The Frozen River - new book by James Crowden launched this week
Barefoot through the frozen river on the Chadar
John Buchan, of 39 Steps fame, once wrote a book called Salute To Adventurers - which is a relevant way of starting this article because this is a salute to one West Country adventurer in particular, whose new book is attracting much praise in high places with one pundit likening him to a modern-day John Buchan.
And salute is just about all you can do when you learn for the first time, after being good mates with someone for the best part of 20 years, details concerning one of the most remarkable interludes in their life.
I knew that my friend, the Somerset-based writer James Crowden, had lived in the highest mountain range in the world, but I had no real idea what his altitudinous adventures entailed. At least, I didn’t until this week when I read The Frozen River, Seeking Silence in the Himalaya (published by William Collins).
“On Friday 31st January 2020 James will be delivering a talk on his book and on his remarkable Himalayan adventures at The Ebenezer in the Seed Factory (Aller, Somerset TA10 0QN)
Doors open at 7.00 for a 7.30 start”
Not only did the book come as a revelation for me as a friend, it also happens to be the most gripping and fascinating reads I have enjoyed for a very long time.
When someone tells you that they once spent the best part of a year living in a high valley in the Himalayas, you vaguely imagine a hardy young soul with a rucksack yomping over icy passes, living in rough village guest-houses and staying in the odd monastery here or there.
James Crowden can be seen in the centre of this group - the man with a Union Jack on his rucksack
You do not imagine a country-boy born on Dartmoor organising his own one-man expedition and hiring horsemen to carry six-months’ worth of belongings into one of the most inaccessible valleys in the world so that he can become the first or maybe second Westerner ever to overwinter in its freezing wastes and live among the subsidence farmers and monks.
There had been an obscure and brilliant Hungarian linguist who’d been in Zangskar in the early part of the 1800s, but he’d left few notes or records about his winter there. And there’d been been a rather unlikely expedition undertaken by three British housewives in 1958, but they stayed briefly and escaped long before winter. So when James entered the high valley in 1976, just a day or two before the first seasonal snows closed the entire area off for winter, his appearance was regarded as very novel indeed.
Things have undoubtedly changed quite a bit in this remote corner of India now the first road has reached the valley (something James went back to see just recently) - but back then Zangskar meant a six or seven day hike over some of the highest passes in the world.
More than that, it meant planning. There would be no shops or bazaars up in this high valley where James could purchase the necessities for his lengthy stay. Everything - all his food, medicines, even his ration of candles (half a candle a day) - had to be purchased back down in civilisation and hauled physically over the passes to a valley located more than two-and-a-half vertical miles above sea-level.
And all this had to be done before the snows arrived, because once they did, Zangskar was almost entirely cut-off and isolated from the rest of the world.
Almost cut-off… This beautiful, high-altitude, ice-bound, sparsely-populated, prison had one extraordinary, perilous, ancient, and some would say extreme form of ingress and egress. James’ book title refers directly to that one deep and dangerous avenue of hope, survival and commerce.
Gonpo - a famous meditator from the Stegrimo Monastery
The Zangskar River is the somewhat terrifying waterway that eons ago formed the deep narrow gorge which allows it to escape the high valley which bears its name, and tumble and roar its way north, cutting through the vast Zangskar Range to join the Indus River (which in turn gives India its name).
Just beyond from that eventual, distant, meeting of the two rivers, stands the ancient trading town of Leh. It is to this centre that the Zangskari people travel during winter so that they can sell their high-value yak milk - and they can do so thanks to the fact that the extreme low temperatures tame the wild and mighty river by turning it to ice.
Good going - lots of solid ice on the chadar
That is the theory, anyway. But nothing is ever as simple as it seems - and in high altitude mountains everything is always a good deal more difficult and dangerous than you’d ever dream.
Even in good times when the river is hard frozen, this five, six or seven day journey by foot is difficult, arduous and perilous. In average times when there are holes in the ice and the river roars underneath, it is downright dangerous. And in bad times it is impossible and potentially deadly.
The Zangskari people call this extreme avenue of commerce the ‘chadar’ and some of them do it two or even three times a winter (although of course that is becoming increasingly difficult nowadays thanks to climate change).
Back in the early 1970s a young Army recruit from Dartmoor got to hear about the ‘chadar’ and - having fallen in love with mountains and lonely places - began to plan ways of getting to the Himalayas so that he could try this insane journey for himself.
That meant buying himself out of the Army; it meant endless in-depth researches; and it meant scrimping and saving - then purchasing enough of everything he’d need to survive for more than six months in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth.
James did all this and then - once he’d set up house and home (in a tiny draughty room) in Padum, the village capital of Zangskar - was tough, resilient and charming enough to persuade the local men to take him on a ‘chadar’.
Sometimes there was nothing for it but to wade across icy open water
That fact that he has now - all these years later - written about it in such a beautiful and thoughtful way is enough to have me re-evaluating my friendship with him. I have always admired this Westcountry writer and poet, now I am adopting something approaching reverence for the mild-mannered, soft-spoken, adventurer from Winsham.
Not only does the book detail the week-long journey down the gorge that James took with a gang of Zangskari men - it also rather modestly describes the even more dangerous journey back up. And just as gripping in their own way are the accounts of village life spent up there on the roof of the world in temperatures that would often sink below minus 20 degrees (indoors, that is - more like minus 40 c outside).
The book is also coloured with the dazzling prayer flags and chants of the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries which dominate that remote valley. And James goes further - his text resounds with the deep and sombre backdrop of mountain and tantric silence.
Dorje Tsering - one of James’ companions in Zangskar
In short, The Frozen River is one of the most remarkable tomes ever to come out of the West Country. James Crowden describes a style of life that seems as strange, magical and far-fetched as an existence endured on another planet.
Alas, it is a life that is fast-disappearing thanks to climate change, road-building and the reach of globalisation. Why risk your life two or three times a year traversing one of the most dangerous and difficult commercial journeys imaginable when you could buy a pat of industrially made butter off the back of a truck?
But to even ask that question is to miss Jame Crowden’s underlying point… The traditional existence in the high Himalayan valleys wasn’t/isn’t so much a lifestyle, but an entire philosophy. If it disappears, the world will be a much poorer place.
The Frozen River, by James Crowden, published January 23 by William Collins, price £16.99.
Nyungney Karsha in March 1977
Karsha Gustor
On Friday 31st January 2020 James will be delivering a talk on his book and on his remarkable Himalayan adventures at The Ebenezer in the Seed Factory (Aller, Somerset TA10 0QN)
Doors open at 7.00 for a 7.30 start
Author James Crowden (left) with his old friend Martin Hesp
