Full of vigour we set off and, despite the early hour and lack of coffee, it was easy for the first hour or two. Then a state of panic washed over us. We saw before us a flight of stairs that would have gone up the tower of Babel about 3 billion times and still had plenty of extra steps left to qualify those who complete the climb for the Stair Master World Championships. Ah well, it’s what we came for: hard work, burning lungs, thighs screaming in pain, the heart pounding like some massive navvy was standing astride us whacking our chests with a huge sledgehammer and the pack seeming to get heavier with every step taken. It was only beginning and yet already it was easy to forget that we were supposed to be on holiday and this was supposed to be fun!

Gasping for breath by the time we cleared the staircase to hell we spotted our first Buddhist shrine in the hills. It wasn’t a bad sight in its own right, but more importantly there was a family dwelling close beside it and the family who lived there were good enough to furnish a pair of sad trekkers with hot drink and breakfast! I’m not a big tea drinker and Heide isn’t a huge fan of breakfast (strange, I know) but that was probably the finest cuppa ever brewed and I think that Heide had never seen, let alone eaten, such a glorious omelette! We are forever grateful! 

Fully refuelled we set off again and quickly realised that our climb hadn’t actually started. Nope, there were cliffs to scale and gorges to traverse. It was going to be a tricky week! Within a few hours of our breakfast we had cleared the forest region just as surely as the world’s forest are being cleared by loggers. It was at this point that the views opened up and we really saw the awesome might of the Himalayas. It was utterly gorgeous but our guide kept on telling us that this was the “boring bit" and in a few days we’d really see something special! Nutter.

After about 4 hours hiking at the, not exactly blistering pace of 4 km per hour, the first blister on tour appeared. A rather impressive bloody number on my heel. Heide, suitably impressed with the blood soaked sock (and secretly thanking the prayer flag she’d planted at the shrine to protect her feet from swelling) administered the first aid and we were off again. By lunchtime things were heating up, not so much in the pace of the walking as in the effects of the sun. There is an 8% to 10% increase in ultraviolet intensity for each 1,000 feet of elevation. Therefore among the “hills" that we were wandering around direct UV-B is approximately 60% higher than at sea level. Fantastic. Not only are we getting the biggest cardio vascular and legs, bums and tums work out in history we’re also copping skin cancer. What joy!

On the first afternoon we saw something that while not as absolutely fantastic as the mountains were, was, in all likelihood, a once in a lifetime viewing for us. We had crested the peak of one of the mountains and were working our way down to a lodge that would be home for the night when Heide heard a rustling coming from the masses of bamboo. She was convinced that the noise was too much to be just a bird and so had to a “creature" that had some excitement value. After closer investigation it was clear that she’d spotted a Panda! Honestly, there we were hauling along a mountain path and Heide takes time out to find a wild Panda. Incredible! Ok, so it wasn’t the famous giant black and white bears / raccoons, but it’s smaller, though equally as cuddly, cousin the Red Panda. That it wasn’t Ming-Ming or whatever, in no way detracted from the amazing viewing we enjoyed for a good half hour until it was clear that the gallon of sweat on my back had indeed crystallised in to ice cubes and was thus reducing my core temperature to dangerously low levels. By the time we had reached our electricity and heat free lodge we were elated from the glorious views and the wildlife spotting we’d enjoyed that day.

Day two started, as it should, with a steaming bowl of porridge and the prospect of a particularly arduous climb ahead of us. Wonderful.  Well the porridge was wonderful. It struck us rather quickly that we weren’t going to be walking this day’s route very quickly. It was the kind of terrain best viewed and crossed in helicopter. It was also obvious that we were just a tad achy from the day before. Each step induced oohs and ahhs, and not the cooing type you overhear at firework displays either; much more of the “what-the-heck-did-we-do-to-ourselves" type. The trek for the day wasn’t particularly far in a flat line distance measurement, but it was a nasty climb. We were like those magnificent men in their flying machines going “updiddly up, up!" and well, certainly not going “downdiddly down, down." It was absolutely knackering. The final four km should have come with a ladder to scale the heights. But it doesn’t. Somehow you have to just keep on trekking! One tiny baby step after another and eventually we’d reached the summit at Sandakpuh where we’d be stopping that night. It was cold up here but the views, or perhaps the altitude, or perhaps both, were breathtaking. We watched the sun setting behind the highest peaks in the world and were really mesmerised. Sitting, heavily bundled up, in the shadow of Mt Everest (at over 29,000 ft it casts a bloody big shadow) we were really in awe of our surroundings. We really could almost see God looking smug and saying, “Yeah, I made this!" It was perhaps the most beautiful landscape I’d ever seen. Not even the irreverent shouting of the day-trippers who are flown in from Calcutta to take in this majestic outlook could ruin the beauty of the vista (though it came bloody close!) After sun down it was back to the lodge and a deeply unappetising meal of cold lentils and rice. Hmm, that’ll sustain us for minutes at least.

