More intrepid adventurers in Mountain of the Moon

[The book is available at various online stores such as Rupa, Flipkart, Infibeam, Bookadda, Crossword, Linuxbazar (!!), and at Rediff.com]

There are three other explorers that Bibhutibhushan mentions in Chander Pahar - Fernando Po, Filippo de Filippi, and the Duke of Abruzzi.

Fernando Po (Wikipedia gives him many spellings - Fernão do Pó, Fernão Pó, Fernando Pó, as well as Fernando Poo!) was a Portuguese navigator and explorer of the West African coast. He discovered the islands in the Gulf of Guinea around 1472, one of which until the mid 1900s bore a version of his name, Fernando Pó or Fernando Poo. The island is presently named Bioko, part of Equatorial Guinea. His name had also been given to several other places in nearby Cameroon; the village of Fernando Pó, Portugal; the village of Fernando Pó, Sierra Leone; and is the original name of the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, which bore his name until the 20th century.

Filippo de Filippi was a real explorer and a famous mountaineer as well. He (April 20, 1814 – February 9, 1867) was an Italian doctor, traveler and zoologist. According to Wikipedia, Filippo De Filippi was born in Pavia. He succeeded Giuseppe Gené as professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the University of Turin. He was the director of the scientific group affiliated with the first official mission sent to Persia in 1862, intended to re-establish diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Later made a Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, De Filippi set out in 1866 on a government-sponsored scientific voyage to circumnavigate the globe. The ship, the Italian warship Magenta, sailed under the command of Vittorio Arminjon, departing Montevideo on February 2, 1866. It reached Naples on March 28, 1868. However, De Filippi himself died en route at Hong Kong, on February 9, 1867, from serious dysentery and liver problems. He was 53 years old.

An interesting entry in The 1911 Classic Encyclopedia reads "... In 1909 de Filippi went with the Duke [of Abruzzi]'s expedition to the western Himalaya and Karakoram mountains, when a peak 24,600 ft. in height, close to Mount Godwin-Austen, or K2, was ascended. He later (1913-4) organized and led an important scientific expedition to the Karakoram mountains and central Asia, under the auspices of the Indian and Italian Governments, and for his valuable investigations received in 1916 an hon. K.C.I.E. from the Indian Government. He has also received many honours from British and foreign scientific societies, and is a gold medallist of the English and Italian Royal Geographical Societies. During the World War he served in the Italian army medical service, and also lectured in England on subjects connected with the war."

Prince Luigi Amedeo Giuseppe Maria Ferdinando Francesco di Savoia-Aosta, Duke of the Abruzzi, was one of the finest explorers and mountaineers in the first half of the 20th century. His Wikipedia entry is quite extensive, and this link to a virtual museum is really wonderful. His name has been immortalized by the "the Abruzzi Ridge or Spur" on K2. Check this out.

The intrepid adventurers in Mountain of the Moon

[The book is available at various online stores such as Rupa, Flipkart, Infibeam, Bookadda, Crossword, Linuxbazar (!!), and at Rediff.com.]

The author introduces us to four fictional adventurers besides his hero - Albuquerque, Jim Carter, Diego Alvarez and Attilio Gatti.

Curiously enough, two of these names have some historical significance, although far removed from the roles they played in Bibhutibhushan's story.

Diego Alvarez is one of the names of a tiny inhabited island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

"The first recorded discovery of Gough Island was in 1505 or 1506 by the Portuguese explorer Gonçalo Álvares. Maps during the next three centuries named the island for him. On some later maps, this was given as Diego Alvarez." For more, read on here.

