The strangest oropolitical events must surely be the unpublicised ascents of Nanda Devi and Nanda Kot by joint Indo-US expeditions in the 1960s to plant devices to monitor Chinese nuclear activity. The media disclosure in 1978 that an Indo-American covert expedition had planted a nuclear-fuelled monitoring device atop Nanda Kot in the 1960s, and that subsequently the device had disappeared, led to fears of radioactive contamination of the river Ganges, and a political brouhaha.