a bird that sings first thing in the morning with a sound like that of a gate in need of oil. But not this morning. The forest is silent. A heavy frost stiffens the tent, and the only sound to be heard is the rumbling of the river. Autumn is in the air, and the last deciduous trees are patched with russet and gold. Leaves drift in lazy spirals as the day slowly warms.
Once we’re on the move we rise along the true right bank of the river, exchanging broad-leaved trees for tall mossy-trunked conifers. On open meadows straggly clumps of berberis blaze scarlet.
Then all of a sudden mountains are just ahead. Well, a day or so’s walk away, but seeming just ahead. White-plastered mountains, they are, with crests etched sharp against a deep blue sky. My heart makes an involuntary leap in my chest, and I realise I’m smiling. This is an alpine world, for although the summits are maybe 4000 metres higher than our part of the valley, I’m unable as yet to grasp the scale of things, and I stumble. A sharp pain shoots through my leg, for my eyes are not on the inconsistencies of the trail. They are focused on peaks unknown.
We take to the broad, stony river bed. The river is only a few paces away. We can hear its thunder and see occasional bursts of spray tossed from midstream boulders, but other than that it’s lost to view. We pick our way towards the mountain wall that blocks the far end of the valley. There is no path to speak of, but our porters are ahead, the prints of their bare feet easy to follow in drifts of glacial sand between the rocks.
In the early afternoon we pull up a rise and come onto the yak pasture of Tseram at a little under 4000 metres. The size of a football pitch, sloping gently towards the river, it’s fringed with scrub and rocks. Rhododendrons bank the lower hillside, while a fuzz of cypress trees grows a little higher. A group of porters build a fire against a huge smoke-blackened boulder that stands on the edge of the pasture. The unmistakable sound of kukri knives hacking at the branches of rhododendron trees rings clear. It is one of the alarming sounds of the Himalaya, and although I hold no knife, the guilt is as much mine as that of our porters.
Other porters arrive, dumping their lozenge-shaped loads of tents and kitbags where they stop. They wipe their brows, look around, and in a glance decide where they’ll build their own fires. Moments later I notice one man sitting alone hacking at something by his feet, the curving blade of his kukri shines as he makes swift cutting movements. I’m intrigued – is he carving something? If so, what? I edge nearer and am horrified to discover he’s trimming his toenails with a blade as long as his forearm. One slip and he’ll be toeless.
On the eastern side of the valley lies a way to Sikkim over the Kang La. Some of the early expeditions used this pass on their approach to Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling. Frank Smythe crossed the Kang La in 1930 with an international expedition led by the German-Swiss geology professor GO Dyhrenfurth, and on arrival here he found a simple yak-herder’s hut. A long building with wide eaves, one end housed the yaks, while the other was reserved for the herder and his family. According to Smythe’s account, the family’s bedding was a mass of dirty straw alive 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
