Conquest of Everest

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

The story revolves around the life and times of the protagonist, George Mallory, adventurous and him trying to out limit his ability all time would be the most apt way of describing him. Coming from a small town with a not-so-good financial background and ending up climbing the walls of Cambridge to become a lecturer there, from scaling the alps to Mont Blanc to the Eiffel tower (almost till he was brought down by the police) and winning his lady’s heart by climbing up a hotel nimble footed and finally going onto become the talk of the town.. the story has it all. The plethora of the agony and the ecstasy which he and his wife goes through is what sets the motion for this good read and the sacrifice which Ruth Mallory (his wife) makes is one every partner would hope for.

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 8^th 1924 and never made  it back and his body was finally discovered in 1999, 75 years since his brave death. 

George and Sandy from Camp VI

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.

• 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.

 And as Nepal sets into another expedition of remeasuring the altitude, Bachendri Pal being shown in a new series of teleads and after having watched a recent bollywood flick, daring seems to be the word for the moment in mind kyunki darr ke aage jeet hai :)