Near Jara Lhatse, about 5,000 m, 2004

One of our guides stopped below the pass and took off his heavy Tibetan coat. My only theory was that he needed the toilet. Kirill said the meaning was different: the spirits of the pass would feel sorry for a freezing Tibetan and not keep him up there long.

Then Kirill asked: “Do you hear someone singing?” I did. We each heard it clearly, words and all, but from opposite sides of the slope. For fifteen minutes we listened while we climbed: no yaks at that height, no place for a sky burial, no hermit’s cave. We asked the guides. They heard nothing but the wind. At the top of the pass the song stopped. It remains the most inexplicable thing of the whole journey.