Narendra Kumar (mountaineer)

Colonel Narendra Kumar PVSM, KC, AVSM
Other name(s)	Narinder Sharma, Bull
Nickname(s)	Bull
Born	(1933-12-08)8 December 1933 Rawalpindi, British India
Died	31 December 2020 (aged 87) Delhi, India
Allegiance	India
Service / branch	Army
Years of service	1950–1984
Rank	Colonel
Unit	Kumaon Regiment
Battles / wars	Operation Meghdoot
Awards	Param Vishisht Seva Medal Kirti Chakra Padma Shri Ati Vishisht Seva Medal Arjuna Award MacGregor Medal

Colonel Narendra "Bull" Kumar, PVSM, KC, AVSM, (8 December 1933 – 31 December 2020) was an Indian soldier–mountaineer. He is known for his expeditions across various mountain ranges such as the Himalayas and Karakorams, and respective subranges such as the Pir Panjals and Saltoro Mountains. His expeditions and reconnaissance efforts to and on the Siachen glacier were key to the Indian Army's reclamation of the forward posts of the glacier in Operation Meghdoot. Kumar was deputy leader of the first successful Indian Everest expedition that scaled Mount Everest in 1965. He is a recipient of multiple military and civilian honors including the Param Vishisht Seva Medal, Kirti Chakra, and the Padma Shri.

Kumar had three brothers, and all four of them went on to join the Indian Army. The last time Bull Kumar went to Everest was to retrieve his brothers body after a fall from 8500m in 1985.

Early life

Kumar was born in Rawalpindi, British India (in present day Pakistan) on 8 December 1933. He had three brothers, all of whom who would go on to join the Indian Army. In 1947, he was a member of scouts jamboree to Paris at the age of 13, representing the then state of Punjab. He returned back to a partitioned India and landed in an alien Bombay. His parents had moved to Shimla after the partition of India.

Narrating his experience when returning on a ship with 50 other scouts during partition, he would say, "All of us, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, decided to design a flag. We put the Union Jack in the Centre, India and Pakistan on either side. We sang tera sahara." He would find the muslims being asked to get off the ship in Karachi, while the others would go on to Bombay.

Army life and mountaineering

Kumar joined the Indian Army in 1950. He started at the Indian Military Academy (IMA), Dehradun, where he took part in boxing, riding and cycle-polo during his years of training. He was commissioned with the Kumaon Rifles, a regiment of the Indian Army, in June 1954, where he was exposed to winter sports and mountaineering. He earned his nickname "Bull," which would stay on with him through his life, during a boxing match at IMA. His rival on that fight was a senior cadet, Sunith Francis Rodrigues, who would later become the Chief of the Army Staff. Kumar would lose that bout, but the nickname that he would earn on that fight, "Bull," would stay on through the rest of his career.

His interest in mountaineering was further piqued when he met Tenzing Norgay, who was then the Director of the Darjeeling based Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. In March 1958, he led the successful Army and Navy expedition to Mt. Trisul (23,360 ft). He also scaled Kabru Dome (21,780 ft) in 1959 and Yellow Needle Peak (22,480 ft) in 1960. During his first attempt at scaling the Mount Everest in 1960, he would become the first Indian to ascend 28,700 ft. However, bad weather would have him turn back. In 1961, he led a five member expedition to scale Neelkanth (21,644 ft) in the Garhwal HimalayasIn this trip, he lost four toes with frostbite and stopped 200m below the summit. In 1964, he was the first Indian to scale Nanda Devi. He was the deputy leader of a nine-member Indian Everest Expedition in 1965, that successfully summited the mountain. Capt. Mohan Singh Kohli, the leader of the 1965 Everest expedition would call his efforts "astonishing". In 1968, he scaled Mont Blanc (15,782 ft), the highest Alpine mountain. In 1970 he led the first recognised ascent of 23,997 ft Jomolhari (Chomo Lhari), the highest mountain in Bhutan. Kumar successfully climbed the Kangchenjunga from the toughest north-east spur in 1977. He was also a commandant of the Gulmarg based Indian Army High Altitude Warfare School.

In 1981, Kumar was a member of the Antarctica Task Force, chartered with acclimatizing and training the first Indian expedition to the continent, led by S. Z. Qasim, in 1982. In 1983, Kumar summited Kamet (25,595 ft) and Abi Gamin (24,272 ft). He was later put in a "permanent category C" posting, which meant no more postings above 7,000 ft. He would have to sign a non-liability statement, absolving the Government of all responsibilities, every time he went to the mountains after that.

During his mountaineering career, he ascended above 8,000 m on Mount Everest, the low-oxygen zone, more than twenty times. He retired from the Indian Army in 1984 at the rank of Colonel.

Mountaineering expeditions to Siachen in 1978 and 1981

Kumar's mountaineering efforts on the Siachen Glacier began when he was approached by a German Rafter, in 1977, to help him with a descent on the Nubra river from the river's at the nose of the glacier. Spotting a Cartographic error error in the map, which incorrectly showed line marking the ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan, he took his findings in January 1978 to Lieutenant General M. L. Chibber, then India's Director of Military Operations. Chiber obtained the necessary permissions for Kumar to lead a reconnaissance mission to the glacier.

