It is time to equip and supply ourselves, so we meet up with Pasang and our number-two sherpa, Kami, and head for the Asan Tole market. First stop is a little hardware shop just to the north-east of Asan, where we are to buy the expedition kitchen. With difficulty, we explain to Kami that he should buy whatever he needs. This turns out to be:

• 3 enormous new Primus-type stoves
• 1 complicated-looking pressure lantern
• 4 large saucepans (you buy these by weight!)
• 2 large kettles
• 3 pressure cookers
• 8 plates, bowls, KFSs
• 4 Jerry cans
• 1 shiny frying-pan, the porters later found very amusing
• 2 giant thermos flasks
• 1 enormous aluminium washing bowl and
• lots of bizarre-looking utensils.

"Tigerbalm? Chess? Backgammon? Stickyweed? I have everything!" Photo © Tom Padgham 1998

The whole lot costs only about £120. We then buy some carrying-baskets (doko) to put it in, dump the whole lot onto a creaking rickshaw and tail it back to the hotel where our long-suffering ex-ghorka doorman finds us a store room to put it all in.

That is quite enough work for one day, so we go out for lunch and then do some shopping. I am pleased to buy a pair of ‘easy’ trousers for 350 rupees (about $5), not realising I have paid double the going rate. Antoine, though, has managed to spend 420 rps on his pair, so it wasn’t all bad.

We return to the hotel, but Alan gets stressed about consulates and matches, so we go for cocktails and get drunk over dinner. Buy a bottle of whisky from a kiosk and some hash from a ten-year old boy and spend an enjoyable night in.