Thread by @jessnevins

So--anybody interested in a story this morning? Nothing groundbreaking or historical, nothing violent, no villains--just three women doing something unusual and neat.

1/

In Jan. 1958 three British friends, all officers of the British-Pakistani Forces Himalayan Expedition, met at lunch in a pub in Surrey to plan a four-month long expedition to climb Rakapooshi, a mtn in Kashmir.

Their wives, who didn't know each other, were at another table.
2/

The men were skilled mountaineers and knew how much effort would go into climbing a new mountain, so they spent a few hours discussing their plants.

Their wives, meanwhile--Anne, Eve, and Antonia--got to know each other in the traditional British fashion: by drinking a lot. 3/

At some point in the boozeup Anne (35), Eve (25) & Antonia (26) came to the conclusion that if the men were going to spend four months traveling and climbing mountains, then by God they would as well. Only Antonia had any climbing experience, but none of them cared about that. 4/

Antonia had two kids--but they could stay with relatives. None of them had much money--but they could overcome that. Only Anne could drive--but Eve & Antonia would take the driving test. None of them had been to the Himalayas, but they didn't care. The three really DGAF. 5/

They were going to go to Zaskar (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanskar) and that was that. None of them had climbed anything remotely like the Himalayas? Zaskar was closed to outsiders by orders of the Indian gvt? They had no money to get to India, and no vehicles? DGAF! (They were spunky). 6/

The next day they began walking around to the local businesses, asking for funding. Most of the locals donated money. Word got out of what the trio intended, and the press began covering them. The reporting was about what you'd expect for England in 1958, though. 7/

The Daily Mail (of course the Daily Mail): "Gad, sir… officers' wives who want to pack up their troubles in an old knapsack and climb, climb, CLIMB!"

This got Anne, Eve, and Antonia lots of attention, and then a mutual friend introduced them to Dame Isobel Cripps. 8/

Dame Cripps (Dame Isobel?) was the widow of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and she knew *everybody*. So Cripps began pulling political strings on behalf of the trio and began touching up businesses for sponsorship of the trio. Money began to pour in & so did supplies. 9/

John Player & Sons donated 5000 cigarettes. (Eve & Antonia smoked, because of course they did). Max Factor donated makeup. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food donated food. And Land Rover sold the trio a modified demonstration model for £500. (Thanks, Dame Isobel!) 10/

Brooks Bond gave them enough tea "to keep a family going for 150 years." And the trio got enough money to pay for the eventual cost of the expedition (about £1,100, or roughly £23,500/$28,400 today).

On May 5, 1958, the trio got started. 11/

(Correction: Antonia had 3 kids, not 2; 2 of the kids were in boarding school. The 3rd kid was left with Antonia's husband, who had decided not to go on the Kashmir expedition).

Anne was the leader, Eve the navigator, and Antonia the writer (she had a book deal) & mechanic. 12/

They drove to Dover, ferried the Land Rover over to Calais, and over the next six weeks drove through France, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, & into India. They drove through the day (except in Iran, which was so hot they had to drive at night). 13/

They sang and played imaginary instruments as they drove. They took turns driving. The floor of the Land Rover was always very hot--overworked exhaust pipe--so they (gasp) rested their feet on the windshield most of the time, only putting them down when they passed anyone. 14/

Most nights they camped out: at the foot of Mt. Ararat; in the Indian vice-consul's courtyard in Zahidan; on the lawn of a foreign news agency in Kabul. When there was a local Land Rover agent, he'd show the three woman the sights of whatever city they were in. 15/

Nearly everyone was friendly to them & more than a little incredulous of what they were doing. One Turkish official tried to grope Anne, "but I just told him to bugger off."

The woman arrive in India and drive to Delhi, where they have an appt. with the Prime Minister. 16/

The P.M. at the time was Jawaharlal Nehru. The women charmed him, and he gave them official permission to cross the "inner line" and go to Zanskar, which like Ladakh was Indian territory at the time & officially off-limits to non-Indians. 17/

As you can imagine, these three "housewives" getting official permission to go to Zanskar pissed off the local white mountaineers of the Himalayan Club, who'd been trying for years to go across the inner line but had always been turned down. Did Anne, Eve & Antonia care? Ha. 18/

From Delhi it was a 300 mile trek, on foot, to Zaskar. Once they reached the mountains, they engaged two Ladakhi guides to help them. The climb was the best part--they visited mountains and villages no whites had ever seen & visited villages unchanged for centuries. 19/

It wasn't all fun & games, of course. Some of the route was bleak & difficult trekking, the poverty of many of the Zaskari was extreme, and some Zaskari came to the trio for medical care which the women couldn't provide--which haunted the trio the rest of their lives. 20/

Anne, Eve, and Antonia reached Padam, Zaskar's capital, near the end of July. Padam was small for a capital and rather forbidding to outsiders, but the women didn't care. They'd made it!

They spent a little time in Padam, and then they turned around and began going home. 21/

On Oct. 8, 1958, they arrived back in England via the night ferry. Reporters were waiting for them, and the trio got 48 hours of laudatory press ("plucky British housewives conquering the mighty Himalayas," etc). Then Pope Pius XII died, and the reporters left to cover that. 22/

The women were happy to see the reporters go: "We had a year of notoriety, of sorts, and then we crept back into our shells. None of us wanted celebrity at all."

The women went their separate ways after that and had happy lives. 23/

Anne ran an Outward Bound school. Eve was a teacher. Antonia ran an "adventure travel" firm. They're all still alive, as best I can discover, and while they've been modest in the past about their trip when reporters asked them about it, I think they're pretty neat. 24/Fin.