75 years since his brave death.
Though the book gives itself a fiction tag, there are certain facts which probably fall into place and are for real except for some of the letters which looked similar to ‘Letters from a father to her daughter by Nehru’ except here the 2 sides are taken up by George and Ruth (unless the letters which were written a century ago were all found to be intact). Members from the expedition team mention the last time they had seen Mallory was a mere 600 feet from the summit, now going through his life and times and the way Archer claims his prime character to be (about him disappearing after reaching atop the roof of the world) , it wouldn’t be surprising if the history books are rewritten.
George and Sandy from Camp VI |
- Will the camera be ever found and turn the history pages all over.
- Did Mallory summit Mt.Everest? Only time would tell as more expeditions set out to discover it.