more. Blinkered, we’d stumbled on, wondering.
This morning there is no wind, the tent is stilled, a vague glow brightens the fabric to tell of daybreak, and as I receive the steaming mug through the doorway, I see beyond cook-boy Indre’s beaming, high-cheekboned face (‘Morninggg, velly nice morning sah!’) to a shallow pool trapped in a tiny scoop of a valley among the foothills. Yesterday the water seemed brackish, but now from my vantage point a dozen paces away, I can see that it’s blue and sparkling, a mirror-image of the early-morning mist-free sky.
Far and away beyond the pool the rising sun pours its benevolence over summit snows. Out there, a distance of maybe 10 days’ walk away, I see a vertical arctic wall shrugging the clouds – shapely, iridescent, unbelievably beautiful as its colours change with each succeeding moment.
The impact it has on me is instantaneous.
‘Will you take a look at that!’ I gasp at Max as I grab a fleece with one hand, boots with the other and lunge out of the tent in uncontrollable, child-like excitement, then part-stumble, part-hop my way up the slope on the right, where last night there’d been fireflies, but which this morning is diamond-studded with dew.
On gaining the top of the hill I run out of breath. Not with altitude, for we’ve not yet reached even 3000 metres, nor from my haste in getting here, but because all the world below to the east and northeast slumbers in ignorance of the new day beneath a gently pulsating cloud-sea. On it floats the sun. And a black-shadowed, whale-back ridge that can only be the Singalila bordering Sikkim. My eyes, a little moist (from the crisp morning air, you understand), travel along that ridge which rises steadily above the clouds until it gathers snow and what can only be hanging glaciers. There, at the far northernmost limit of the ridge, stands a vast block of ice and snow, a wall so colossal in scale that individual features can be identified even from this great distance. Although until now I’ve seen it only in photographs, that great bulk is unmistakable – Kangchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain.
In response to that view a bird sings a seesaw refrain from its perch on a shrub nearby. Another joins in. Then another.
I’m inexpressibly happy, jubilant with the glory that unfolds, for stained as it is by the morning light, and gathered on the horizon in an all-embracing glance, Kangchenjunga personifies the lure of high places that haunts my dreams by night and day.
The Himalaya at last! It has taken me 30 years to get here.
Nine months ago I’d been enthusing about the appeal of trekking to a group of prospective customers for Sherpa Expeditions in London. In a large room over a pub in Earls Court I’d shown slides taken when wandering with Berber muleteers in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, of tackling the classic high route across Corsica, the romantic wild country of the Pyrenees, and some long treks in the Alps. Since taking the plunge as a freelance travel writer just three years before, I’d been supplementing my income with lectures and presentations at promotional events devoted to mountain travel. On this occasion the audience had been especially receptive, and after the last slide had faded from the screen I’d been bombarded with questions. Some members of the audience were inveterate trekkers, while others had yet to take their first steps, but all were united by a love of wild places and a taste for adventure. Dreamers all, I fed those dreams, then explained how to translate them into reality.
When the last of the audience had finally drifted home to dream and plan anew, director Frank McCready gathered spare sheets of promotional material while I dismantled the projection equipment. ‘How is it you’ve never done a long-haul trip for us?’ he asked.
‘You’ve never invited me.’
‘Would you?’
‘Of course. Somewhere in mind?’ I was winding the projection cable, looping it over the gap between thumb and forefinger, down to elbow and back again, but slowed the process as I waited for Frank to answer.
He passed me a copy of the latest brochure, which I took with my one free hand. It was open at the Himalaya section. ‘You’ve never been to Nepal, have you? Fancy going?’
Would I fancy going to Nepal! What kind of question was that? My heartbeat quickened and I was aware of the pulse in my neck as I attempted to answer without choking on the words. ‘Sure,’ was all I could manage. ‘Why not?’
‘The far northeast of the country was out of bounds until recently,’ he explained. ‘The Nepalese government has just lifted restrictions, and for the first time a limited number of trekkers will be able to approach Kangchenjunga. We hope to send a group in the autumn – we’ve just managed to get it in the brochure. It’s new, and I’m sure it would be a good route to try. We’d need someone to write about it. What d’you think?’
On the tube to Victoria it was impossible to clear the smile from my face. Others sharing the carriage must have thought me mad. I was. But my head was spinning with the prospect of going to the Himalaya at last. For 30 years I’d been climbing and trekking in a variety of mountain regions, but never the Himalaya. I’d read the books, seen the films, attended lectures – how many times had I sat in an audience enthralled by the tales of a top climber describing the ascent of some Himalayan giant, and imagined myself there! Not climbing – no, I’d lost that fantasy long ago – but trekking across the foothills, through the valleys and over high passes. That would suit my needs; just being there among those fabled mountains. Sharing promotional events with trek leaders experienced in Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Tibet, Pakistan, I’d bombard them with questions, envying their travels. I’d led groups in other places, organised numerous trips to ranges elsewhere, but somehow a Himalayan opportunity had never arisen.
Maybe that omission was my own fault, that I’d never created an opportunity for myself, although friends and acquaintances with conventional jobs and a real income had managed it. Some had sent postcards and letters from exotic locations, while I’d simply drifted from one financial crisis to another and contented myself with mountains nearer home, mountains whose familiarity had become part of my workaday world. They were no second best, of that I was certain. But if you love mountains, the Himalaya will inevitably invade your thoughts and stir ambition. To me, the Himalaya had formed a major part of my dream world, while in reality those great iconic peaks remained far off, remote, aloof and unattainable. Until now.
I couldn’t wait to get home to share the news. But by then it was past midnight and the family was asleep.
In the far northeast of Nepal, and straddling the border with Sikkim, Kangchenjunga is a huge massif with extensive ridges and numerous spurs. With five main summits and as many glaciers, it’s considered a sacred mountain by those who live in its shadow. When the first ascent was made by a British expedition in 1955, George Band and Joe Brown honoured the beliefs of the Sikkimese people by stopping just short of the actual summit. The untrodden crown thus remained the domain of the gods, undisturbed by mere mortals. Until 1980, that is, when a Japanese team trod all over it.
Unlike many other Himalayan giants that remain blocked from distant view by intervening peaks and ridges, Kanch is clearly visible 70 kilometres away from the ridge-top town of Darjeeling, where it has become one of the sights of the eastern Himalaya. Over the years I’d met a number of men and women who’d spent time in India during the days of the British Raj, whose eyes would glaze over as they reminisced about watching the sun rise or set on that distant peak while on temporary leave from summer’s oppressive heat in Calcutta. If the sight of Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling could so enthral, inspire and mesmerise non-mountain folk, I wondered what would its effect be on those of us with a passion for high places who planned to trek to its base?
In the seemingly endless months between that initial invitation in Earls Court and the date of departure for Kathmandu, I absorbed as much information as I could about Nepal in general and the approach to Kanch in particular. Truth to tell, there wasn’t much written about the Nepalese approach, for nearly all expeditions to tackle the mountain since the first attempt in 1905 had begun their walk-in from Darjeeling, and had only entered Nepalese territory by crossing