First Across the Roof of the World, Traverse of the Himalaya. Graeme Dingle, Chewang Tashi and I formed the traverse party with other Indian and New Zealand members as a support team with which we rendezvoused every three or four weeks. Far more than a ten-month, 3000-mile trek from Kanchenjunga in Sikkim to K2 in Pakistan, we crossed dozens of high, glaciated passes, two over 20,000 feet in the Makalu-Everest region, and mixed with isolated and forgotten communities. Our life-style was of unexpected simplicity as we lived like nomadic cavemen, eating tsampa and solja (barley flour and Tibetan tea), sleeping under the stars or under bivouac rocks or within the dark, sooty confines of a villager’s house. Starting in Sikkim during the late winter of 1981, in February, we crossed Sikkim to the pass, the Ratong La, and descended the Singalila ridge to where we could cross into Nepal. From there, we climbed back into the Himalaya via the Milke ridge, traversing into the Makalu region and over to the Khumbu via the Far East Col, West Col and the difficult Amu Laptsa pass. After a rest in Kunde village (above Namche), we continued west across the Rolwaling, Langtang and Ganesh Himals, to the Buri Gandaki valley. Here we trekked north to pass Manaslu on its northern side on the Tibetan border. Descending into the Manang valley, we moved west via frozen Tilicho lake and Jomosom, past Dhaulagiri, making an inadvertent visit to the forbidden district of Dolpa. After extricating ourselves, we trekked to Jumla and Rara Lake and finally Jolaghat, where we crossed into India. The monsoon caught us and for three months we slogged along muddy tracks beneath umbrellas with leeches hanging from our legs. We failed to cross into the Nanda Devi Sanctuary by an uncrossed pass to the south and so we circumvented it to Joshimath, Kedarnath, Uttarkashi, Gangotri and via the upper Sutlej Gorge to Manali. Turning north, we marched over the Bara Lapcha Pass to the desolate Zanskar valley with its Tibetan communities, and hence to Lamayuru Gompa in Ladakh, the westernmost point of our trek in India. We had to take a circumlocutory route via New Delhi and Islamabad in Pakistan to reach Skardu on the far side of the Indo-Pakistani cease-fire line. Up the Braldu valley, we reached the Baltoro Glacier. We walked up the chaotic moraines of the glacier to Concordia, where the pyramidal form of K2 stood above us. It was early winter and extremely cold. It had been an extraordinary experience, the most multi-faceted adventure of my life.

Peter Hillary, New Zealand Alpine Club