Narendra Dhar Jayal - Death

Death

In 1958, the Government sponsored an expedition to Cho Oyu (28,867 ft), one of the highest mountains of the world. Jayal died of pulmonary oedema caused by overexertion on this expedition at Camp I. He had started late and tried to catch up with the main party. There was also a problem in his medical care as much of the expedition equipment had been lost in a Dakota crash en route to Nepal. His death and that of some others brought home the cruel lesson of need for acclimatisation and discipline in the pursuit of Himalayan mountaineering.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, paid rich tributes to Jayal saying "the Major has set an example of courage and adventure which should inspire our young people. The news of his death came to me as a shock and I feel that the country has suffered the loss of her finest mountaineer..."

Arthur Foot, Jayal's Headmaster of Doon, noted that "The Himalaya completed his education into a stature of nobility", echoing a sentiment expressed two years earlier by Jayal himself who had noted, after an expedition to Saser Kangri, that "Pushing the body to the utmost for something indefinably inherent in a person, is intrinsically noble and worthwhile." R.L. Holdsworth, a teacher at Doon who had encouraged Jayal to pursue mountaineering noted after his death that "He died very much the master of himself and of most of the world that is worth mastering."

The Indian Mountaineering Foundation had a Nandu Jayal Fund and published, along with the Corps of Engineers, a book Nandu Jayal and Indian Mountaineering, which contained articles on various aspects of Indian Mountaineering by him and by others.

Nandu Jayal's life and career motivated many young officers of the Corps to take up mountaineering, most prominent of whom were his nephews, Harsh and Jai Bahugana; both were officers of the Indian Army, dedicated mountaineers and both died on Mount Everest.