Only a short distance down the road from Basantapur lies the bustling, one-street, hill-village of Hile - the starting point for the trek to the isolated, uninhabited Barun Valley and the base camp beneath Mt. Makalu - ( "the Great Black One" ) - the world's fifth highest mountain and one of the truly great peaks of the Himalaya.

Leaving the riverside beyond the sprawling village of Tumlingtar, with its small, grass airstrip, the trail winds up through terraced hillsides to the substantial town of Khandbari with its flag stoned pavements and three-storied, stone-built, shop-houses.

On a clear, crisp morning I scaled the stony, moss-covered hillside above the campsite at Shershon to attain a superb 360 degree view of the surrounding peaks; most unnamed and identified only by their survey numbers. Bounding the glaciated valley to the south arose the ice-hung of Peak 6 ( Mt. Tutse ) and Peak 4 while to the north were the pointed summits of Peaks 3 and 5. However these were all eclipsed by the majestic Makalu with its soaring ridges and sheer granite faces sweeping skywards only a stone's-throw away. Walking across to the western edge of the plateau I looked down to the Barun Pokhari and on up the great glacier to the two other 8000metre giants of Lhotse and Everest.

From Shershon it is only a short distance further up the valley to the site, on wide gravel flats, for the base camps for climbing expeditions to Mt. Makalu. Beyond base camp we followed a faint trail, marked by small cairns, over the rough convoluted moraines of the Barun Glacier to Advanced Base Camp and, next day, accompanied by Lakpa and Dorje, I scrambled up a rocky ridge to a height of some 6000metres directly beneath the imposing north-west face of Makalu.