Today I’m going for a little-longer-than-usual walk; a fourteen-miler in Cambridgeshire to raise money for the Royal Marsden Hospital. It will be a doddle in comparison with The Ascent of Rum Doodle.
Rum Doodle, as you know, is the highest peak in the Himalayas, substantially higher than Everest (29,029 feet) it is 40,000 (and a half) feet. The story of its ascent was written by WE Bowman in 1956. The author’s biography is rather endearing.
W. E. Bowman (1912 – 1985) was a civil engineer who spent his time hill-walking, painting and writing (unpublished) books on the Theory of Relativity. He was married with two children.
His book did not attract much attention when it was published but it became a favourite with mountaineers and explorers. It might have stayed with that restricted readership had not Bill Bryson stumbled upon it while working as a sub-editor on the business section of The Times. Philip Howard, literary editor, used to periodically sell the large numbers of books sent to him for review to raise money for charity and Rum Doodle was among them. He mentioned it in a 1997 interview on the wireless, resulting in his meeting Bowman’s widow. The book has now been re-published several times and should you be in Kathmandu you can take refreshment here.
I seem to rmember that The Ascent of Rum Doodle was a sort of monument to misunderstanding. I can’t remember which language it was, but when your man tried to order 30 porters to meet him, there was a slight difficulty because the word for 30 had 4 contiguous vowels, followed by a non-aspirated glottal stop. He mistakenly used the aspirated version, resulting in 30,000 porters meeting him at Khatmandu station. Something like that, anyway, but all delicious nonsense.