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With a shuddering sob Helen collapsed on the ridge and burst into tears.“I cannot take another step,” she sobbed. “Oh, I know it’s all vanity and pride!”

She was referring to the summit, looming in full infuriating view an hour’s slog above us. “You go on,” she said with quivering lip, “I’ll wait for you here”.

“Forget it, I’m not going up without you and frankly I’m not that bothered about the summit. And for goodness sake stop crying. You’ll need that energy for the descent”.

So that drew a line under our climb of Stok Kangri in Ladakh, surely one of the Himalayas most accessible 20,000 foot peaks. The error that day was to have taken the summit head on across the moraine from our advanced base camp, which was set up on the wrong side of the glacier. Had we crossed the glacier and pitched our tent on a platform below the start of the climb, and then headed off diagonally left across the moraine towards the ridge… who knows?

It doesn’t matter: I repeated the mantra to myself on the silent trek back to base camp and down the trail to Stok village at the road head, the last stop before picking up the jeep to Leh. Success, failure – every mountaineer knows these are mere words, devoid of significance. The summit is a trap cunningly laid by our ego, designed to keep us bound to the wheel of samsara.

What’s that, you failed to summit Stok Kangri? There it is, the very word of shame and humiliation, enslaving us to our egos. It’s all rubbish, of course, we reassure ourselves. What really matters is the camaraderie, the days spent with good companions in the inspiring environment of the high mountains. The summit is a bit of icing on the cake. It adds nothing to the experience apart from a false sense of prestige, derived from the Latin praestagium, meaning illusion. The summit, in fact, is a mere illusion.

Oh yes.

So it was that the following August found us starting off once more from advanced base, this time camp properly sited on the far side of the glacier, plodding manfully across the moraine straight towards the summit ridge.

Two hours into the climb and “Oh, God,” Helen moaned, collapsing once more on the ridge, in fact the very same spot as the previous year. “It’s such a long way…”

Not again, I thought with inner rage, an eye fixed on the beckoning summit.

“All right, have a little rest. Have a drink of water, catch your breath, count to ten – but we’ve got to carry on because the weather is looking pretty naff.” Bands of mist rolled up from the valley, intermittently obscuring the snow-capped summit. It was obvious we would have to move smartly if we were to enjoy any view at all from the top. Helen began rummaging in her day sack and what happened next left me gaping in stunned disbelief.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing with that?” “It’s all right,” she smiled. “It’ll boost my morale”. But – lipstick! We’re nearly twenty thousand feet up in the Himalayas and you… “There we are.” She zipped up her sack, smacking her brightly rouged lips. “Let’s go.”.

Helen is six feet tall and she is maddeningly unaffected by altitude. Once suitably made-up off she marched at a sprightly quip, unheeding of my protests about the importance of keeping a slow and steady pace. We negotiated the handful of slightly exposed spots on the ridge and three and a half hours after leaving out tents we found ourselves on the top of Stok Kangri, with just enough sunlight left for a couple of snapshots of K-2 on the horizon, before the mist billowed over the summit.

Jules Stewart is leading a Ladakh trek and ascent of Stok Kangri on 17th-31st July 2004. Details are available on 0207 2294774 or e-mail: Jjulesstewart@aol.com

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That night the local tribe was going to perform a ceremony that would involve singing and some sort of dancing, and Adam Baines and I were invited go along. The tribe held hands and formed itself into two circles, one inside the other, both facing inwards.

One circle moved to the left and the other moved in the opposite direction and at the same time started moaning. This singing or sort of moaning continued as the circles moved slowly in opposite directions. I started the tape, the moaning continued, the bullfrogs joined in, the jungle added its chorus, the circles turned.

Adam and I stood there bemused, as the minutes went by, with nothing more happening other than the continuous circling and moaning. I joined the tribe, held hands and moaned with everybody else, circled with everyone else and, I think just like everyone else, wondered what the hell was going to happen next.

