Post-monsoon in the Indian Himalaya was the venue for my summer holidays in 1996. The steep granite walls of the Scottish Route on Bhagirathi III were the objective of our mission. Here is my account.

Bhagirathi III The Scottish Route takes the ridge just R of shade

We arrived from separate parts of the globe at Delhi airport, a bustling mass of foreign colours, sounds and peoples.
We had been keen to leave Delhi the next day, rather optimistically I thought in view of the reputed bureaucracy of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation. In fact, our Peak Adventures representative and trek guide Agni had done a great job in persuading the IMF colonel to attend to our needs and dispatch us on our way with the minimum of fuss. Some duty-free cigarettes were gratefully accepted by the Colonel. Agni was a meticulous but fussy gentleman who was dubbed "Auntie" from his idiosyncratic but charming approach to organisation. It took three days of pot-holed roads for our bus to reach its destination of Gangotri Village at 10,000ft. On the way the towns of Rishikesh and Uttarkashi had provided colourful and noisy interludes. The path up to base camp was a pleasant two day walk on the well-trodden pilgrim trail to to Gaumukh, the glacial source of the holy River Ganges.

	Text and photos by Andy Scrase

Base camp at Nandanban was a beautiful meadow, lush with Alpine flowers. Our arrival was greeted by rain, wind, and snow, and had turned back several teams from their climbs. When the weather cleared, our jaws dropped at the awesome sight of Shivling and the Bhagirathi mountains. Unfortunately, the bad weather had left them plastered in snow, and in the days that followed this did not melt back quickly.

Our first foray towards Bhagirathi III was just a load carrying and acclimatisation trip. The initial two hour trek across alpine meadows and sandy flats was deceptively easy. Our bodies were soon toiling under heavy loads as we climbed 600m up to our advance base camp site on the moraine slopes below the walls of the Bhagirathi cirque. It was a truly awesome amphitheatre of sheer granite walls and ridges, each liberally plastered with snow and ice. The sun barely penetrated some of the darker recesses
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