Nepal, the trekkers’ paradise, had an attraction for us too. Sir Edmund Hillary called Tashi Lapcha pass the most difficult one he has crossed. My wife Geeta still proudly holds that as her height record. The charms of Solu Khumbu and Arun valley belong to an another world. And what’s good is that both the treks, from east Nepal and north Sikkim end at Darjeeling, where momoes are in plenty, tomba flows freely and my Sherpa friends are warmest. It is all in the game.

I have enjoyed forays into many different areas in the Nepal Himalaya. Way back in the sixties it was Muktinath on a shoe-string budget, when trekking as we know it today was not known in Nepal. In the seventies it was a trek to the Everest Base Camp when the hordes were yet to arrive in Sherpa country. Finally in the nineties and onwards I saw the full extent of the development of trekking as an industry. No experience was discouraging—the mountains were beautiful on all occasions; only they were to be enjoyed differently.