Then I recalled Joe Tasker’s Savage Arena, a book I’d reviewed for a magazine when it was published in 1982 at the time of the author’s disappearance with Peter Boardman on Everest’s Northeast Ridge. In it Joe had recounted his part in the four-man expedition to climb Kanch’s Northwest Face three years earlier. Taking it from my shelf I leafed through the book and found teasing references to walking along the crest of a ridge between the valleys of the Arun and Tamur, of rhododendrons and clusters of huts, and of porters dwarfed by monstrous loads as they made their way from village to village. Only once did he mention catching sight of the mountain he’d come to climb, ‘hovering white and unobtrusive in the distance so I thought it was a cloud’.
By contrast, Boardman’s story of the same climb, which appeared in his Sacred Summits, offered more descriptions than Joe’s of the approach from the then road-head at Dharan, and brought to mind something he’d told a mutual friend when he’d arrived home from the mountain. It was, he’d said, the most beautiful walk he’d ever made. Considering his vast experience on several continents, that was quite a claim, and it excited my imagination more than anything. Could I be embarked on the most beautiful walk in the world?
Max joins me on the hill overlooking the cloud-sea. He’s brought my camera as well as his own. ‘Here,’ he says with his distinctive Belfast accent. ‘I figured a new boy like you might like to take a few snaps of your first sight of the Himalaya.’
A 30-year-old bachelor with a high level of disposable income, my tent-mate comes trekking in the Himalaya twice each year and enjoys teasing me for being what he calls ‘a new boy’. Mind you, he’s never seen the Alps or Pyrenees, or any other European range for that matter, but in common with many other trekkers in Nepal, his only mountain experience has been here, among the highest of them all. How times change! Until very recently it was usual to serve an apprenticeship among the hills and fells of Britain before graduating to the Alps in order to build experience to face bigger, more remote challenges in the Himalaya. It was a natural progression, and if not exactly a law carved in stone, it was something to which most of us conformed. But the advent of adventure travel and cheap international flights has changed all that, and a trek in Nepal, Ladakh or Pakistan is now seen as a viable alternative to a fortnight on the Costa del Sol.
‘Thanks,’ I say as I take the camera from him and try to capture the essence of this moment in time. Through the lens I scan pillows of mist that froth and foam and lap like a tide against the Singalila Ridge, sharply outlined like a cardboard cut-out. I note the light which floods almost horizontally across the sea of mist, painting a skyline of mountains and pushing blue shadows westward.
We breakfast in a bhatti, a simple teahouse in the tiny village just up the slope from our tents. Mingma and his team have taken over the building next door for their kitchen, and ferry the food to us. There’s porridge, fried eggs and slices of luke-warm toast to spread with peanut butter, honey or over-sweet Druk jam imported from Bhutan. And there’s as much tea, coffee or hot chocolate as we can drink. As I eat, I can see through a hole in the wall to where a pig stands knee-deep in a trough snuffling his own breakfast, while at the same time peeing into it. ‘Adds to the flavour,’ says Bart, our leader. ‘But don’t try it on my breakfast.’
It’s good to be trekking with Bart Jordans once more. Last year we’d been in the Alps together, and I’m delighted to see that his enthusiasm for mountains is as infectious as ever. Only a few days ago this tall, effervescent Dutchman with a halo of dark hair and wire-rimmed John Lennon glasses had arrived back in Kathmandu from leading a trek to Everest Base Camp, and had barely enough time for a shower before heading east to Kangchenjunga with our group. He must have slept well on the 26 hour bus ride, for since we began trekking he’s been bursting with vigour that energises the rest of us.
While we eat the Sherpas collapse the tents, and our porters make up their loads and head off along the trail with small jerky steps, their towering bundles or bamboo dokos held only by hessian tumplines round their foreheads. How do they do it? These guys are only slightly built, with thin legs and either plastic flip-flops or nothing at all on their bare feet. They give no indication of having either strength or stamina – but what must their neck and leg muscles be like?
Leaving the village, our trail slants across open country with an uninterrupted view of the Himalaya ahead. There’s Kanch again, demanding our attention, but as we turn a little to the northwest, we can see across the depths of the Arun Valley to Makalu, Lhotse Shar and an insignificant peak that someone says is Everest. Really? I find that hard to believe, but what do I know? Best of all is a mountain standing south of the main Himalayan watershed, with an extensive, flat-looking ridge supported by a vast wall of snow, ice and rock. It’s Chamlang, a 7000 metre giant first climbed 27 years ago. Bart speculates that we should have had this panorama yesterday, had it not been for the mist. I’m just thankful we have it now.
Our trek takes us over short-cropped grassland that in the Alps would be grazed by bell-ringing cattle; the only livestock we see here are a few goats. We enter groves of rhododendron trees tall as an English oak. Between lumps of moss cladding, the pinkish bark has a rich sheen as though it’s been varnished; ferns and exotic tree orchids adorn some of the trunks, tattered ropes of lichen hang from the branches, and dried leaves form a carpet beneath our boots. At the edge of one of these little woodlands the stumps of recently cut trees tell of nearby houses, and as we pass by women are sweeping the dust from their doorways. Grubby-faced children emerge with hands pressed together in the attitude of prayer: ‘Namaste,’ they cry; ‘I salute the god within you.’ It becomes a mantra, the soundtrack of our journey, as much a part of the Nepalese trekking experience as bed-tea and distant views.
For an hour or so I walk alone, senses alert to every new experience. This is what I’ve dreamed of for so long; I want to miss nothing. There are riches to be harvested wherever I turn; I’m greedy for life.
Suddenly I’m aware of a young voice singing. Delivered in a strong but high-pitched key, the sound is approaching fast, and when I turn I see our 15-year-old porter we’ve named Speedy come tripping along the trail under his 20 kilo load. Neither the weight of his doko, nor the speed of his footwork, appears to have any impact on his singing. I’m impressed. There’s no room for him to pass just here, so I continue until there’s a broadening of the trail where the shrubbery is not so dense. There I stand back, but Speedy decides to stop too, leans his doko against a convenient rock, adjusts the namlo on his sweating forehead, and gives me a wide grin. His song has ended, but I figure it would be good to have it on tape as a record of the journey, so pull my hand-sized recorder from my pocket and give him a demonstration. He speaks, and I play his voice back to him. Eyes wide with wonder, he takes the tape recorder from me to examine. ‘Ramro,’ he says. I sing a few phrases, play them back and point to him. ‘Will you sing for me?’
He understands my request and willingly gives a rendition of the song he’d been singing only moments before. Then we resume our journey together. But the young lad soon draws ahead, singing a different song this time, his plastic flip-flops slapping a rhythm of their own on the bare-earth trail, while I jog behind trying to record more of this very special soundscape.
Together we make rapid progress along the trail, which now slopes downhill before easing along a more open flank of the Milke Danda. A broad valley lies far below the ridge – the same valley that was drowned by the cloud-sea at dawn. Now I see it is patched with trees and small villages, and on its far side hillsides are cleft with streams draining the Singalila Ridge where cloud-shadows ripple their own journeys.
After less than three hours of walking we return to the crest to gain a view onto a dip in the ridge where two lines of simple houses face one another across a paved street. To the left of the houses there’s another small pond, which gives the village its name – Gupha Pokhari. ‘Pokhari’, Max later explains in his eagerness to educate me, means ‘lake’. Beside the pond I notice the blue tarpaulin that signals our lunch stop. But it’s only 10.30!
A stone-built chautaara stretches along the centre of the village street. Our porters have stopped here; their