with fleas, and cooking was done on a fire of rhododendron wood on a stone hearth. Our porters are not the first, then, to attack the rhododendron trees of Tseram.
I’m unable to take my eyes off the head of the valley. Up there, Kabru’s lofty ridge sparkles in sunshine. Next to it is shapely Ratong, with the deep saddle of the Ratong La below. Snow and ice smear every verticality, yet the valley walled by those peaks is devoid of glacier or snowfield, so far as I can tell from here, which makes the impact of that white vision the more profound. Then, as the afternoon moves towards dusk, the lowering sun turns an unnamed rock peak a little northeast of here into a glowing tower of bronze. Suddenly Kabru and Ratong lose their dominance. Clouds boil up from the lower valley, and one by one all the mountains take their leave.
One more camp and we’ll be within sight of the Southwest Face of Kangchenjunga. Since leaving Basantpur at the road-head – what was it 10, 11 days ago? – every day has been filled with wonders. The lush foothills and more rugged Middle Hills have rewarded each hour, and if we were to go no further, they would have justified travelling all the way to Nepal. Even so, the prospect of coming within touching distance of those Himalayan giants denies me sleep, and I’m saddened to know that two of our group will wait here while we go on tomorrow. For several days one of our women has been suffering from diarrhoea, and the other says she’s trail-weary and has run out of steam. So near, yet so far…
I cannot believe this day has arrived!
On three sides I’m hemmed in by mountains of exquisite beauty. Behind me the Yalung Valley descends in a series of steps. On each level a baize of autumnal grass hints at pasturing for yaks, although I’ve not seen any this morning. Every once in a while a diaphanous web of mist drifts up from the lower, unseen valley, but by the time it reaches this point it spins, tears and evaporates. The air has a crisp bite, yet shaded from any breeze the sun’s warmth is reminiscent of a late Indian summer. On this dazzling day the light is so acute I’m forced to squint behind dark glasses.
Topping another rise I’m suddenly aware that for the past hour or so I’ve been walking through an ablation valley – off to the right there’s a dark wall of moraine, which conceals from view the great Yalung Glacier, and to the left the pasture stops abruptly at the foot of a mountain. A hanging valley breaks the uniformity of that left-hand slope, but ahead…ahead I see a glacial lake. Shallow and ice-edged, it acts like a shining mirror. In those waters summits of rare perfection have been uprooted. Images of snow-sheathed mountains dazzle the sun; they float and shimmer upside down, while their real selves form a backdrop that until now belonged to a world of dreams.
I lower my rucksack to the ground and position myself on a convenient rock. Alone, my soul floats in a breathless silence.
The poet Robert Service once wrote that silence is man’s confession of his own deafness, and I know he’s right, for it’s not silent here at all. Peaceful, yes. Almost devoid of sound – but not quite. There comes the whisper of a stray breeze, filtering not from the lower valley, but from ahead and across the other side of the unseen glacier where Koktang is a crystal curtain, its immaculately fluted ridge tilting shadows that outline every individual fold and ripple of its face. That breeze brings with it frostnip and the soft hum of distance.
Koktang’s left-hand arête sweeps down to the U-shaped cleft of the Ratong La, through which I see mountains that belong to another country. Those snow peaks of Sikkim seem to be dwarfed by the immediate scene, yet their presence adds to its glory. On the north side of the Ratong La rears the great cone of Ratong that we’d gazed on yesterday from Tseram. This acts as a buttress to the formidable block that is Kabru, whose face is crumpled with hanging glaciers, but from here I am unable to see the continuation of its summit ridge, although I know it leads to Talung and then up to Kangchenjunga itself. Kangchenjunga…just around the corner. Only just around the corner…yet I am content to wait a little longer before setting eyes on its Southwest Face. For this moment in time there’s as much scenic grandeur as I can absorb.
