8000 metres. Alan Hinkes

your head, which feels like it might explode, and lethargy sets in as though you have flu. All that speed was an unnecessary risk in my view. However, Benoit was the leader, he made the decisions and he insisted that we would be fine.

      Just as I had feared, almost as soon as we reached Tingri I started to feel nauseous and unwell. I developed a pounding, burning headache, which would not go away. Paracetamol and aspirin had no effect. In the end, the team decided to put me in a Gamow bag, which was, at the time, a new piece of first aid equipment. Essentially, it is a big nylon coffin that acts as a mini-hyperbaric chamber. Pressure is built up within in an attempt to fool the body into thinking it is a couple of thousand metres lower down. One of the Italians had also gone down with altitude sickness so we took it in turns to disappear inside the horrible bag. It didn’t seem to do much for my splitting headache and I felt that the only cure was to descend to a lower altitude. A jeep to take the two of us to Zhangmu on the Nepal border would be expensive and taking two of us out of the expedition for three or four days would affect Benoit’s plan for us all to summit together. Thankfully, Benoit started feeling the altitude badly too, so the three of us were driven down to benefit from the thicker air of Zhangmu. There, I immediately recovered. We spent a couple of nights at the much lower altitude, resting, drinking the odd bottle of Chinese beer, eating and gently exercising before driving back to Tingri, this time with another stopover, in Nyalam.