In 1978, Kumar, who was then the commanding officer of the Indian Army's High Altitude Warfare School, led a team along with two German explorers to navigate the upper regions of the Indus river in Ladakh. He later went on an expedition to Nubra Valley, between Ladakh and the Karakoram ranges within the Siachen glacier. Kumar took a batch of students (40 climbers and 30 porters) from the High Altitude Warfare School in 1978, as the first Indian expedition into the glacier. Starting at the snout^ of the glacier, the team went to the mid-way point from where a summit team of three completed its ascent of Teram Kangri II (24,631 ft), at the southern end of Shaksgam Valley. Recalling this summit, Kumar, would later say that part of the problem was braving the temperatures of ~-50 celsius and navigation of dangerous terrains, but, also the Pakistani jet aircraft which would circle the members of the expedition. The team was helped by the Indian Air Force with rations and other logistical support. The team would return back with remains left behind by Pakistan's incursions into the region. The Indian Army, usually secretive, would go on to publish photographs and details of this expedition in The Illustrated Weekly of India, a weekly english language news magazine.

In April 1981, Kumar returned to the Siachen Glacier with a 70-member team with a budget of ₹50,000 (US$590). This time, the team would start from its snout at 11,946 ft to its origin on the Saltoro Ridge (18,910 ft). In this expedition, he would become the first to climb the Siachen Glacier the world's second biggest glacier and referred to as the world's 'Third Pole'. Recollecting the experience, in placing the Indian flag at the farthest summit of the glacier, Kumar would say, "Once you get the heights, you're the tiger."

In the process, he reached India's northernmost point, Sia Kangri I(24,350 ft). In a period of eight weeks, the team would summit Saltoro Kangri I (25,400 feet) and Sia Kangri I (24,350 ft), hike to the top of Indira Col at 24,493 ft (the watershed at the north end of the glacier), and skied to Bilafond La, Saltoro Pass, Sia La, Turkistan La and Pass Italia passes on Saltoro.

Later that year in 1983, Kumar published an account of his journeys in the newsmagazine Illustrated Weekly of India. The first public acknowledgment of the manoeuvres and the developing conflict situation in the Siachen was an abbreviated article titled "High Politics in the Karakoram" by Joydeep Sircar in The Telegraph newspaper of Calcutta in 1982. The full text was re-printed as "Oropolitics" in the British Alpine Journal in 1984.

Operation Meghdoot

Kumar's expeditions to the Siachen glacier, and the detailed topographical mapping exercise, as well as photographs and videos from his expeditions helped the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, to authorize Operation Meghdoot. In 13 April 1984, the Indian Army began its offensive operations at the Indian portions of the Siachen Glacier, and established its bases along the glacier.

During the course of this operation, the Indian Army would go on to conquer and reclaim the Siachen Glacier and also the area to the west of it, along with the main ridges and passes-Sia La (7,300m), Bilafond La (6,160m), Gyong La (5,640m), Yarma La (6,100m) and Chulung La (5,800m), along the Saltoro Range. Crediting Kumar's contributions being instrumental in the Indian Army's efforts to ending Pakistan's occupation of the glacier, Lieutenant General V. R. Raghavan, commanding officer of the operation, called him 'a mountain of information'.

Personal life

Kumar was married to Mridula. Their daughter, Shailaja Kumar (born 1964), competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada in alpine skiing, and was the first Indian female winter Olympian. Their son, Akshay Kumar (1969–2020), ran Mercury Himalayan Explorations, an adventure travel and rafting company.

His youngest brother, Major K. I. Kumar also went on, in 1985, to ascend Mount Everest; however, he would die on a fall from a height of 8,500 m. Kumar went to retrieve his brothers body, this would his last time on the Everest.

Kumar lived in Delhi until his death at the Army Research and Referral Hospital in Delhi on December 31, 2020. He was aged 84.

Awards and recognition

• Top: Prime Minister Modi meets the members of the Indian Everest Expedition 1965 on the Golden Jubilee of the occasion in 2015. Kumar is on the left, second from end.
• Bottom right: Narender Kumar at the meet.
• Bottom left: A 1965 Indian stamp dedicated to the 1965 Everest Expedition

Kumar's mountaineering achievements were recognized by military and civilian awards and honors. He was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honor, and the Arjuna Award, in 1965, for the first Indian Everest Expedition of 1965. He remains the only Colonel to have received the Param Vishisht Seva Medal (PVSM) across all three services, an award that is usually reserved for Generals. He also received the Army's Kirti Chakra and Ati Vishisht Seva Medal (ASVM). He was awarded the Indian Mountaineering Foundation's Gold Medal for his mountaineering achievements. In 2010, he was presented the MacGregor Medal, by the United Service Institution of India, for his military reconnaissance and exploration efforts of Indian remote areas.

The Indian Army's Siachen Battalion HQ in the Siachen Glacier is named as "Kumar Base" in his honor; the base is also a logistics forwarding post at a height of 4,880 metres (16,010 ft).

He was also awarded an United Nations fellowship for ski teaching. He had also trained in Austria and Switzerland as a ski-trainer. He had also made the first descent rafting on the Indus River in Ladakh and the river Teesta in Sikkim.

See also

• Mountain warfare
• Oropolitics
• Khardung La
• Actual Ground Position Line
• Bana Singh
• Indian summiters of Mount Everest - Year wise
• List of Mount Everest summiters by number of times to the summit
• List of Mount Everest records of India
• List of Mount Everest records
• Siachen Base Camp (India)

External links

• First successful Indian Expedition of 1965 on YouTube