ABSTRACT
Wilfrid Noyce, also of C Section, was off to climb somewhere in the Himalayas; he was a promising climber who went twice to the South Col, once without oxygen, in the 1953 Everest expedition, and was later killed in an accident while climbing in the Soviet Union. Bernard Newman and I agreed on a more modest objective in the same area: Naini Tal, one of the hill-stations close to the Himalayas. There was a slow train across the plain to Bareilly, where we changed to a narrow gauge. The terrain altered as we reached the foothills and arrived at the terminus, Kathgodam; thence by rickety coach driven by a Sikh who worried us by gesturing at the views on the left while he negotiated hairpin bends to the right, with a sheer drop below. As the road twisted and climbed there were signposts to other hill-stations: Almora and Ranikhet.
