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Sitting on top of the world

Pavel Bém shares his adventures abroad — for a hefty price

By Frank Kuznik
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
January 30th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Friendly locals included this aspiring Mousketeer in Bhutan.
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Man first walked on the moon July 20, 1969. To this day, there are people who don’t believe it happened, that the whole deal — television broadcasts included — was an elaborate government hoax perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.
What brought this to mind was the recent arrival of a weighty package addressed to the editor of The Prague Post, thoughtfully gift-wrapped in green and gold. It turned out to be Třetí Everest — Poznání bolí (roughly, Third Everest — Painful Wisdom), a multimedia account of Prague Mayor Pavel Bém’s assault on Mount Everest last year. Despite daily dispatches of his progress during the trip, it was hard to believe this slight man had managed to scale the world’s tallest peak.
Page 14 of the book should erase all doubts. A full-page color photo shows Bém, barely recognizable as a grinning, bearded face cocooned in layers of outdoor gear, standing at the top of the world, proudly displaying a Czech flag. And, if there’s any question about how he got there, the next 206 pages recount his journey in elaborate detail.
That’s not all. The 352-page tome, which has a mani (Tibetan prayer stone) inlaid in the cover, also includes chapters on Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and India; 18 pages of photos taken from the summit of Everest, including a four-page foldout; and five prayer flags that you can hang on a clothesline at home, just like the ones pictured in the book. The entire package, which comes in a bright-red cardboard slipcover, also includes a National Geographic map of Everest, a paper lantern to set the proper reading mood and a DVD account of Bém’s excursion.
An ego trip to rival the trek through the Himalayas? More like a goodwill gesture, according to the mayor, who produced the book with his climbing partner, travel agent and publisher, Rudolf Švaříček.
“When we were sorting out those piles of photos we brought back and talking about the fantastic experiences we had there,”  Bém writes via e-mail, “we agreed that it would be a great pity just to keep it for ourselves and not [show] those people who don’t spend every free minute they have in the mountains.”
“The book is not only about our Czech-Slovak Nepal expedition,” Švaříček adds. “We wanted readers to get to know the Himalayas and all the interesting things about them more deeply.”
As the text is entirely in Czech, few people outside of Bém’s constituency will be able to appreciate the mayor’s detailed travelogue and observations on life in Southwest Asia. The photos are splashy and colorful, if mostly the predictable fare of man versus mountain, monks praying in monasteries and leathery locals. There are a few genuine keepers, like the young boy in a Mickey Mouse mask pointing a gun threateningly at the camera. Then again, does the world really need a life-size reproduction of the Bém expedition’s permit from the Tibetan government to climb Everest?
Neither Bém nor Švaříček is giving away any numbers on how much the book cost to produce, nor how many copies were printed. “Considering the Czech book market, the number of copies is high,” is all Švaříček will divulge. As for financing, he says, “Livingstone [Švaříček’s publishing company] published this book, so obviously it carries all the costs.”
The price tag (1,298 Kč/$72.50) isn’t outrageous considering the quality and contents of the package, though one wonders how many working-class Czechs can afford it. But it will no doubt make a nice presentation gift for the mayor for years to come, not to mention a sweet freebie for media types.
Whatever else one thinks about Třetí Everest, you can’t say the mayor didn’t work hard on it. “We spent some five months putting the book together and I literally worked night shifts,” Bém confides.
Now if he’d only apply the same effort to nailing those damned cheating cabbies.
— Hela Balínová contributed to this report.
    
    
    
    

Frank Kuznik can be reached at fkuznik@praguepost.com


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