Robbinsville man tackles Himalayas during three-month survival course
By Matt Chiappardi, The Packet Group
While leading an expedition through the dangerous Ralum Pass high in the Himalayan Mountains, Robbinsville native Joda Hankins faced a life-and-death decision.
At 15,575 feet in altitude, some of his team members were suffering from altitude sickness. The team had already gone past the halfway point and wasn’t sure it had enough time to go back down. But pushing on meant ascending even higher in order to descend, maybe putting his crew at greater risk.
Mr. Hankins, a Lawrence High School graduate who grew up on Windsor-Perrineville Road, chose to go forward.
”At the time it seemed harsh, but later they were grateful. That pass was the last obstacle. After that, it was all downhill,” he said.
That was one of the many decisions the 21-year-old had to wrestle while completing a 90-day course on leadership and wilderness survival through the Wyoming-based National Outdoor Leadership School earlier this year.
His journey took him from his small college in Lakewood, Colo.—Colorado Christian University—to one of the largest metropolises in South Asia, and then north to some of the harshest, most desolate terrain on earth.
The Himalayas stretch across seven countries and are home to the top 50 tallest mountain peaks in the world. As a mountaineering enthusiast who began by rock climbing in New Jersey, Mr. Hankins said he was attracted to the Indian wilderness course by the geography.
But after three months hiking through alpine passes and going through mountain villages, it was the social aspect of the trip Mr. Hankins ultimately took home with him, he said.
”The people there don’t dwell on the fact that they have nothing. They keep trying even with the guarantee they won’t get anything,” he said.
The area of India where Mr. Hankins explored, close to the China border, is populated with people whose lives have changed little in thousands of years, unlike their southern neighbors who live in one of the fastest growing and quickest developing parts of the world. Mr. Hankins, who had never eaten Indian food or had never seen a Bollywood movie before setting foot on South Asian soil, said his trip was an eye-opening experience.
”I saw rice paddies being planted by hand, cow dung used as fuel, hay that had already been trampled on and covered in urine hung out to dry and be reused,” he said.
”It’s a hard life, but a true life. These are the true mountain people,” he added.
It took some time for Mr. Hankins and his group of 13 other students and four instructors to find those true mountain dwellers. They started in the 17 million-person megalopolis of Delhi. Then through days traveling in buses, trains and jeeps finally began hiking north of Kathgodam in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.
Over the next few months, the group would take turns with different students acting as the leader responsible for the party’s route, travel patterns and health.
Mr. Hankins led the team for two weeks near the end of the course. Learning how to be both a good leader and a good follower was invaluable, he said.
”It made me feel my decision making was valued and put their importance into perspective. Sometimes, there’s no time for negotiation,” Mr. Hankins said.
But there was time for Mr. Hankins and his group to marvel at some of the looming monuments of history, both natural and man-made.
In the shadow of Mount Everest he and his group saw the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, a mountain peak and glacial basin regarded by many Hindus as the patron goddess of the Uttarakhandi highlands.
”I felt privileged to be there,” he said. “It was tranquil and serene. I felt still.”
The group came across an ominous sign when it passed through one of the villages, abandoned when the Indian Chinese border was closed after the People’s Republic of China invaded and annexed Tibet in 1950.
Mr. Hankins said one village the group visited went from a population of 300 in 1948 to only three in 2008.
”There is an absence of time here and a loss of generation. I attribute this to just the isolation, lack of resources and the lack of contact with the rest of the world,” he said.
In the villages with people, those inhabitants lived on subsistence farming and gathering, and drank water irrigated from the mountaintop snowmelts, he said. When a village was lucky enough to have a radio, only one frequency would play for a certain amount of time, and its inhabitants would all gather round to hear a short news bulletin, he added.
”India was a place where the people and their lives really give Americans a tighter perspective on things. The lifestyle was what I expected to a degree, but not to this extent,” said Mr. Hankins.
Returning home, Mr. Hankins said he had a newfound confidence in his abilities as a leader, and a new perspective on the mountain people of India. The man who had barely any contact with South Asian culture now plans to return next year.
Along with honing his skills as a mountaineer, he learned how to become a mentor. But most importantly, the course taught him the value of perseverance and how to emulate the mountain peoples that in his short time visiting he’d come to respect.
”Never put the summit above life,” he said.

