MUNSIARI (PITHORAGARH), June 25: It was a dream team of eight women, led by noted mountaineer Bachendri Pal, that set off from Delhi on February 4 to traverse the Himalayas on foot over a distance of 4,000 km. Today, thanks to personality differences between team members, the well-publicised expedition has become a case of a dream turned sour.

The team has split vertically now, with three members deciding to stage their own expedition. While the original expedition went by the name of `Indian Women's First Trans-Himalayan Journey '97', the break-away group has named theirs `To Walk the High Himalayas'.

In a statement issued here, expedition members Sumita Roy, Bineeta Muni and Malika Virdi stated that they had decided to leave the team after having been a part of it for over four months because of the ``oppressive and humiliating behaviour of the leader''.

According to their statement, team members were being threatened with expulsion if they refused to comply with what were ``illogical and often whimsical demands''. Things had come to such a state, the statement said, that the three members decided to leave the original team for the sake of their own self-respect and integrity.

Among the complaints voiced against the leadership was its attitude towards villagers. ``It was revolting for us to be part of a team which descended on villages like a swarm of locusts and raided the people in the name of hospitality, all the while deriding them for what they were,'' the statement read.

Another charge was that the expedition, despite the generous grants received from the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation, the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs and a number of private companies, was always short of infrastructure and food.

On occasions, they allege, members had to buy and carry their own food, and arrange for tents themselves. The decision to disallow all personal photography, despite the fact that it was agreed to at the beginning of the expedition, was yet another cause for friction. Members were allegedly forced to hand over all film rolls personally bought under threats of expulsion.

The three-member team, with a small support group of friends, and backed by India's premier mountaineering institution, The Himalyan Club, will now follow a route that takes them from Munsiari at the Indo-Nepal-Tibet trijunction to over several high passes above 17,000 ft.

Their journey would cover 6,000 km and will conclude around mid-September at the Karokoram range. Going by the original plan, the team led by Pal will complete its journey at Indira Col on the Siachen Glacier some time in July or August. But members of the break-away group state that they are not in a race to ``finish the Himalayas'' and would rather do it as a collective project.

Ironically, just before setting out in February, Malika Virdi, a member of the break-away group, in an interview with The Indian Express had observed that the expedition will demonstrate not ``just how long and well you walk, but how well you hang together as a team''.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.