I ALWAYS COME BACK TO THE HIMALAYAS

durability camping in New Zealand like the camping you get around the United States and at last rigid it were beautiful Summers and the shine of camping together Alaska is a campus delight at this time of the year for adventure [Music] it is a land of Exquisite wildflowers and we reveled in them the air is unpolluted the water purity but probably the most important factor is the nature of nature itself in this part of the world the growing season is short but the sunshine is abundant over 20 hours a day vegetables fairly leap out of the rich soil spurred on by the long Sunshine hours we had heard Tall Tales concerning the size of the Cabbage they were true our New Zealand Garden never produced anything of this size [Music] foreign but the Hillary farmer once again became the Hillary camper as we continued on our way that afternoon we arrived at our destination Mount McKinley Park and we selected a campsite as close to the peak as possible while Ed was sitting up camp the children were making friends [Music] and I was making dinner everyone seems to enjoy eating Outdoors Guess Who's Coming to Dinner [Music] then at last our first close look at Mount McKinley [Music] America's highest peak twenty thousand three hundred The View was everything we expected peaceful Serene magnificent yes the hilleries have learned to enjoy things together which isn't hard when you're camping as a family someone once said the family that camps together sticks together [Music] Alaska provided beautiful scenery lovely campsites exceptional fishing [Music] and friendly humorous inhabitants [Music] but no matter where you camp pitching a tent is an important part of life whether it's in Alaska or in the Antarctic of course you have to adapt to the particular environment actually the techniques you use for camping don't differ too much from one place to another [Music] nowadays with those Rock Bottom to get the picture tendon and many state camping grounds you practically need to use what we call dead men to hold the tent down [Music] my first trip to the Antarctic was in 1956. when Dr Vivian folks LED an expedition across the continent and I laid out Supply Depots all the way to the South Pole but this exploration was a lot later 1967 and way up in the northern part of the Antarctic at Cape Hallett on any Expedition you try to adapt to the conditions much the same as the local inhabitants do [Music] however modern equipment has made traveling in the Antarctic a little easier and it causes great interest to the natives these seals poke their noses up through the ice and have their young on the top [Music] they teach their young to dive deeply the water incidentally is a good deal warmer than it is on top of the ice on this sort of terrain traveling can be quite hazardous winding in and out of pressure ridges and dodging tide cracks which go through to the Open Water weeded a thousand miles or more on each of these snowmobiles [Music] there are times when travel is quite impossible when a blizzard strikes you just pitch your tent and sit it out these tents are a new type and hadn't been tested before I was a bit worried about them but they held up well each Expedition is a separate Adventure and each location has an attraction of its own [Music] but I always come back to the Himalayas thank you [Music] the Himalayas are situated in north of India and on the border between Nepal and Tibet they are on the same latitude as Northern Florida they stretch for 1500 miles which is only a little longer than the Appalachians in the eastern United States but they include an enormous number of great Peaks and it's a land of great climatic contrast paths are drenched with rain over 600 inches a year while the inner Rangers are cold dry and half desert the word in Sanskrit means Dwelling Place in the snow the pronunciation with which I'm most familiar is Himalaya however many people prefer himalia but whatever the name there's a great deal that draws me back here the superb trekking and there are thousands of beautiful campsites then the flowers particularly in the pre monsoon season they are incredibly beautiful the giant Magnolias are a terrific site and of course the Himalayas are famous for Rhododendrons while it's just like walking through a huge Garden for miles and miles [Music] and in the rainy season the high mountain pastures at 14 000 feet are covered with criminals primroses poppies and all kinds of other interesting wildflowers I'm no expert on their names but they are very beautiful well I suppose the biggest attraction in Nepal is the people of the country and the things that they do [Music] at a weekly market for instance there are carpets and Chinese bowls that have come over the Border if you want to have a suit tailored well it can be made for you on the spot although it may fit like a Tailor's Revenge but they can come up with a good shirt on these hand-operated sewing machines there's a big variety of friendly people and always a few animals around as well [Music] of course the mountains exert a powerful attraction on any climber in the party and that includes me there's still so much to do sometimes the challenges are big ones such as this climb in cantiga at 22 000 feet whoops there was a crevice under there with good sound techniques problems such as this can be safely handled on the big mountains you first have to establish a route of which loads can be carried then you have to put in many camps and it all finishes with that final push for the summit at twenty thousand feet even the efficiency of a vigorous man is greatly