As a kid, when Arjun Vajpai would play hide and seek he would invariably climb up the trees to conceal himself from his friends. Today, the Noida boy doesn’t want to come down. No, not from the trees…from the roof of the world. At 23, Arjun has climbed four 8000 metre peaks, a world record, and is now eager to complete the grand slam by scaling 14 such peaks. “People often ask me, don’t you feel lonely there, I say, I feel at home. My soul takes me there. Here the society has been given to me. Mountaineers get to pick their own social group and then they work towards a common goal,” says Arjun, who has just returned from Nepal after climbing Mt. Makalu, the fifth highest mountain in the world.
In fact, Arjun says, one of discussions that mountaineers often indulge in is how the society looks at them. “People often say why we go through this kind of suffering. I say people in cities lead a physically comfortable life but mentally their lives are stressed. In the mountains, we are physically uncomfortable but there is complete peace of mind. Physical stress will pass but memories will stay forever. We humans don’t have the capacity of unlearning experiences. We can pretend but they stay somewhere.”
Profound words from a boy who refuses to read books because they carry someone else’s experiences. It is another matter that he has penned his own experience of scaling the Mount Everest in “On Top of the World: My Everest Adventure”. Like a character of a page turner, he wants to live a life where every few months he is on the edge, where he doesn’t know what lies at the next turn. “Like every explorer, I want to be at the outermost rim of the society from where I want to reach where nobody has been there before. Most virgin peaks are in India and if you can climb them, you can name them,” gushes Arjun, now sounding more like his age.
We meet at Made In India, the fine dining restaurant of Noida’s Radisson Blu and one is eager to know what does he eat up there. With watermelon juice in hand, Arjun recounts, the process starts with drinking lots of water to get acclimatised to the low oxygen levels. “White ice has lot of air content, so as soon as we reach the base camp we look for blue ice to satiate our thirst. One is expected to drink at least five litres of water a day.” Arjun also carries specialised stoves which run on butane gas to heat pre-cooked food and water. The problem is the water has to be boiled and over a period of time it takes away the ability to taste from taste buds. To resuscitate them, Arjun carries his mother’s lehsun ka tikhat (garlic chutney), which is super spicy. “It has lot of zing. Then I carry namkeen and nutcrackers which are very popular among my fellow climbers from Austria, Spain and China.” In return Arjun gets lots of chocolates, which are gold in higher altitude region. “Europeans offer exquisite cheese, speck and salami and the Chinese come up with octopus meat and dried fish.”
Here the chef comes up with non vegetarian kabab platter to spice up our conversation. Arjun starts with galauti and soon polishes off tilasmi mahi tikka as well before telling us how, at times, one has to go back to primitive ways of food collection as well. “During the descent from Makalu, when we started from the base camp the weather suddenly deteriorated and the helicopter could not reach us for three days. During this period we had to capture lambs from the wild and consumed fresh mutton to keep going.”
The real challenge, though, begins once they leave the base camp for the peak. The supply of fresh food dries up and they have to rely on ready-made noodles, dry fruits and chocolates. Here training comes to the rescue as from 10000 to 12000 calories in a day the food consumption comes down to 3000-4000 calories. “There is extreme weight loss. The altitude is so severe that you don’t like eating. We carry dry fruits and lots of chocolates – things that give instant energy because body needs carbohydrates.” In his expeditions, Arjun, trained at Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, has lost 9 to 18 kilos in two months. “That is why in my resting period I just eat and sleep,” he chuckles.
To counter the effect of weight loss on climbing ability, Arjun gains a lot of weight before going for the expedition. “It is to ensure that there is no muscle loss. In the training you have to develop muscles and over that the right amount of fat. I gain fat towards the end of the training so that it doesn’t stay on the body for long. However, the weight gain should not be at the cost of endurance levels. That’s why all along we try to simulate the environment that my body is going to face at 25-26000 feet.” However, in the same vein, Arjun adds that physical exercise can take you only up to a point and after that mind takes over. “You can’t train for every challenge. After a point you have to leave it for the mind. It does wonders. It defines us as human beings. During the Nepal earthquake, I was on the way to Mt. Makalu and I had only 12 cashew nuts left. I had to convince myself that I have to survive on one nut a day.”
For him, says Arjun, who also gives motivational talk in corporate houses, a mountain is like a living entity, whom one should not challenge without proper preparation. Has he given them a gender as well? “Oh yes! The kind of mood swings they have, they have to be female. Most mountaineers would agree with me. That’s why in Hindu and Buddhist mythology they have been named after goddesses.”
On the lighter side, Arjun, now digging into jhinga kali mirch, says he often gets fed up with the watery Nepali dal and undercooked vegetables. “So the moment I reach home, I ask my mother to prepare karhi chawal and aloo ka parantha.” He is adept at cooking as well. “I can survive. I am good at curries, something my fellow climbers love to try. Because only Indian curry has tomato puree and ginger paste. But sometimes, it gets too spicy for my Chinese and Spanish friends and they have to often rush to the makeshift loo.”
After a month’s break, Arjun will return to training. He is aiming at K2 but before that he wants to climb Kanchenjunga and Annapurna. “It is not about the height alone. Climbing a mountain is like solving a puzzle. Over the years, the riddle of Mount Everest has almost been solved. No Indian has climbed K2 yet. In terms of terrain it offers a different kind of challenge. Its base camp is almost 1000 metre lower than of Mount Everest’s. So you need to have better stamina. Annapurna has a higher fatality rate. There is a gully where avalanches get triggered very easily.”
Very much like the kulfi on our plate. As I also get to break some ice literally, Pahari, as Arjun’s friends call him, has the last word for young climbers. “It is not an expensive sport, to begin with. I have done 6000 metre backpack climbs within 10-12000 rupees. Also it is the only sport for which the government has created a separate category. So give it due respect. Don’t fake the results and don’t depend on sherpas to push you up. It creates a bad name for Indian mountaineering community. In my second attempt at Makalu, I had to return when I was just 60-70 metres away from the peak. I wore a 3D spot detector, so that everybody would know my position. I returned and climbed it on the fourth attempt. In our society, a mountaineer’s word has lot of respect and we have to live up to it.”
