  
We were at 29,036 feet at least, we had to be, Everest is 29,035 feet high and we were over the top of it – just. In a Pilatus P-6 single engine prop plane with the side door fully open and tied back to the tail with rope. It was minus 50 degrees outside, bloody freezing inside, we were on oxygen and then the engine spluttered to a halt. The propeller stopped propelling and the nose started to dip down towards the landscape of the jagged and painful looking Himalayan Mountains that surrounded us. We started to dive towards Tibet and Chinese missiles.
Such was the joy of working with Johnny Lizard. We used to have an expression “Go to lunch with Johnny Lizard and you’ll end up dancing on a table in Rio.” Life was never dull. But at that moment life was also looking quite short. Of course he had noticed none of this, he was busy,not taking oxygen but living on the oxygen of hanging half out the plane taking pictures for the Shah of Iran’s airline.
The trip had started promisingly, a nice little flight up from New Delhi
on Royal Nepalese Airlines. The Queen Mother of Nepal was in Club class, we were all handed little
religious good luck charms before take-off, was this a good sign or bad? I checked Johnny’s expression but it was
unflappable as ever. In Kathmandu we checked into
 our hotel, and Johnny made a batch of Lizard Martinis.  Take a
cocktail shaker, fill two-thirds with ice, add two shots of Noilly Prat and shake vigorously. Pour away the Noilly
Prat, thus leaving a hint on the ice. Two thirds fill the shaker with Polish vodka and shake vigorously again.
Serve in a martini glass with a stuffed olive or a twist of lemon peel. And be happy. NB: Only drink Martinis first thing in the
morning or in the evening. This was an evening Martini and where he got the ingredients from I did not ask. Johnny was ever resourceful but sometimes it was better not to know.
The following morning we met the wonderful Swiss pilot
Emil Wick. Today was a good day for flying he told us. The weather was calm enough to fly and the air dense enough to
enable us to get over the top of Everest, this was re-assuring I thought. His joke about getting shot down
by Chinese missiles if we strayed into Tibetan air space was less so. Johnny briefed him on what we wanted to
photograph but said that shooting through the windows was
 going to be a problem. No problem to Emil though, the
door was simply slid back and tied off with some old rope. So it might be a bit colder, noisier and more uncomfortable flying, but these were the days when men were men, Johnny was Johnny and the Health and Safety police had not even been thought of. Emil, Johnny, “Lightning” (Johnny’s assistant) and I jumped in. We were given oxygen masks, the engine roared into life and off we went.
Johnny and “Lightning” busied themselves getting all the cameras and equipment
ready and I sat in the back busying myself with getting colder, and thinking that they wouldn’t allow this in business class. 40 minutes later we were flying into the
Southwest face of Everest. Johnny was ready to shoot, so he tapped Emil on the shoulder, a pre-arranged signal for Emil to tilt the plane at an
angle so that the struts
 for the right wing would lift out of shot. Emil obliged, at a 90 degree angle. Being in an aeroplane, sideways, over the Himalayas, on oxygen, freezing cold, with the door open was not really quite how I had imagined this little assignment, but Johnny was doing the thing
he loved best, working. Making pictures, making art, the motor drive on his Nikon whirred as we whirred round and round sideways. “Lightning” was keeping the spare cameras under his armpits under his jacket to stop them freezing up. Johnny got enough shots for the day and then carelessly asked Emil to show us what he could do. Well, he could do a lot more than sideways. I never realised |
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that a plane could be flown so close to a vertical surface at such odd angles. I am sure Johnny could have leaned out of the doorway and brought back a bit of the Himalayas with us. Eventually when I opened my eyes, we were coming in to land at Syanboche airstrip, 12,500 feet high, but only 351 metres long, with an incline of about 10% uphill to help the plane stop. But as an extra safety precaution if the plane failed to stop, there is, of course, a very solid looking mountain at the end of the runway to help stop you. We were stopping off for a night at The Everest View Hotel, the highest hotel in the world. Johnny jumped out with that enthusiastic child-like demeanour of all creative people, “That was brilliant!” “Yes,” I replied “I need a Martini.” 4:30 am we were up to get to see what God’s light was going to be like that morning, to shoot some more pictures before we flew back to Kathmandu. But the weather had closed in, so for three days Emil was unable to return to pick us up. Every few hours we would venture out to see if there was any light to shoot with, then venture back in shot-less to some fireside stories over brandy and coffee. We had to keep warm somehow and even Johnny couldn’t conjure up a Martini out here. Three days later the weather cleared enough for Emil to pick us up. There wasn’t much time as there was only a small gap in the weather. Take-off on the airstrip is a real kick, bollock and scramble. Everything up to full power, back up as near to the mountain as possible to get as much of a downhill run as you can and then go for it. At around 350 of the 351 metres the wheels clear the ground, one metre later you are about a thousand feet above the ground as the world drops vertically away from you. This time I was prepared for the sideways flying. I just wasn’t prepared for the engine to stop! ......To be continued...... |
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