Rifugio Pagari

These were some of the people with whom I was hanging around while I was a student of physics in Torino (Italy). Matteo you already know, as he was in yesterday’s photo. This picture was taken at the Rifugio Federici-Marchesini al Pagari, in Valle Gesso (Piemonte’s Alps). The two persons on the left are Nepa and Aladar, which where (and still are) the custodians of the Rifugio.

Aladar (Andrea Pittavino) was a student of physics at my university, and Nepa is his brother. Aladar at some point in his university career, had to take an exam on the history of Physics. He decided to write something on the history of science in the Far East, so he went to a spiritual trip to Tibet to find the material he needed. With his brother, he went hitchhiking all the way to northern India. They only took an airplane once, because they couldn’t get a visa tro cross Iran, and had to fly over it. Aladar told me that after several months he managed to arrive in a remote monastery in the Himalaya. He asked to access the library of the monastery and a monk told him that he was expected and showed him the way. In the library, without knowing the language, he took the first book he saw, which turned out to be what he needed.

At the time of the photo, Aladar and Nepa were full time custodian of the Rifugio. This means that they were there all year around, even in winter when the place (2,650m = 8,000ft on the sea level) cannot be reached from the valley below because of the snow. He told us that during the winter they didn’t see any other person, with the exception of the elicopter pilot that was parachuting their food once in a while. They had to ration the food and the wood, and they didn’t even have enough water to do the laundry (all the water was frozen, and they had to thaw the water they needed to drink on the wood stove). He recently wrote a book on the history of the refuge.