1. He Had Saved His Own Life
Chapter 1
He Had Saved
His Own Life
Sundar Singh gasped a breath of icy, thin air at the summit of the pass. His head was spinning from the sixteen-thousand-foot altitude, his lungs throbbed, and his bare feet had gone completely numb hours before. Another traveler, a Tibetan he had met the day before, trudged along beside Sundar, who was glad for the man’s company. After several minutes of rest, the two men began their descent from the heights of the Himalayan Mountains. They hoped to reach a small village perched precariously on the edge of a steep precipice at the bottom of the trail before darkness engulfed them.
The two men were halfway down the trail when the wind whipped up and the air became bitterly cold. Sundar began to fear that they might not make it to the village, which was still several miles away, especially since the trail had narrowed to a foot-wide, slippery ledge and their going was slow. On previous trips across these mountains, he had come upon the bodies of men frozen to death by such sudden change in the weather, and he hoped and prayed that the same fate did not await him.
Sundar tried not to look down as he clawed his way along the narrow ledge, but as his eyes scanned the rock ahead for his next foothold, something far below caught his attention: a brown object lying on the snow. As Sundar studied the object, he realized that it was the body of a man. Then, surprisingly, one of the body’s arms flailed—the man was alive!
Sundar tugged at the fur jacket of his traveling companion. “Look down,” he yelled into the howling wind. “A man has fallen down there. We must try to rescue him.”
Sundar’s traveling companion shook his head vigorously. “If we try to rescue that man, none of us will reach the village,” he yelled back. “We will all freeze. We must get to the village. That man is already as good as dead. Leave him to his fate.”
“I can’t,” Sundar replied. “Please help me to go down and get him. It will take both of us.”
The traveling companion shook his head again. “If you value your life, you will come with me.” Without even looking back, he turned and continued picking his way along the ledge.
Sundar looked around for a way down to the man. When he thought he had found one, he climbed off the edge of the ledge and hand over hand made his way down the rock face. He willed his numb toes to grip the crevices in the rock. It was treacherous going, and Sundar prayed the entire way, but finally he made it to the bottom of the ravine where the fallen traveler lay.
Kneeling down beside the man, Sundar took a closer look at him. The man’s hair and beard were frozen, and he was barely breathing, but none of his bones appeared to be broken.
“Come on, let’s get you out of here,” Sundar said, standing up and heaving the man onto his back. He pulled his blanket around them both and tied it in front, forming a cradle for the man. Then slowly and painstakingly Sundar inched his way back up the side of the ravine. The extra weight of the man on his back caused Sundar’s numb feet to bleed and throb as they beat against the jagged ice and razor-sharp rock, but eventually Sundar reached the safety of the ledge and began carrying the man along the trail.
Soon Sundar was leaving bloodred stains in the snow with each step, as slowly but surely he inched his way forward. He dared not to stop, even when it began to snow heavily, reducing visibility and making the trail even more slippery. Stopping meant certain death for both of them.
As the daylight began to fade, Sundar wondered whether they would make it to the village before nightfall, when it would be impossible to make out the trail in the darkness. Thankfully, right then the snow let up, and in the improved visibility Sundar could make out a cluster of stone houses a few hundred yards ahead. Relief overcame him, until he took a few more steps. There at the side of the trail lay the frozen body of his traveling companion. The man’s eyes were open, and his hands were frozen to his face.
Since he could do nothing for the man, given the conditions, Sundar trudged on. Soon he and the man he was carrying on his back were safely inside one of the small, round huts, sitting in front of a yak-dung fire. As Sundar sat sipping a cup of hot tea, he realized that he also could well have frozen to death. What had saved him from such a fate was the man he was carrying on his back. The contact of their two bodies had produced enough heat to stave off the savage cold and keep both men warm. In risking his life to rescue the fallen traveler, Sundar had unwittingly saved his own life.
As he drifted off to sleep in front of the fire, Sundar imagined some of the trials that lay ahead of him in Tibet. This day’s ordeal would not be the last life-threatening event on his mission trip; he was sure of that. But he was sure of something else as well: ever since he had been a small boy growing up in the Sikh village of Rampur on the Punjab plain of northern India, God’s hand had been upon him.