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Nanga
Parbat:
Some background and History
The
Himalayas are a great mountain range. The
central Himalayan mountains are situated in
Nepal, while the eastern mountains extend to the
borders of Bhutan and Sikkim. The Nanga
Parbat massif is the western corner pillar of
the Himalayas. It is an isolated range of peaks
just springing up from nothing, and is
surrounded by the rivers Indus and Astore. Nanga
Parbat or "Nanga Parvata" means the
naked mountain. Its original and appropriate
name, however, is Diamirthe king of the mountains.
Nanga
Parbat Base Camp
Nanga
Parbat (main peak) has a height of 8126 meters/26,660
ft. It has three vast faces. The Rakhiot (Ra Kot) face
is dominated by the north and south silver crags and
silver plateau; the Diamir face is rocky in the
beginning. It converts itself into ice fields around
Nanga Parbat peak. The Rupal face is the highest
precipice in the world. Reinhold Messner, a living
legend in mountaineering from Italy, says that
"every one who has ever stood at the foot of this
face (4500 meters) up above the 'Tap Alpe', studied it
or flown over it, could not help but have been amazed
by its sheer size; it has become known as the highest
rock and ice wall in the world!".
Nanga
Parbat has always been associated with tragedies
and tribulations until it was climbed in 1953. A
lot of mountaineers have perished on Nanga
Parbat since 1895. Even in recent years it has
claimed a heavy toll of human lives of
mountaineers, in search of adventure and thrill.
Its victims, have included those in pursuit of
new and absolutely un-climbed routes leading to
its summit.
Nanga
Parbat
It
was in 1841 that a huge rock-slide from the Nanga
Parbat dammed the Indus river. This created a huge
lake, 55 km long, like the present Tarbela lake
down-stream. The flood of water that was released when
the dam broke caused a rise of 80 ft in the river's 3
level at Attock and swept away an entire Sikh army. It
was also in the middle of the nineteenth century that
similar catastrophes were later caused by the damming
of Hunza and Shyok rivers.
The
Nanga Parbat peak was discovered in the
nineteenth century by Europeans. The
Schlagintweit brothers, who hailed from Munich
(Germany) came in 1854 to Himalayas and drew a
panoramic view which is the first known picture
of Nanga Parbat. In 1857 one of them was
murdered in Kashgar. The curse of Nanga Parbat
had begun.
