accelerated hard enough to send the truck hurtling forward, away from the precipice and on into Gyantse. From there, we hitched a ride west to Tingri, lying flat in the open back of a lorry like fugitives. It was exciting, even though the journey seemed to take forever. Every so often the driver would stop, enjoy a few more bottles of beer and gamble with the householders who had provided the refreshment. Arriving with blackened faces from the exhaust, safe but sore, we felt like real adventurers now.
‘Come on, Sally. Just a bit further!’
The aim was to get to Rombuk monastery. At 5,000 metres above sea level, it’s the highest monastery in the world. By now we were a group of seven. Together, we hired a couple of yaks and a guide and stayed in yak-skin tents, which have a hole in the top to allow smoke from the yak-dung fires to escape. We drank yak tea (or ‘yuck tea’, as it came to be known). Made from tea, salt and yak butter, unless drunk very quickly it congeals on your tongue. The climb was slow and hard work; we all suffered forms of mild altitude sickness but one of our group actually had to go back as he was clearly unwell and the only cure is to descend. At one stage we had to cross a roaring river via a crumbling stone bridge that I was convinced would collapse beneath our weight. Otherwise, there was just silence and fluttering prayer flags, the rumble of prayer wheels (wooden wheels reputed to accumulate wisdom and good karma as they spin) and the occasional flap of bird wings. It’s a desert region: food is hard to come by and there is no green, just mile upon mile of rocks and Everest shrouded in mist in the distance, drawing us ever closer.
Arriving at Rombuk monastery is unexpected: after a two-day walk up the valley, you turn a corner and the ridge flattens out. There it is, clinging to the side of the Everest valley like a beleaguered fortress. The monastery is still inhabited by a community of monks and nuns whose lives are dedicated to God and survival. With their lined, weathered faces and faded tunics, they seem to belong there on the mountainside. We stayed in a platform hut built on dried mud, with Tibetan rugs and the best loo with a view I’ve ever encountered. From there, you could see Her Majesty. The monks also operate an efficient black market currency exchange and charged an extortionate amount for their eggs, which just goes to show everyone has to survive somehow.
As soon as we arrived at the monastery, I looked at Andrew and knew from his set jaw and gleaming eyes that he’d decided to go on. Now the plan was to get to North Everest Base Camp: just seven kilometres of rocky terrain with heavily loaded rucksacks away. After a fitful night’s sleep on a hard floor and more green tea, we set out the next morning.
‘Just a bit further, Sally.’
CLICK!
I took a photo to remember the spot, the exhaustion and the sheer elation of being on top of the world (well, almost!). Here’s Andrew in his Harris sweater knitted by my dad (we had one each) and walking boots. He looks every bit the gentleman explorer – no different, in fact, to George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale Everest in the 1920s from the Tibetan side. Mallory gave the infamous answer to the question, ‘Why did you climb it?’: ‘Because it’s there.’
Only Andrew’s white-framed sunglasses (oh, so eighties!) give the decade away.
We reached the British Base Camp in the afternoon. This turned out to be a bunch of scruffy huts and more prayer flags, looking ragged; there was a cairn and tents and provisions. I had expected posh tents but they didn’t look any different to the ones we saw when walking the Munros. Yet despite the low-key nature of the camp, our moment of arrival still stands out as the most exhilarating of my life: to be there on the flanks of Everest (and not on the Nepalese side on a guided tour) and all down to our own initiative and resources was a remarkable feeling.
Unloading our rucksacks, we tried to take it all in. We were so close to Everest that the view was obscured by whiteness; it was hard to connect where we were with the myths and expectations surrounding the world’s highest mountain – she was every bit as powerful as the place she holds in our imagination. No wonder men sacrifice their lives for her, I thought, cupping a hand over my eyes to avoid the glare.
I sat down.
‘No, come on,’ said Andrew. ‘I want to go a bit further!’
‘Right now?’
‘Yes.’
I stood up.
‘OK, that’s far enough,’ he said, half an hour later. ‘I want a photograph of us with Everest in the background. Can you take a photo?’ He gave the camera to our new friend Peter, a Canadian mountaineer. ‘Actually, take loads!’
Andrew had taken off his ski-jacket. His lips were chapped and his nose, like mine, was striped with sunblock. He came and joined me in front of the camera. Together, we blinked in the sun and I relaxed into the pose. Then all of a sudden, he dropped down on one knee.
‘Andrew?’
I watched him rummage in the camera case hanging from his neck then I looked over his shoulder towards the craggy face of Everest and its snow-covered slopes.
He can’t have planned this in London.
‘Will you marry me?’
I burst out laughing. As he pushed a diamond and ruby ring over my finger, I started to weep with happiness.
I had waited so long to be asked and now when I least expected his proposal and it couldn’t have been further from my mind, there it was. Insane. In the space of a few hours, all my dreams were coming true. My next thought was, get the ring back in that box before you lose it!
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Yes!’
That night we celebrated our engagement at Base Camp with the British expedition teams who had failed to scale the Northeast ridge as the bad weather had come in. The men were tired and gruff. It felt so exciting to be there, eavesdropping on their stories, that I didn’t appreciate how disappointed they must have felt at not succeeding. One of their group was part of the mountain rescue team in Glencoe and another belonged to the Guinness family. With them were the Sherpas, quite extraordinary men who get themselves and everyone else up Everest, carrying loads, while more often than not inadequately equipped or reliant on the teams to equip them. For me, it was a glimpse into a world I would never see again.
Meanwhile, I twisted my engagement ring round and round my finger. During the trip, I’d lost so much weight that my fingers had shrunk and it didn’t fit: the ruby glinted, blood red, in the firelight. We drank whisky and ate the Scottish food provided for us by the team: tinned mince and peas followed by Dundee cake. After months of rice, the food was too rich and we were all violently sick.
Once I’d recovered, I called Mum on the UK team’s satellite phone (there were no mobile phones in those days).
‘Andrew’s asked me to marry him.’
‘What is the terminal moraine like?’ came the reply.
Mum’s a geography teacher – well, she was then – and she’s crazy about mountains. My laughter echoed around the world, distorted by the thousands of miles between Tibet and Scotland. We spoke to Dad then rang Andrew’s parents. All were relieved to hear from us and also happy with our news. The evening was as unexpected as life itself. We listened to the mountaineers’ stories and felt blissfully tired and full of whisky.
I have a photograph of Andrew on bended knee and me in sunglasses, my hair in