The following morning we were supposed to be walking along a ridge from Sandakpuh to Phalut. If this route was a ridge then I’m the all-new hiking Dalai Lama. We were up and down the sheer paths that the locals here in Nepal quite possibly jog along, but Heide and I were dying. It was a shocker and it was all at high altitude. We were over 12,000 feet and 50% of those who walk above 12000 feet will get acute mountain sickness (it rises to nearly 75% if you are wise enough / lazy and rich enough to fly there, I can only hope that the Calcutta Noise Machines who had done their best to destroy our serenity were so afflicted) This days hiking was supposed to reward us with the best views of the trek and for the first, oh, maybe six kilometres we pottered forward, jaws agog at the majesty all around us. After the first, oh, maybe six kilometres, our jaws were just agog as we gasped for the precious oxygen we just didn’t feel was finding its way into our blood streams. As is the way in the mountains we were able to spot our destination from miles away. It always seemed to be perched on the next hill, then of course we’d scale that peak only to find that there were a few, previously invisible mountains to scale before we made it to camp. Eventually we lost sight of our goal as the clouds had come in and masked everything. Great! We’re breathing like a pair of asthmatics on a route march that makes the Trail of Tears seem like a stroll in the park, while stepping along a yak trail in the high Himalayas with zero visibility, well that’s not a recipe for disaster is it? Finally there was a break in the clouds and we once again caught a glimpse of our destination. I wish we hadn’t. It soared about 3000 feet above us; it was but a dot on an ocean of mountains. Onwards and upwards, and upwards some more I guess. Finally we made it. We were elevated and elated!

If I had though that the views from Sandakpuh were amazing then I was utterly unprepared for what greeted us the next day. We awoke before dawn and hiked yet higher so that we could take in the full, incredible, beauty that surrounded us. Beneath us, seemingly miles beneath us, lay a think belt of cloud, so thick it looked like you could leap from the precipice upon which we stood and be caught by the cotton wool below. On all other sides there were just unimaginably gorgeous views of mighty snow capped peaks, nothing had prepared us for this. It struck us dumb (and luckily this was too high and too remote to be sullied by day trippers) it was gorgeous. While we sat, gob-smacked and awed Heide made a new friend. A young puppy cuddled up beside her and decided that she was his new owner, or potential chocolate source anyway. Sadly we had to leave this beautiful spot and start a new day of hiking.

The route for this day took us back down from the summits and it did it quickly. Very quickly. Apart from abseiling I think we took the most sheer decent possible. In about 3 hours we’d dropped our altitude level by almost a mile. To me that’s a long way down in a short time. It was perhaps the most painful section of the whole walk. Our knees were getting the kind of work out a mule’s legs would buckle at and it wasn’t pleasant. I had the idea of dropping my pack having Heide hop on behind me and riding the thing down the wall we were climbing like a bobsleigh. With wisdom beyond her years Heide spotted that this may be just a little dangerous as we’d reach terminal velocity in about 2 seconds and probably not stop until we splashed into the Bay of Bengal. And we’d probably run over the puppy who’d followed Heide all this way! Given the nature of the decent it was no real surprise that we’d reached our destination about 8 hours earlier than planned, but still that gave us time to try and reduce the swollen knees and then to dream of the next day hiking. The next day was a big one for us. It wasn’t so much that it was further than we’d hauled our bodies before (though it was) but that it took us to a lodge with, shock, horror... electricity and all the trimmings that provides such as... hot water!!!

This being Day 5, and us having had no hot water to wash with since Darjeeling, we were a tad stinky by this point and I had a face as shaggy as the Yeti himself (we had a nice bowl of yak and lentil stew with the Yeti en route, nice fellah as it goes. Misunderstood really) but the promise of a nice hot shower and a dinner of something other than lentils really spurred us on. It was a terrific day of walking, the kind that is actually very pleasant to engage in: great scenery and easy gradients, both up and down. Fantastic! The last day was an easy return to Darjeeling and the comfort of our old hotel room. Marvellous.

I think that we both consider the trek in the Himalayas to be the literal physical and emotional high of the entire tour of India and frankly this feeling cannot, I suspect, be eclipsed, until that is we get home in just one week’s time! What a magical week it’s been, let’s hope the magic continues and the forthcoming week just disappears!