Now I’m aware of a soft tinkling sound, so lightly suggested that it’s necessary to hold my breath. There it goes again – and again – as a stream breaks free of its early glaze of ice and finds release across the pasture.
I’m not certain how long I enjoy the solitude, but eventually the peace is disturbed by a familiar sound when one porter after another comes over the bluff behind me to traipse across the yak-cropped grass. The first announces his presence with a cough, a hawk, and a gob of smoke-induced phlegm. The juggernauts of the Himalaya are on the move again.
Once more we camp early, this time on the uppermost yak pasture known as Ramze, where the successful 1955 Kangchenjunga expedition had their so-called Moraine Camp, and where their 300 porters set down six tons of food and equipment to be ferried up the Yalung Glacier to their base camp. By comparison it is empty today. Just a handful of our blue ridge tents to provide a modicum of shelter for one night only.
At an altitude of more than 4600 metres, the pasture is hemmed in by a curving black wall of moraine just short of the point where the valley makes an abrupt turn to the north. Two herders’ huts stand on a slope behind our tents, and above these Boktoh scratches at the sky. With nightfall the temperature plummets, and when I brave the chill for a pee shortly after midnight everywhere is coated with frost and Boktoh glows in the light of a full moon. I stand entranced by a heaven flushed with stars, each one diamond-sharp and close enough to touch. I’m tempted to pluck two or three from the sky to carry back to the tent to use as candles.
Bed-tea is early in that frost bowl, and we breakfast on porridge long before the sun is awake. Cocooned in down we trudge round the bend of the valley towards the bulk of Kangchenjunga, which gradually appears like an impregnable fortress at its head. An avenue of snow peaks, anonymous still in shadow, draws us on. It’s bitterly cold and too early for words. Day may have dawned high on Kanch, but here in the ablation valley night still holds sway. But before long, across the Yalung Glacier the great crusted ridge of cornices that links Ratong with the many summits of Kabru, and Kabru with Talung, begins to appear translucent. Beyond those mountains the sun is working its magic from a secret Sikkimese meadow where it has spent the night. I sense its rising. Then there’s an explosion of light, a halo appears and ice crystals dance in the still morning air.
Kangchenjunga, to which we have been walking for so many days, now offers its Southwest Face for inspection. Broken here and there by black ribs of rock, it has a formidable presence, its glaze of ice and snow stippled by what appear from this distance to be minor cracks, but which in reality no doubt are monstrous glacial shelves. Almost 4000 metres higher than where I stand, the wall is topped by a crest of ice carved against a sky of deep intensity. A glorious mountain it truly is, but so too are those to the right and left of me, each one no less spell-binding in its beauty than Kanch itself.
Pemba grabs my arm and points up the left-hand slope. ‘Bharal,’ he hisses. These are the so-called blue sheep of the Himalaya, and I stand rooted to the spot to watch as a small herd of the short-horned animals skitters across what looks like a vertical gully. A few stones rattle down. Then peace is restored.
My Sherpa friend is excited to be back in close contact with Kangchenjunga. Today it is his mountain and, full of stories of his time here with the Japanese expedition, he directs my attention to individual features on the massive face. In honour of his return he’s wearing a pair of red quilted trousers from that expedition as a souvenir.
We clamber onto the moraine crest and look down upon the glacier. In the Alps it would either be riven with blue-green crevasses or carpeted with snow. Here in the Himalaya we gaze upon a junkyard bearing the debris of the mountains that wall it; a chaos of rock and rubble – grey, drab and lacking appeal.
Pemba presses on, now joined by Dendi, while I follow close behind, panting with the unaccustomed altitude. I am made breathless not only by the thin air, though, but by the scene ahead, above and behind, for this is the culmination of a dream; the Himalaya at last!
At last we reach a prominent chorten, like a huge milestone on the moraine crest, with an uninterrupted view of Kangchenjunga as a backdrop. A cluster of bamboo wands wearing strips of printed cloth rise from the top of this pile