Gori Chen III. We more or less reached our goal, the mountain Gori Chen and the unknown Mönba mountain area, traveled by Tilman in 1939, but we did so only after four weeks of irritating and frustrating struggle with bureaucrats. Our journey to northeast India was completely dominated by opposition of all kinds of military and civil officials. On arriving in New Delhi on October 18, we received permission for Gori Chen from the Indian Mountaineering Foundation. However, there were doubts about the validity of the permission. We had to wait in Tezpur from October 19 to 25 before being allowed to continue to Bomdila to ask for a new permission from the local district commissioner. On October 27, we reached Jang in the Tawang District. There, the second part of the trouble began: no pack animals. We waited four days for them, two in Jang and one each in Thingbo and Mago. We finally reached Base Camp on November 3. Normally it should take five days from Jang, but we took nine, which reduced our planned 12-day stay to three. On November 4 and 5, we established Camps I and II at 5100 and 5600 meters. We had to be content on November 6 to climb to the secondary summit, Gori Chen III (c. 6300 meters, 20,670 feet). From its top, we could see the other tempting peaks of Gori Chen as well as the mighty, unclimbed 7000er, Kangto.

Ronald Naar, Koninklijke Nederlandse Alpen Vereniging