While Singh went on to reach the peak of Trisul, where he performed a headstand asana to honor the Hindu god Shiva, Jayal noted his own feelings in lyrical terms: "The grass on which we camped was like a cushion sprinkled with tiny mauve primula and the gentle lapping of the running water recalled melodies from Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.

I confess a desire to bring my efforts to an honourable conclusion here – as long as somebody got to the top – and revel in this bracing and saner altitude.

Under the leadership of the Engineer-in-Chief, Maj. Gen. Harold 'Bill' Williams, himself an eager climber, Nandu Jayal organised the first Sappers expedition to Bandarpunch successfully in 1950.

As a young Captain in 1950–51, he carried out a strategic reconnaissance of the Garhwal Himalayas and was later the Indian Army liaison officer for the French Expedition to Nanda Devi in 1951.

Jayal was the founder principal of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute at Darjeeling, with Tenzing Norgay of Everest fame as the Chief Instructor.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, paid rich tributes to Jayal saying "the Major has set an example of courage and adventure which should inspire our young people.

The news of his death came to me as a shock and I feel that the country has suffered the loss of her finest mountaineer..." Arthur Foot, Jayal's Headmaster of Doon, noted that "The Himalaya completed his education into a stature of nobility", echoing a sentiment expressed two years earlier by Jayal himself who had noted, after an expedition to Saser Kangri, that "Pushing the body to the utmost for something indefinably inherent in a person, is intrinsically noble and worthwhile."