We have been prisonners of the tibetans for seven days. Here at the foot of the mont Everest; we American and English explorers, we can also live a bad adventure if we don't conform to the rules of this ethnical, very special peoples. We are the 7th of January 1930. We have taken the train from London to Budapest and two weeks later we have accosted in Tel Aviv. From Tel Aviv to the Himalayas, it has been a long trip, dangerous, exciting in beauty. We made it with short distances in auto-stop; we could have found someone evil and bad who would have cut our heads for the dollars we carried with us but fortunately noone did trouble us.
Once in Nepal, we've passed the border quite easily but we forgot that we couldn't have gone further due to the war between China and Japan. The peoples in Tibet are very proud of their ethnical background and their religion. Before we entered Tibet, someone has advised me to always keep the hood of my cassock up my head in order to never reveal that I am blond.
-"They will think you're spies he said"
I followed his advises but according to some circonstances that I don't know, the tibetans discovered that we were foreigners in their lands.
-"We want to pass to China we said before someone got off a large knive and threatened us to death.
We had to follow them where they wanted to take us. One of the guys caught my wife from the hair and told me to give him money to deliver her. I showed him what I had in my pockets; three notes of 100$ and this was not at is taste.
-"You liar he said we want 5000$.
We were far from having this amount of money. If we had continued our trip until Shangai, we would have received 1000$ but not more. The guy who was catching my wife threatened her once more and said that all europeans are shit. We were at the border with Nepal, far in the distance, the top of the mont Everest was appearing like a giant going past behind the level of the clouds. The guy smiled at me and told me:
-"Are you mad enough to climb the Everest"
I stayed quite, my primary objective was to deliver my wife from that dangerous man who can kill her at anytime.
-"We can be there in a week time, if I see you climb the whole of the mountain I give you your wife back otherwise she will be mine but as a matter of facts you will be the prey of the vultures when you will know it"
-"OK I said, in a week time" and we started to walk toward Nepal knowing that we were all risking ours lives in some points.
There are some evil peoples like this tibetan who like to give challenges to others in order to get from them what they want. However on that day I was strong, I climbed the roof of the world and saw the world differently. I had a strange sensation of power but when I was back on firm ground I realised that the wind alone could have killed me and made me fall from where I was.