with Jamling Tenzing Norgay

The British expeditions in the 1920s and ’30s were enchanted by the Sikkimese forests and mountain sceneries they hiked through as they made their way from Darjeeling north to the Tibetan Plateau and Mount Everest. In Mount Everest: The Reconnaissance, 1921, Lt. Col. C. K. Howard-Bury wrote of “magnificent forests of evergreen oaks . . . covered with ferns and orchids and long trailing mosses. . . . It was impossible to imagine anything more beautiful, and every yard of the path was a pure delight.”

Not many Westerners have walked these forested paths since then, and on this extraordinary trek we’ll spend ten days trekking to bracingly remote villages, monasteries, and temples, lavished all the while by wonderful views of the Himalaya (most spectacularly: Kangchenjunga and 22,563-foot Siniolchu, a peacockish peak the great mountain lover Douglas Freshfield considered the world’s most beautiful).

Our leader is Jamling Tenzing Norgay, son of the famed Tenzing Norgay, Everest’s first summiter along with Edmund Hillary (and a member of the 1935 British expedition that passed this way). Since writing Touching My Father’s Soul, a moving account of his successful Everest climb in 1996, Jamling has embarked on a world-spanning career as a speaker and tour operator in his own right. A fascinating and sharp guy, Jamling will welcome us to the Norgay family’s ancestral home in the old hill station of Darjeeling, “a town,” Jan Morris has written, “magically reduced in scale and shut off from the world by vapor.”

After an active day in Darjeeling, visiting the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute and more, we drive to much-coveted Gangtok, Sikkim’s capital (“It is at the end of the motor road. . . . All the same, you feel out of the world. The whole thing is a fairy tale,” remembered the great climberwriter Fosco Maraini). Then on to Lingja village and our rare and beautiful trek.

Days 1 & 2: USA to Delhi • Day 3: Delhi • Day 4: fly to Bagdogra, drive to Darjeeling • Day 5: Darjeeling • Day 6: drive to Gangtok • Days 7-16: on trek • Day 17: drive to Gangtok • Day 18: drive to Bagdogra, fly to Delhi, and depart for USA • Day 19: arrive in USA.

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