We walked over to the large pack team, which must have crossed the river a few miles south. The ever-friendly Jonny approached a man who seemed to be the group leader, a George Clooney look-alike standing in a bright-yellow jacket. Jonny extended his hand, but the man didn’t respond; he just turned his back and started brusquely away.
Then I noticed the bold embroidery on his shell: Kashmir Expedition 2007. We’re screwed, I thought. Trying to be as friendly as possible, I asked, “Where are you from?”
“Italia,” he responded coldly. “We have permit for this peak, not you.”
“Permit? I reckon we don’t need a permit for this peak — it’s under 6,000 meters,” Jonny said evenly.
“We have permit,” he said once again, and then walked off for good. I reminded Jonny that he’d told me we wouldn’t need a permit; my worst fear was that Clooney would try to shut us down. We’d been dreaming about this expedition for months and traveled thousands of miles over seven days to get here, so damn if we weren’t going to climb something.
“We don’t — not for anything under 6,000 meters,” Jonny reiterated. “If you needed a permit to climb under 6,000 meters in these parts, then every goat herder in the Himalaya would need one.” Somehow, these guys didn’t look like goat herders.

“Sir, many people coming over the river,” our cook, Purtemba Sherpa, said, as, on edge, we arrived back at the tent. Meanwhile, the new arrivals had split into two teams, sending one member, with a team of Kashmiri horsemen, to cross farther downstream while the rest of the team looked for a spot closer to us.
“How many?” I asked.
“Many sir, very many. They have LO from IMF with them . . . his name is Raju.” I could hear the stress in his voice. Raju, from the Indian Mountaineering Federation, was the group’s liaison officer.

Jonny and I headed over to the long Tyrolean traverse we’d established over the rapidly moving, glacier-fed Suru River a week earlier. Setting it up had been no easy feat: Jonny had to swim across a 150-foot section of unbelievably cold water with a rope tied loosely around his waist. When the shore cut out from under his feet, all I could see was his head and arms moving with wild abandon. To set the traverse, we’d drilled a few bolts, and then using some old ropes we’d scored on the way, pulled them tight. Now the massive Italian onslaught — 11 people total — crossed with ease . . . on our cords.