Seven Years in Tibet (1997 film) still a boy, and becomes one of his tutors. During their time together, Heinrich becomes a close friend to the young spiritual leader. Harrer and Aufschnaiter stay in the country until the Chinese military campaign in 1950. In 1938, Austrian mountaineers Heinrich Harrer (Pitt) leaves behind his pregnant wife to join Peter Aufschnaiter (Thewlis) in a team attempting to summit Nanga Parbat in British India (present-day part of Pakistan). When World War II begins in 1939, they are arrested by British Indian authorities and imprisoned in a POW camp in Dehradun in the Himalayan foothills, in the present-day Indian state
Nanga Parbat faces Kanchenjunga was more difficult than Everest and neither expedition made much progress. K2 was known to be harder still, and its remoteness meant that even reaching its base would be a major undertaking. Nanga Parbat was therefore the highest mountain accessible to Germans and also deemed reasonably possible by climbers at the time. The first German expedition to Nanga Parbat was led by Willy Merkl in 1932. It is sometimes referred to as a German-American expedition, as the eight climbers included Rand Herron, an American, and Fritz Wiessner, who would become an American citizen the following year. While the