Heil Harrer! - legends of Dehradun

ALLinDOON

Abhishek Juneja

Fri Oct 07, 2011, 18:30 IST

The British during the times of Raj had some mysterious fascination with the Himalayas. Whether it was George Mallory quipping 'Because it's there' when asked why he wanted to climb the Everest or George Everest, the man after whom Everest was renamed from Peak XV, they were all crazily obsessed with the highest mountain range in the world. However, there are some unknown, undocumented Europeans who with their adventures have become a part of the folklore. One such man was Heinrich Harrer. While the British were busy salvaging pride in Europe after the outbreak of the Second World War, the Austrians set foot in India with an eye to conquer Nanga Parbat, the 8126 metre high Himalayan peak which is now  part of Pakistan administered Kashmir. As a part of a 4-man team led by Peter Aufschnaiter, Harrer were in Karachi when the British Secret Police caught the 4 mountaineers on charges of spying for Germany. Now, this could not have seemed improbable. Harrer had served in the SS as a Seargant between 1938 and 1939, and was one of many hot-blooded Austrian disillusioned into joining Hitler's Nazi Party. 


Now, Harrer could do little to prove innocence and hence complied with the Police and was sent to Ahmednagar detention camp for weeks where it was decided he and his fellow mountaineers would be sent to Portugese Goa. But as luck would have it, the group was sent to Dehradun instead, and with over 1000 other enemy allies, the four spent five years in captivity at the Dehradun Central Internment Camp. But Harrer wasn't among the ones who would take this lying down. Twice he attempted to flee the prison and twice he failed and was recaptured. But on the third attempt, Harrer and Aufschnaiter managed to slip through and landed in Tibet, then a neutral region. It is believed that the two were dressed as Indian traders when they managed this feat. Finally Harrer had reached close to what he had hoped for and the persistence and hope paid, because in a near-life changing experience he met Tenzing Gyatso, the man who would become the fourteenth Dalai Lama. His seven years in Tibet were recorded in a diary and was released as a memoir in 1953 under the name, 'Seven years in Tibet' which was much later turned into a Hollywood film starring Brad Pitt. The book became the average European's guide to the East and Heinrich Harrer, an adventurer of the highest order had his name etched in the annals of history as the man who brought Tibet to Europe.