Attilio Gatti, on the other hand, was a real explorer! According to Wikipedia, "Gatti was among the last great safari expedition men. He led ten expeditions to Africa over 23 years before 1945. He became one of the Europeans to see the fabled Okapi, and the Bongo, a brown Lyre horned antelope with white stripes. He was an enthusiastic amateur radio operator, OQ5ZZ, and tried to operate from the Congo deep inland regions. He knew the Pygmy peoples of the Congo Regions very well. He wrote many books on his expeditions, including Killers All!, The New Africa, Here is Africa, Saranga the Pygmy, Africa is Adventure, Kamanda the African Boy, Great Mother Forest, Mediterranean Spotlights, Here is the Veld, Tom Toms in the Night, and South of the Sahara, (Robert McBride & Company 1945). Gatti's books contain invaluable anthropological material from his descriptions of the native peoples he met. Gatti also took good photos of Pygmys and Watussi. He met an important female python shaman. He became experienced with African magic and an entire world that no longer exists."

You'll find a list of his books here. This picture is of Attilio and Ellen Gatti.

Doubtless Bibhutibhushan must have read about Gatti's exploits in contemporary newspapers and journals.

One more review

Entitled "BLOOD DIAMOND", this review appeared in The Statesman, Kolkata, on Oct 2, 2011. 

"I first ran into Chander Pahar, the Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay original when I was helping my nephew with his Bengali. What struck me immediately was the resemblance to Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, a swashbuckling novel that Bandyopadhyay must have been familiar with. However, while Alan Quartermain is a great white hunter ready with his gun, Shankar, the main protagonist of the Mountain of the Moon is no such hero. Shankar is in his twenties, comes from the lower middle classes, and is determined to find at alternate exciting way of life to the one that he knows in rural Bengal. A neighbour finds him a job in Africa so he has the chance to indulge his dreams.

What he discovers is a world ‘red in tooth and claw’ filled with man-eating lions, live volcanoes and haunted by the mysterious, deadly three toed Bunyip and the Dingonek. The translator of Mountain of the Moon, Jayanta Sengupta, points out that apart from King Solomon’s Mines, Bandyopadhyay was probably familiar with J Patterson’s Maneaters of Tsavo. Though I placed the Bunyip in Australia, the Dingonek apparently did exist in African legend and was some kind of fearsome almost dinosaur with horns the head of a crocodile and the body of a hippo. 

Shankar’s adventures in Africa are of the thrill a minute kind guaranteed to keep readers young and old compulsively turning the pages. Each chapter leads on to another encounter and people die, but the narrative continues without any false sentiment.

Like the great 19^th century writers, Bandyopadhyay creates a ‘Dark Continent’ a blend of fact and fiction where Portuguese adventurers and lost treasure abounds and danger threatens at every step. Despite this inhospitable environment, Shankar sets out in search of a cave filled with diamonds located in the Mountain of the Moon.

The wonder of it is that Bandyopadhyay had never been to Africa and the story came out of his researches with his own descriptions of the stillness of the night and the hanging stars brought in. That in no way detracts from the fascination of his tale and the confidence with which he tells his story. It’s a very different one from the one he tells in his Apu stories that gave Satyajit Ray the script for Pather Panchali and Aparajito.

Jayanta Sengupta attempts to keep to the flavour of the original time by using phrases like ‘land of the Faerie’. However, early on in the book, he does retain words like ‘bedi’ and ‘pratima’ while describing a small ruined temple near Shankar’s home. These words could, one feels, have been given English equivalents to make the book accessible to non-Indian readers.

The other issue, which comes into the quibbling zone, is the matter of the title, Mountain of the Moon. The Mountains of the Moon with an ‘s’ are supposed to be the source of the White Nile and have been mentioned in ancient treatises. It’s a range familiar through legend to Africa hands and would certainly have been familiar to Bandyopadhyay. The Bengali word for mountain, ‘pahar’ allows for number flexibility. Therefore perhaps, Mountains of the Moon would have been a more satisfying sounding title."

This was written by the well-known novelist, Anjana Basu, author of books like "Curses in Ivory", "Black Tongue", "Rhythms of Darkness" and others. You may want to catch up with her work here. 

Incidentally, if any reader can send me a link or a scan of the review as it appeared in the Statesman, I would be most grateful. 

