c u on top - satyabrata dam

I am often asked what exactly my mind churns when I am doing a dangerous and reckless climb, where the outcome is unknown and I had already crossed the point of no return. Never have I been able to give a satisfactory answer, mostly I would nod and say I don’t remember, since once out of the perilous situation (self orchestrated) my numb and dumb brain would quickly forget all that my mind must have gone through. But in a recent trip of mine, the moment I returned to safer grounds, I jotted down some of my thoughts immediately on a piece of paper and later on reading it, thought it may still not be the right answer to the question of my mind, but it is a convincing one nevertheless, so here it is. While I was going through the miniscule notebook that I had managed to keep and return with during this trip, through the smudged up pencil marks and torn and soaked pages, I discovered that at the end of the day when I climbed the peak and then came down through atrocious conditions, thankfu...

Satya’s own website! The idea seemed far-fetched and preposterous and Satya said so to his friend who insists that Satya must immediately grab the domain name www.satyabratadam.com Satya’s logic is simple, why a personal website and who would be interested? A (Satya’s ever faithful computer geek friend) further insists that many around the globe would be keen to follow him and his stupid insane exploits and would want to know what in general is happening with him once he is out of the Navy. But I am not a celebrity, people only follow celebrities and their bovine tantrums, Satya persists. Well my friend, you are, A chips in, and if you are not we would make you one and getting a website is the first step towards it. That jolts Satya’s self esteem a bit; and he retorts, but I am a kind of non-conformist (he didn’t want to mention the word ‘celebrity’) in my own field, after all people pay for my airfare, boarding and lodging and something on the sides from many countries just to hear me...

In the beginning of the great Himalayan climbs there was the ‘siege ‘ style that was more like a jamboree headed by a sahib of British or European origin, followed by a staggering number of porters, orderlies, factotums, carrying even more staggering number and volume of scientific and exploratory equipment. They were mostly unsure of what they intended or what the specific objective of it all was; if there was one. The idea of actually standing astride a lofty summit was primarily secondary since exploration and opening up the area and filling up the blank spaces in the maps were more in the order of the day. Few intrepid climbs were done nevertheless by such swashbuckling leaders like Shipton, Smyth et al. With the end of the European exploration and British dominance of the Himalaya post Indian independence, the next few decade unfurled the siege style to its utmost glory and evolutionary developments till one day two fine men from the Alps came and introduced ‘Alpine’ style into th...

I had never heard of Malcolm Bass till one day I got his mail that made me realize I would soon be heading for an exciting adventure into the Indian Himalaya with Malcolm as the leader. His CV looked impressive and he had exactly equal number of years as I in the mountains. After a bit of Googling and calling up some of my other British climbing friends, I realized much to my delight that Malcolm was nothing short of an enigmatic legend in the vertical world of UK climbing world. What surprised me though that despite my frequent trips to BMC meets and Scottish winter climbs and the Lakes, our paths had never crossed before. When I met him in the library of Indian Mountaineering Foundation, he won me over from the word go. It’s impossible not to like Malcolm. He has a boyish charm and a child like enthusiasm about everything within sight and then some that is outrageous and riveting in equal measure and draws even the most stoic onlooker into his exuberance like moth to flame. What inst...