Following the trail of Darjeeling Sherpas

(clockwise, from above) Contemporary climbing Sherpas in Darjeeling; Nandini Purandare (third from right) and Deepa Balsavar (second from left) in Darjeeling; and Tenzing Norgay with his medals.

- Shail Desai

Back in the day, when Nandini Purandare was in her 20s, her heroes included British mountaineers Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker. She followed their climbs and devoured literature by them, routinely exchanging notes with her now husband, Dinesh, on their many dates.

"Their adventures were my idea of cinematic grandeur and everything that was glamorous when I was young," says Purandare, now 64.

Boardman and Tasker took on daring climbs up mountains in Asia and Europe, before they met an untimely death on Mount Everest in 1982. They were in their early 30s and left an indelible mark on world mountaineering. To honour their memory, the Kendal Mountain Festival—held annually in November in Cumbria, UK—has, since 1984, handed out the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature. Last year, Purandare and her close friend, Deepa Balsavar, 65, became the first Indians to win it for their co-authored book, The Sherpa Trail.

"I've probably read most of the previously awarded books, so to be part of that list feels incredible. And then there's the connection with Boardman and Tasker which makes this so very precious," says Purandare. Their work had earlier won the best "Climbing Literature" prize at the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival in Banff, Canada. It was a culmination of a decade-long effort that started when Purandare heard of the legendary climbing Sherpas of Darjeeling from renowned explorer Harish Kapadia.

"Western literature usually painted stereotypical images of Sherpas, who were strong, hearty and always smiling. But there were hardly any specifics. Harish had many campfire stories about characters we had never read about before and whose stories were worth exploring," elaborates Purandare.