[The book is available at various online stores such as Rupa, Flipkart, Infibeam, Bookadda, Crossword, Linuxbazar (!!), and at Rediff.]

Online store

The book is now also available online from the publisher's own store - here. This seems to be aimed at the international audience - the book is priced at USD 10! As the mere author, who am I to complain?!

The rivers of Mountain of the Moon

The reader is taken on a short journey down some rivers in Africa - the Congo, the Guai, the Orange, the Wai and a few others. I couldn't find the Guai - it could be a figment of the author's imagination. I found two Wais - one in Maharashtra, India, and the other in Papua New Guinea.

But the others are very well known. The Orange River, otherwise known as the Gariep River, Groote River or Senqu River is the longest river in South Africa. It rises in the Drakensberg mountains in Lesotho, flowing westwards through South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. The river forms part of the international borders between South Africa and Namibia and between South Africa and Lesotho, as well as several provincial borders within South Africa. Although the river does not pass through any major cities, it plays an important role in the South African economy by providing water for irrigation, as well as hydroelectric power. The river was named by Robert Jacob Gordon after the Dutch Royal House.

The Congo River (also known as the Zaire River) is a river in Africa, and is the deepest river in the world, with measured depths in excess of 230 m (750 ft). It is the second largest river in the world by volume of water discharged, though it has only one-fifth the volume of the world's largest river, the Amazon. Additionally, its overall length of 4,700 km (2,920 mi) makes it the ninth longest river.

Its drainage basin covers 4,014,500 square kilometres (1,550,000 sq mi). The Congo's discharge at its mouth ranges from 23,000 cubic metres per second (810,000 cu ft/s) to 75,000 cubic metres per second (2,600,000 cu ft/s), with an average of 41,000 cubic metres per second (1,400,000 cu ft/s).
The river and its tributaries flow through the Congo rainforest, the second largest rain forest area in the world, second only to the Amazon Rainforest in South America. The river also has the second-largest flow in the world, behind the Amazon; the third-largest drainage basin of any river, behind the Amazon and Río de la Plata rivers; and is one of the deepest rivers in the world, at depths greater than 230 m (750 ft). Because large sections of the river basin lie above and below the equator, its flow is stable, as there is always at least one part of the river experiencing a rainy season. (All these facts are from Wikipedia).
The drainage basin of the Congo River is pretty impressive.

Legendary monsters of Africa

The Bunyip in Chander Pahar gains in mystery since the author never gives a description - he leaves us readers to imagine the size and ferocity of the beast. Africa, as befits the Dark Continent, has many legendary beasts, just as the Himalayas can claim the Yeti, and Pacific Northwest of the USA has its Bigfoot.


There's the Dingonek - Wikipedia describes it as a scaly, scorpion tailed, saber toothed cryptid seen in Africa. Hailing from the Congolese jungles (primarily in the nation formerly known as Zaire), the Dingonek is yet another in a long line of West African cryptids – such as the Chipekwe, the Jago-nini and the Emela-ntouka. At the Brackfontein Ridge in South Africa is a cave painting of an unknown creature that fits the description of the dingonek, right down to its walrus-like tusks. Said to dwell in the rivers and lakes of western Africa, the Dingonek has been described as being approximately 12-feet in length, with a squarish head, a long horn, saber-like canines – which has resulted in its nickname the “Jungle Walrus” – and a tail complete with a bony, dart-like appendage, which is reputed to be able to secrete a deadly poison. This creature is also said to be covered head to toe in a scaly, mottled epidermis, which has been likened to the prehistoric-looking Asian anteater known as the pangolin. The description by John Alfred Jordan, an explorer who actually shot at this unidentified monster in the River Maggori in Kenya in 1907, claimed this scale-covered creature was as big as 18 feet long and had reptilian claws, a spotted back, long tail, and a big head out of which grew large, curved, walrus-like tusks. It is said to be exceedingly territorial and has been known to kill any hippos, crocodiles and even unwary fishermen, who have had the misfortune of wandering too close to their aquatic nests. This may (or may not be) a picture of a Dingonek. 

