Cloth Merchant Who Knows His Ropes

Harish Kapadia, as his name suggests, is a kapada merchant. Sitting crosslegged in his shop, M/s Ramdas Bhagwandas, from noon till about ten at night, he sells cloth. Stacks of them, wholesale, for the calico giant Raymonds. The shop is located in the Vithalwadi locality of Bombay, the largest and oldest cloth market in Asia. But this kapadia has another life, something his businessmen colleagues and clients would frown upon if they only knew. Harish Kapadia is India´s best-known mountain climber and adventurer, who regularly disappears from his Vithalwadi shop and Malabar Hill apartment to go exploring in the deep Himalaya. He has climbed everywhere in the Indian Himalaya from Kashmir to the Northeast, summitting hard summits in the company of some of the world´s best climbers, such as Chris Bonington, Dick Renshaw, Victor Saunders and Stephen Venables. Mr Kapadia has also almost single-handedly helped inculcate a passion for the mountains and a sense of adventure among India´s urban professionals, who today make a small but dedicated group. The Indian climbers Mr Kapadia is closest to are Muslim Contractor, Zerksis Boga and Monesh Devjani. Among Sherpas, he climbs often with Pasang Temba.

"I have always climbed in my own group of friends and do not go with national teams and so on," says Mr Kapadia, whose expedition support staff invariably come from Harkot village in Almora which lies on the famous trail to the Pindari Glacier.