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
1939 American Karakoram expedition to K2 time in America. In 1935 he became a U.S. citizen and the next year he and Bill House became celebrated as the first people to climb Mount Waddington in Canada, a mountain on which there had previously been sixteen unsuccessful attempts. By 1938 he had become the pre-eminent American climber and, having been on Nanga Parbat, the only one with experience on an eight-thousand-metre peak. He seemed the obvious choice to lead the 1938 expedition for which he had led the successful attempts to secure funding. As it turned out he had prior commitments in 1938 but he was available