There are numerous reports of a strange, horned creature along the west coast of central Africa. French zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans discusses some of them in his 1959 book On the Track of Unknown Animals under the category of "water elephant" and "forest rhinoceros." 



In December, 1919, the London Daily Mail published a letter from C.G. James, who had lived in what is now Zambia. He reported on an enormous beast with a single ivory horn living in the waters of Lakes Bangweulu and the surrounding lakes and swamps. James said this animal was called "Chipekwe" by the natives. The same creature is also mentioned in both Millais' 1924 book Far Away Up the Nile, and Hughes' 1933 volume Eighteen Years on Lake Bangweulu. The latter describes Wa-Ushi tribesmen actually killing such a creature along the Luapula River that leads to Lake Bangweulu. They detailed how its smooth body was armed with a single horn fixed like that of a rhinoceros, but composed of smooth white, highly-polished ivory. Hughes tells of a hippo that was said to be killed by a Chipekwe. The throat was torn out. (Hughes, 1933, p. 146.) Indigenous peoples near Lake Edward in Zaire, call this same creature "Irizima" and refer to it as a "gigantic hippopotamus with the horns of a rhinoceros on its head."


In Mali the Bambara people sculpture iron figurines of a three-horned creature with long points coming off the neck much like the ceratopsian dinosaur Chasmosaurus. (See Ancient Depictions in Room 1 of the Exhibit Hall.) In Cameroon the Baka pygmies identify pictures of a Triceratops with an animal they call the Ngoubou. They report it being big as an ox, possessing a neck frill, and sporting from one to four horns. Apparently the mature male has the largest frill. Perhaps this is the same species as the Emela-ntouka in the Congo and the observers there merely saw the single-horned variety or younger creatures. The Ngoubou is said to inhabit the savannas along the Boumba and Sanga river where it is known to fight with elephants. French cryptozoologist Michel Ballot's 2004 photograph (left) of a native's wood carving representation of Ngoubou bears some resemblance to the picture of the Emela-ntouka from Roy Mackal's 1987 book A Living Dinosaur. This could be the Emela-ntouka. 

This, perhaps, could be the Chipekwe. 

The Bunyip of Chander Pahar actually originated in Australia! Here's Wikipedia on this beast: The bunyip, or kianpraty, is a large mythical creature from Aboriginal mythology, said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes. The origin of the word bunyip has been traced to the Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia language of Aboriginal people of South-Eastern Australia. However, the bunyip appears to have formed part of traditional Aboriginal beliefs and stories throughout Australia, although its name varied according to tribal nomenclature. In his 2001 book, writer Robert Holden identified at least nine regional variations for the creature known as the bunyip across Aboriginal Australia. Various written accounts of bunyips were made by Europeans in the early and mid-19th century, as settlement spread across the country." This is what the creature could have looked like to an artist who drew this in the 1890s. 

The Matabele, the Masai, the Zulu

In his journey with Diego Alvarez, Shankar gets to meet members of a number of African tribes - Matabele, Zulu, Masai.

The Matabele are now known as the Ndebele people. There's an interesting write-up on them here. And this is an interesting picture from R. H. Kiernan, Baden-Powell, 1939. 

The Masai are probably among the best known peoples of Africa. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about them. Photographer Osa Johnson and her husband Martin were responsible for introducing much of the world to the exotic wonder of Africa. This is a photograph of her with Masai women, taken in the 1930s.

This picture is a classic - I don't know who the photographer is, but I always dreamed of an African hunter looking for prey in exactly this pose. 

Wikipedia tells us a lot about the Zulu people, the Zulu language, and the Zulu kingdom. The most famous king of the Zulu people was King Shaka. The picture below is, I understand, the only known drawing of the king. 

The famous folk singer Pete Seeger believed that the well-known song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is actually about Shaka. Here's Pete Seeger and The Weavers singing this song at the Carnegie Hall in New York, at their reunion concert.