reduced through the effort of cutting steps and climbing at the summit of kangtiga there was an avalanche on the face and the group was rather lucky to escape however they did reach the top [Music] of course every climb isn't a big one there are lots of little ones too even if it's just climbing Boulders and rock faces around camp and they can be pretty exciting and need all the equipment of modern Mountaineering I even took my family climbing in the Mount Everest region and they learned a lot and fast like scrambling along narrow paths that's Dad's firm hand on our youngest Belinda who was only seven at the time [Music] they learn to love the Beauty and the Grandeur it was a great experience for them [Music] some of the family suffered from altitude sickness but it didn't affect their enjoyment too much and it certainly didn't affect our breakfast appetite especially after two or three hours of vigorous walking our highest Camp was at sixteen thousand feet and we had to cross a glassy Moraine to get there it was rather windy and Barren and the campsite was not far at all from the foot of Everest it was early winter and the temperatures were quite low the lake nearby was frozen solid we set off for a peak 18 300 feet high there was a bit of a scramble and we were rather short of breath but what a marvelous viewpoint the views of Everest are quite terrific Everest isn't reasonably as good of you as you get from any direction for the first time our family really appreciated dad when we saw all those problems between the bottom and the top much as I've enjoyed the mountains I've found that over the years the Peaks have become less important to me are still important but less so now it's the people the Shepherds who live in these mountains they have become my Prime concern it all started in 1961 in Kung Jung Village when we built the first Elementary School the Shepherds had ever had [Music] I always enjoy returning to konjong and the school children walk almost exuberantly at this time there are 130 students it's a ceremonial form of welcome but when all these kids Rush forward and shove the scarves around your neck you're almost engulfed [Music] the parents all come down too and their welcome is equally warm but a little more dignified then you have a ceremonial drink of tea milk or the local Spirits pretty raw stuff too a few years ago virtually everyone here was illiterate you get quite a satisfaction out of seeing them learn to read and write [Music] most of their learning is by route but they make a lot of progress all the same first the English alphabet but mainly the Nepali alphabet the village of bukanji a beautiful area at nine thousand feet in the location of Hillary's 10th school over the years this man had developed an even greater social conscience and became quite dedicated to these people but sometimes even Hillary wasn't able to reach his goal many of the mountains in this region were unclined not for any lack of Desire or ability but for political reasons this didn't stop Hillary from looking they don't stop us from looking or building a few years ago we constructed a hospital in the village of kundi which is around thirteen thousand feet this was the first and only Hospital in the area and now the Shepherds have somewhere to go when they are sick or injured the opening ceremony was the highlight of the year now these people can get treated for all the well-modest ailments of course complicated surgery really isn't attempted unless it's pretty much of an emergency this sort of touching scene can make it all worthwhile experience for this boy who was born deaf to suddenly hear with the benefit of a hearing aid we built a classroom into the hospital children and adults are taught the basic principles of public health and hygiene we know it's important to get Public Health procedures right into the villages and in fact into the homes [Music] it's working with people that give you the most satisfaction we hope it will bridge the gap in understanding and in this case Bridge was the right word here at ringmo the last three Bridges had been washed away by Monsoon flood waters the local people wanted and needed a bridge that wouldn't be swept away so we had a guard building one [Music] everybody helped everybody the local people worked hard and gave their labor free of cost first of all rocks were needed for the foundations [Music] then we used fencing wire for tying things together and wire knitting to strengthen the rock foundations [Music] but the toughest job was getting the heavy logs down from the forest this was really hard work because the forest was a mile above our 10 000 feet elevation to make the task even more difficult the timber was fresh cut and wet so the logs took a lot of handling we didn't have any mechanized equipment you had to keep your eye peel for Rolling logs so you didn't get in front of them and about 20 of these big logs had to be brought down from the forest on either side of the stream we built cantilevers much the same as the shippers do but we were able to get a bigger span by wiring them up then we Haul the logs up and move the central section into place I suppose you'd call it Farm engineering this type of activity takes a bit of Common Sense some Ingenuity and a good deal of hard work I suppose it's really a pretty primitive sort of a bridge but it will serve its purpose this is the main road from Kathmandu up into this area thousands and thousands of people across here every year it's a vital breach especially when the river comes up high as it does during the monsoon season then on to the next