Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [35]
Invariably I would get the occasional macho lad who would turn up determined to prove to everyone how tough they were. Luckily these types never lasted long, as I basically taught the ethos of minimal force, and the art of using an aggressor’s force against himself. The machos soon got bored of this passivity.
On the whole the folk who signed up were committed, well-meaning people who just wanted to learn how to defend themselves if they were ever in a tough spot.
Soon the number of clubs I taught at was growing, and I was beginning to earn some half-decent money. But it had always been a means to an end – the end being to travel.
It was time to move on.
I felt a bit guilty when I stopped teaching the classes, as the regulars were so much fun, but I made sure I handed the clubs on to other good instructors I knew.
I had loved the camaraderie of it all, but I had bigger dreams that I wanted to follow.
CHAPTER 31
I soon had enough money saved to take my old school friend Watty up on his offer of travelling through northern India together, hiking and exploring.
His family knew a retired Indian Army officer who wanted to start a trekking company for young school leavers; and we were to be his English guinea pigs, upon whom he could test various different treks and adventures.
It was a dream opportunity.
We spent a month hiking through the Indian Himalayas, around Darjeeling and beyond. We travelled on the roofs of trains, slept on wooden beds in remote mountain villages, and rode the white waters down mountain rivers.
We also got to explore the spectacular regions of western Bengal and northern Sikkim, both of which were then restricted zones for tourists, due to the border disputes with Pakistan, but for which the Indian Army officer had arranged special permits.
We visited the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, outside of Darjeeling, where they ran a winter mountaineering school run by Indian Himalayan guides, and I was hooked. The place was like a shrine to the great mountaineers, and the stories of death and adventure on the highest peaks on earth had me entranced.
Meanwhile, Watty had fallen in love with a local Indian girl, which proved a massive distraction to adventure, as far as I could see. He announced he was off to go and visit her family; but all I wanted to do was hike the mountains in the distant hope of getting to see Everest herself.
When I rose early one freezing cold mountain morning, woefully ill-equipped in terms of appropriate clothing, footwear or sleeping bag, I finally got to watch the sun rise over Everest in the distance, looming like a giant across the horizon.
Now, like Watty, I, too, was in love.
On our return to lower altitudes, I bought a large, rolled-up, laminated poster of Everest (which was a bigger version of the one that my father had given me when I was a young boy, after one of our climbing forays), and I vowed to myself that one day I would risk it all and attempt to climb the biggest, highest mountain on earth.
The truth is that, at that stage of my life, I had no idea what such an expedition would really involve. I had minimal high-altitude experience and, according to all the books, I was far too young to make a serious high-altitude mountaineer.
But I had a dream, and that always makes people dangerous.
Dreams, though, are cheap, and the real task comes when you start putting in place the steps needed to make those dreams a reality. I had never been one for idle threats, and I made my Everest intentions clear to all who were close to me.
To a man, they thought I was mad.
Before leaving India I had one more ambition I longed to fulfil – I had always dreamt of meeting Mother Teresa.
I discovered that her ‘mission of mercy’ headquarters was based in Calcutta, so we routed by train into the huge, terrifying, sprawling metropolis of one of the