How Jamyang Tenzing is transforming Indian rock climbing
Popularly known as Jammy, this rock climber from the Himalayan region of Ladakh in the state of Jammu and Kashmir is at the forefront of popularizing rock climbing in India leading tours, charts new routes and climbs and as the founder of an exciting new festival dedicated to climbing.
With a father from Ladakh and mother from Manali, it would be fair to say that Jamyang Tenzing was born with the mountains in his blood. He even studied at a boarding school in the Nilgiri hills in southern India. ‘I was always up for an adventure and enjoyed exploring hidden valleys with friends. I was always fascinated by the sheer size of the mountains and enjoyed reading about the adventures of mountaineers,’ Tenzing told Grin.
After college, he did some odd jobs, including working at his parents’ shop in Goa, until he got work at Shakti Himayala, the Himalayan travel company. It was while showing the Himalayan countryside to clients that Tenzing realised that his heart was in mountaineering. He quit his job and started training at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering.
It was there that Tenzing was introduced to rock climbing. Soon he was climbing Stok Khangri (6,153 metres), Goleb Khangri 5, 995 metres, Kang Yatse (6, 270 metres) and several other peaks in the Himalayas.
Soon he became a mountain guide and started rock climbing at GraviT boulder gym in Ladakh. In 2011, the owner of the gym moved to France and Tenzing and another partner took over the place. Initially, they tried setting up a cafe alongside the gym. ‘But that did not work really well as food frying and the stench from climbing shoes don’t work well together,’ laughed Tenzing. The duo then focused purely on climbing. Some of the yop routes were in Shey and Gompa — the aim was to create a climbing revolution in Ladakh. They even discovered flash pump — a 30 metre rockface on the way to Khardung-La — and started collaborating with Jeremy Higle, an American climber, instructor and mountaineer who was in Leh to teach the locals some outdoor leadership skills. Through this Tenzing and his partner became certified single-pitch instructors, and also learned the importance of leave no trace.
It was through Higle that Tenzing discovered the Suru Valley in Ladakh. It was love at first sight and the team now organises the Suru Boulder Fest. In 2017, the festival got participation from 125 climbers from 25 countries. ‘It is now a bouldering destination and many climbers look forward to climbing in Suru during the festival. We have also made short films at the festival which has helped us reach out to a larger audience and we want Suru to be a platform to create outdoor based video content to represent the Indian scene,’ says Tenzing.
The latest discovery of the team has been a boulder field in the heart of the Indian capital of New Delhi and new climbing trips to Kareri village in northern state of Himachal Pradesh where they have identified and climbed more than 50 boulder problems over the past two years. ‘Nye, a village near Leh is another location that we are working on and just last summer we organized a few climbing trips there and managed to open loads of climbing including four trad routes.
‘For the future I want to help develop a more stable financial model around climbing so that I can help out young professional climbers by funding their projects and also help create jobs. I also want to build a bigger gym in Leh so that we can host international competitions and also help the local community with better climbing facilities. Exploration still remains my priority and I would like to climb in different parts of the country and bring to light the unexplored rock. We are also documenting the climbs as we go along and would soon be releasing topographical maps of the areas that we have climbed at so that other climbers can find and climb those boulders,’ says Tenzing.
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