Rereading this book for its first publication in India in 2017, I\u2019m struck by how much \u2013 but also how little \u2013 has changed.\u00a0 The most palpable change is the passing away of some of the members of the expedition: George Band, with whom I shared a tent; Ian McNaught Davis, or \u2018Mac\u2019, who campaigned so hard for the Nanda Devi Sanctuary to be opened once more.\u00a0 But little has happened in terms of access.\u00a0 The Sanctuary remains inviolate or inaccessible, depending on your politics. The Indian government is reluctant to disturb the uneasy status quo.\u00a0 At the time of writing, no permits to go there are being issued by the Indian Mountaineering Federation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the decade since this book was first published in 2004, I am pleased to say that one of the stories at its heart \u2013 how the CIA tried to plant a nuclear spying device on the summit \u2013 has had a great more deal more publicity, both in India and abroad. <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 2010, Vinod Jose published a long article in Caravan <\/em>magazine called \u2018River Deep Mountain High\u2019, which included an interview he had conducted with the Indian leader of the 1965 mission, Captain Kohli.\u00a0 This revealed further details about this strange and secretive episode: how thirty-three Bhotia men from Lata and Reini were hired for the abortive expedition, while nine Sherpas were brought from Sikkim for their expertise in climbing glaciers; and that when Kohli and his team returned in 1966, they discovered the five kilograms of plutonium which powered the nuclear device \u2013 only one kilogram less than used in \u2018Fat Man,\u2019 the bomb dropped on Nagasaki \u2013 were nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jose\u2019s article also included details about one of the project\u2019s initiators, General Curtis LeMay, then the United States Air Force chief of staff and a Dr Strangelove figure who was \u2018one of the most controversial officers in the history of the United States military\u2019. LeMay was a noted proponent of the use of nuclear weapons, and clashed several times with President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the early stages of the Vietnam War arguing that he should be allowed to bomb America\u2019s rivals \u2018into the stone age\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When details of a lost nuclear device were first leaked in the late 1970s, Prime Minister Morarji Desai commissioned a six-member scientific committee to investigate.\u00a0 They produced a 94-page report which recommended continual monitoring of the Sanctuary \u2013 presumably why, when our own expedition gained access in 2000, we came across a unit of Indian army sappers. Needless to say, the results of that continual monitoring have never been made public in India, despite the very considerable health concerns, given the possible effect of nuclear contamination to the headwaters of the Ganges.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Vinod Jose made an impressive and determined attempt to contact some of the many organizations charged with nuclear safety in India, like the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE).\u00a0 However, in a way the reader may not find surprising, no one in any of these organizations wanted to touch what was clearly a hot political potato \u2013 or rather, a hot nuclear device. He was finally able to quote one source on conditions of anonymity, who told him: \u2018As far as the Government of India is concerned, it is a closed chapter.\u2019 With even more worrying complacency, this same source claimed that because the plutonium was buried underground, it could not pose a risk \u2013 this despite the obvious possible effects of seismic or glacier movement in the volatile Himalayan region.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Captain Kohli, the Indian leader of the expedition, was recently quoted in The Hindu<\/em> as saying, \u2018The life of that capsule is 900 years and only 50 years have roughly passed by. It means the radioactive surveillance equipment will keep ticking somewhere in India for the next 850 years.\u2019 \u00a0Kohli\u2019s own account of the episode, Spies in the\u00a0Himalayas,<\/em> which was published in the United States, has added to the growing debate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I would hope that the publication of this book in India will in a small way help put pressure on the government to locate the nuclear device using the more sophisticated techniques that are now available and alleviate any local and national concerns about its possible contamination.\u00a0 This particular sleeping dog should not be allowed to lie quietly \u2013 because if it does ever wake up, the aftermath could be catastrophic.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hugh Thomson, 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rereading this book for its first publication in India in 2017, I\u2019m struck by how much \u2013 but also how little \u2013 has changed.\u00a0 The most palpable change is the passing away of some of the members of the expedition: George Band, with whom I shared a tent; Ian McNaught Davis, or \u2018Mac\u2019, who campaigned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":203,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-without-sidebar.php","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3242","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3242"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3245,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3242\/revisions\/3245"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}