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Much of this material was tested in the Alps and in North Wales. As the year turned, stores were crated and labelled and shipped to Nepal, via India. The climbers slipped quietly from their office-desks, their form rooms, and their hospitals the envious Alpinists of the world sent their good wishes the newspapers carried a mild paragraph or two and by the middle of March, 1953, Colonel Hunt's expedition stood ready in Katmandu, the secluded capital of Nepal. (For in this disillusioning age it is so easy to travel to that ancient and fabled city that a travel agent in Piccadilly can book you a through ticket by air.)

From Katmandu to Everest the way runs harshly, by rough hill tracks, some 350 miles across mountainous country. It can be followed only on foot. To carry the expedition's stores on this trek large numbers of Nepalese porters were engaged. They were a wild variety of men, their dress a ragged, shirt-like garment, on their long-haired heads a white gnome's cap, their feet bare, their faces expressive of humourless passivity. They were supervised by a number of Sherpas, led by the redoubtable Tensing Norkey, who had travelled to Katmandu by train and an foot from Darjeeling. These were people of a different order small, sturdy mountain fellows of Mongolian cast, with twinkling eyes, bursting with a benevolent self-confidence.

In all, 350 men and more formed the expedition's main caravans-the broad logistical base on which the ultimate pinnacle of the assault parties must rest. This great company - with a few determined and appalling camp followers - assembled on March 10 on a wide green space at Bhatgaon, about 10 miles east of Katmandu, where the motor road ends, Near the expedition's bustled activities an old, old man washed himself, aloof and unconcerned, in a beautiful flagged pool and among the crates and packages wandered a myriad of children, more dirty and inquisitive than an English mother could imagine in her most desolate nightmare. The caravan was split into two sections. By midday on March 11, to a few rather hopeless cries of "Baksheesh!" both had passed through Bhatgaon's medieval streets on the road to Everest.

Colonel Hunt's rear base was to be at Thyanghoche, a Buddhist monastery some 20 miles south of Everest. The march there took 16 days, the parties camping each night on the outskirts of some village, while the porters wandered off with their little bundles of possessions to find food and a modest bed.

The track lay across arid valleys and great streams, through paddyfields and over hills dazzling with rhododendrons. Twice rivers had to be crossed by crazy narrow bridges, swinging dizzily with the wind. Time and again hill ranges 8 ,000 or more feet high were laboriously scaled, only to be followed by deep valleys. The rains were far off and the way often shimmered with a foetid heat but it was nearly spring, and over the wide hillsides the first green shoots were starting. Everywhere there was music, the constant unlikely calls of innumerable birds the beating of drums and the chanting of mournful dirges the endless scraping chitter-chatter of women the clatter of metal plates the buzz of the friendly grasshopper. Now and again a Sherpa would break into a snatch of Tibetan song (for they are Tibetan by origin) or a New Zealander would split the air with ribaldry.

Nepal is a country of many peoples as the Americans would say, of many ethnic categories. But though several expeditions have now passed through the land, Europeans are still a rare and fascinating sight. Some of the people in these upland villages had never seen a wrist-watch before, never looked at a photograph, never (in their fortune) used a tinopener. Each evening as the climbers camped a little crowd of Nepalese, led by the foolish village sages, would watch enthralled having, as W. H. Davies would wish for them, plenty of time to stand and stare.

Often to their left the climbers glimpsed the Himalayan snow peaks, dazzling and mysterious, and on March 22 the leaders found themselves in the deep valley of the Dudh Kosi, with great and unclimbed mountains on every side. This was the country of the Sherpas, the Everest people. It was an enchanted valley, fragrant with pines and watered by a clear rushing stream. The rugged Sherpas, in their fur-trimmed hats and high embroidered boots, gave an uninhibited welcome, offering chang, the local rice beer, rakhsi, a spirit, and potatoes roasted in their skins. They are an incorrigibly cheerful race at home, and if their heartiness borders sometimes on the grotesque, and their insensibility sometimes becomes a little overpowering, at least their handshakes are firm and honest, and they smile.

Through the Sherpa head village of Namche Bazar the caravans passed, and up a gentle slope beyond it. And suddenly, as they turned a corner in the track, there was Everest. Only the summit of the mountain showed, crook-backed above the huge fortress wall of Nuptse, with a plume of white snow streaming in the wind. To the east of it and to the west towered snow peaks of an ineffable beauty, the evening light bathing them in a pinkish glow, and far, far below was the monastery of Thyangboche on a wooded hilI. The sky was still a watery blue above, the hills in front were fresh and green, and the whole was veiled with a seductive haze.

On March 27, inspired by this loveIy sight, the whole expedition was encamped at Thyangboche.

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