The Diary of a Mountaineer

This was written by me at eleven years of age. Most of the facts are wrong, but it makes for good reading.

28 September

The greatest day of my life! Joe Greenwell, the famous mountaineer has invited me to climb Mt. Everest with him. Apparently he has heard of my feats in mountaineering. The team consists of six people- Joe Greenwell from Britain, Feng Yang from China, Tom Brown from USA and Peter (I don’t remember his surname, it’s too difficult- but it begins with B) from Switzerland and me. The sixth person is not yet decided, but I’ll get to know soon.

30 September

Joe just called. He says the sixth person is Danil Titov from Russia. It is a very international team, since I am from India.

18 January

We’re due to leave for Leh next month. From there we’ll take a bus to camp.

5 February

We had reached Leh a bit earlier than expected. The rest of the days are reserved for sightseeing and for us to get used to the climate. There are many hazards like high altitude sickness and frostbite. We’re in a hotel right now and we couldn’t have hoped for a better weather. There’s Feng and Peter calling me for a game of cards right now. But for some reason Danil doesn’t interact a lot with us. He just mutters things in Russian. I doubt he knows a lot of English.

6 February

We’re still in the hotel. That day I just passed Danil as he was sitting in a corner. He just sprang up suddenly and said,” Hello, You Surty? I Danil. Want joss?” He held up a bottle of juice. Before I could answer, he went on. “No? Okay. You have later. Come here.” He led me to the kitchen. “I so scared of fire. I like cold.” he said. “You make food?” He told me the recipe of some Russian dish and I made it for him. When I tasted it, I was so proud of my cooking. From then on he has started talking to me. I like the way in which he speaks English. He isn’t a bad fellow at all. Oh, by the way, we’re going to climb the mountain on the 8^th.

8 February

I didn’t sleep at all. We left at dawn and have already ascended about 8 km. Feng knows every corner of the mountain. Tom just told me a few ghost stories. I feel Danil knows better stories than him. We reached the camp halfway up the mountain. We’re just going to refill our provisions. We don’t want to waste time here. Next morning we will continue our climb.

9 February  

A devastating day! Danil has gone missing and Feng is unwell. But he still wants to go on inspite of telling him, that it is not advisable and blah blah blah. We’ll go a bit slowly now for him. But it is impossible to stop without getting freeze-dried.

10 February

Feng’s gone missing too. We now feel it’s our duty to find Danil and Feng. We’ve decided that we’ll abandon our trip to the peak and using our GPS, we’ll find our way out. We all are preparing ourselves physically and mentally for it.

11 February

’m getting very scared. At about 5 pm, I looked up and saw a white creature high on top of the mountain. It was running on two legs and was blowing up a cloud of before disappearing behind a rock. Others did not believe me but never the less, we headed in that direction. Reaching the rock, we found foot prints. We followed them and they disappeared near a cave. We saw Danil and Feng near the cave. They were dead. I think this will be my last entry. The white creature has found us. It looks like a yeti. It is coming closer.... I think this is.... the end....

Sorry for the sudden ending. I cannot tell you anything else about it except for the next day’s newspaper headline.

TEAM OF SIX MOUNTAINEERS FOUND DEAD IN MOUNTAIN CAVE