Friends in high places

David Lang first heard about the Himalayas when he was a little boy. As his father read aloud from the works of the great botanical explorers — Reginald Farrer, Frank Kingdon-Ward, and ‘Chinese’ Wilson — he imagined the high mountains and the flower-filled valleys. Above all, he longed to see the yaks: ‘there was something about yaks which appealed to a small child’.

When he grew up, David Lang became a vet with a busy practice in Sussex. He is also an accomplished field naturalist, equally knowledgeable about plants and birds, and author of several books about British wild flowers.

Not until 1983 did he realise his dream of visiting the Himalayas. A first trek to Kashmir and Ladakh, led by the great botanist Oleg Polunin, whetted his appetite for more. Next he visited Bhutan, where his party was caught in a blizzard and had to be rescued by helicopter. Undaunted, he then planned a trip to Sikkim, the little country — or, more accurately, region of India — which is wedged between Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan. Since 1987 Lang has made four expeditions to Sikkim and has achieved his ambition of exploring the remote northern valleys near the Tibetan border. Not only are they physically difficult of access, involving arduous journeys on foot across high passes: since 1962, when China attempted to invade India’s north-eastern frontier, the area has been a restricted military zone. Very few foreigners obtain permission to visit it.

On his first visit to Sikkim in 1987, Lang had a great stroke of luck. He was leading a trek near the Nepalese border when the weather deteriorated. In mist and driving snow, the rest of the party retreated to their bungalow suffering from altitude sickness.