job you could hardly describe our construction methods as the most modern available but we had faith in them and so did the Shepherds the inadequate water supply at this Monastery produced a certain amount of dysentery Sir Edmund Hillary offered to help so we brought in three quarter inch plastic pipe and connected it to a little spring which runs all the year round then pipe this into a homemade tank it's a fall of over a thousand feet down to the monastery and this was the last major pylon the pipe was connected at the spring and we listened to hear the water coming down and listen finally it did flow very little at first but the amount increased immeasurably later [Music] the pangboshi monastery and Village today has a good supply of water thanks to an excellent flow and thanks to Edmund Hillary 10 miles away we tackled another project which was of particular interest to me we rebuilt the Terrace in front of the Tommy Monastery which is located up near the Tibetan border it's an energetic three-hour Trek from our camp at kunjong to Tommy we crossed the horse the horse was for the honored guest but the honored guest wasn't at all enthusiastic and offered it to me claiming he was no Horseman nor am I mounting was no small task [Music] Tommy is only a few miles from the Tibetan border with its Chinese Army checkposts the area was prohibited unless you had a very special permit which we had been able to get that's the monastery that red building on the other side of the valley [Music] and way up at the end of the valley is the pass into Tibet this little boy is 12 years old and by title is the head of the monastery although he is not at this time engaged in its Administration he's believed to be The Reincarnation of a holy lava and monk who died many years ago the front Terrace needed repair in fact the Hillary group decided to completely rebuild it but they needed more manpower and it was there each household offered three days of Labor free a considerable contribution to the project this platform was rotting away and the entire slope in front of the monastery was very unstable the sherpa's building techniques had not been entirely satisfactory in the past and so they turned to Hillary it was decided that some big buttresses should be built from low down to support the main wall a simple enough procedure unfortunately the people were not familiar with it and had to be indoctrinated they started buttress a hundred feet down on Solid Rock hundreds and hundreds of tons of rock had to be fried off broken up and moved on men's backs definitely the biggest and toughest part of the whole project at times there were over 150 people carrying rocks the local rock Masons are very expert at making dry rock walls but for added strength Hillary brought up some wire as well and periodically the wall would be secured right back into the foundations to increase its strength before this wooden shoot was built rocks were heaved over the side and there was a strong chance that someone below was going to be injured or perhaps killed but after Sir Edmund constructed the shoot the whole procedure was a great deal safer [Music] there are equal rights for women here They Carried rocks as well as the man [Music] and so we completed the job we were rather pleased with the very high top wall and so were the villagers [Music] we laid a rock surface on the big Terrace in front of the monastery [Music] then the trumpet sounded for the opening of the biggest ceremony of the Year Mani rimdu it had promised to get the rebuilding done in time for this ceremony and it was with a couple of days in hand as a special treat the village planned to give us lunch Ed and I climbed to our places of Honor on the balcony and food was laid out I must say it was all very delicious especially if you like hot chili it was a beautiful morning the Sun was shining and it was quite hot even at 13 500 feet the feast began first we were given tea sweet tea which was very good but from then on we were served Eric a raw local spirit [Music] the young rimpachee as the boy llama is called presented us with scarves of Honor we all got them and rightly so as the project could not have been completed without a combined effort actually the sharpers themselves deserve much credit for a job well done credit for their determination and hard work as I say most sincerely namaste which is a sharper way of giving accordia welcome A forthright Farewell and best of all a genuine thank you namaste and then young reincarnate who has great dignity took his official seat to the sounding of trumpets drums and symbols this meant that the official program had begun this celebration continues for two days [Music] all the dancing in playing has a symbolic meaning some of it is serious some humorous [Music] the local people dressed in all their finery and enjoyed every minute of it the occasion is very informal and the bottles of Eric pass around very freely indeed [Music] the masked dancing is particularly interesting and attractive [Applause] I was pleased to see that Abe's new terrorists and the big war held up very well there was even a clown and he certainly caused Great amusement [Music] we couldn't understand too much of what was going on but it was funny anyway [Music] the final blast of the great trumpets announces the end of the festival the Sherpas can now begin afresh in the New Year having reaffirmed their faith in their religion and they will begin afresh they have a lot going for them Hillary Himalayas happenings this is Sir Edmund Hillary Explorer humanitarian World citizen but one who always returns [Music]