I was beginning to think that this whole ceremony was being put on for our benefit, as a sort of show for these strangers from the outside world. I stepped out of the circle and stood back with Adam whilst continuing to watch this ritual. Adam asked me what the ceremony had done for me. I replied that I had always dreamt about holding hands with strangers, walking in circles, moaning out loud under the stars in the Amazon rainforest! Adam tried everything to stifle his laughter.

We both concluded that this show was being put on for our benefit and, deciding to call it a night, thanked our hosts and walked back to our hut, leaving the tribe still moaning under the full moon. As we reached our hut the moaning stopped and we smiled at each other as we went in, but the last laugh was to be on us. We slipped into our sleeping bags being careful not to let any mosquitoes under our nets and I fell gently asleep after such a busy day.

I awoke to my shoulder being shaken by one of my moaning friends who said it was Party Time, and that this hut was the party hut. We were to sleep in the next hut with others that did not want to dance the night away. I looked at Adam stumbling about when he was woken as I had been. We grabbed our belongings in our arms, everything falling out of everywhere, and moved huts in pitch darkness.

We staggered to the next hut, which was totally full off about fourteen hammocks, mostly containing a couple, to find the only place we could sleep was under someone’s hammock. The music started, not the moaning of a couple of hours before but the loud music called Forro, which was coming from a ghetto blaster running off a car battery and which was overlaid by the noise of dancing feet.

The Forro, a corruption of the English ‘For All’ came from the North East of Brazil,. As the British who built the railway there sometimes had parties for which the invitations were ‘For All’. It was now my turn to feel like moaning as the music blasted into the night from all of twenty yards away.

The Indian in the hammock above Adam started to do the horizontal samba with his woman and the swaying and groaning made me see the funny side of life. Or would have, if the mosquitoes hadn’t been eating me alive and something I’d rather not know about slithered over me. A hellish night, to end a near perfect day.

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I was rather disappointed by my trip to the Angel Falls – let’s get the bad news out of the way – it was over priced and pretty basic stuff.

I was there 2 ½ years ago or so. It was not possible to visit the Angel Falls independently, so we had to join a tour. The land is owned by the indigenous people, and they run the tours. We flew from Caracas to Ciudad Bolivar and then on to Canaima. From there, we joined about 6 others and took a succession of curiaras, supremely uncomfortable dug out canoes, but powered by outboard motor, up the river. The water is an interesting brown colour – the colour of tea with all the tannin from the land. We ended up on Rat Island, along with 100 or so other people all in different groups, and spent the night here (Isla Ratton – aptly named) which consisted of about 100 hammocks strung out in the open under a corrugated iron roof (no sides) and very primitive bathrooms, hurricane lamps etc. A very early start the next morning, bread and strong black coffee, for a short walk/climb – not at all strenuous, to a viewing point across which we saw the Angel Falls. The entire group sat on ledges etc gazing across at the Falls for about 30 minutes, took photos and then went back down the mountain and returned by curiara to Canaima.

And that was it. It cost an awful lot and we got very little in return. You don’t get particularly close to the falls and the service, food, accom was appalling, considering how much it cost. Now, I’m a backpacker and I don’t mind roughing it, and had hoped it was all going to be a great adventure, but it just felt like a huge rip off. I was glad to be away from the place – it did not feel good.

With hindsight, I would rather have spent longer in the Gran Sabana and Kavak and have been content with having seen the Iguaçu Falls – 100 times more impressive! Alternatively, trekking around the region might have been better.

Whilst the Angel Falls was the enduring disappointment of our trip, our 5 days spent in a 4WD with driver (we were told it was not advisable to drive ourselves) around the Gran Sabana was fabulous – completely recommend this – beautiful landscape, lots of tepuys, lakes, waterfalls, water holes – really, really nice and relaxing, friendly people, easy and reasonable places to stay. Our absolute highlight was a short stay at Kavak and visiting the slot canyon – amazing!

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