c u on top - satyabrata dam

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...

In climbing, especially the extreme kind where we dangle from non-existent holds and bullet-proof vertical ice slabs, words and languages are mostly superfluous. We often don't say anything, in order to save our breaths and energy for that one impossible move, and when and if we do, it is often an expletive to which we don’t expect an answer. For our last prayers, when the need arise for such devotion to God, we generally mutter silently inside the deepest and unknown recesses of our souls asking forgiveness for our stupidity. In none of the situations, as you can evince, are words or languages (that can be understood by your climbing co-conspirators) necessary. Climbing is an activity that transcends borders of demography, religion, sex, language and visions. Where we perhaps differ, fundamentally, is our individual ethics and reason to climb. Put any two climbers together on a hard route, who may have never met before, or don't understand each other's tongue, and they wou...