Mount Everest is the highest point on Earth, 8,848 metres on the border between Nepal and Tibet, and the rock at the top is a fossil seabed. The grey limestone capping the summit is studded with trilobites and shells from a shallow tropical sea, carried the whole way up by the collision that is still building the Himalaya. Very few people ever touch that rock. Above eight thousand metres the air will not keep a body alive for long; more than 340 climbers have died here since records began, and over two hundred of them are still on the mountain, held by cold too deep to bring them down. That is not what most visitors come for. On the Nepalese side Everest is a mountain you walk to, up the Khumbu valley through Sherpa country, and the walk is the point.
The route goes through villages rather than wilderness. Suspension bridges hung with prayer flags swing across the gorges, and you stand aside on them for yak trains coming down with bells on. Namche Bazaar, the Sherpa capital, is stacked up a terraced amphitheatre, and everyone stops here for a day to let their body catch up. The Saturday market sells yak cheese, and the climb to the rim above the houses gives you a first clear look at Thamserku and Kongde. Higher up, Tengboche Monastery stands at 3,867 metres with Everest behind it and the fluted spire of Ama Dablam in front. The morning prayers are open to whoever is in the courtyard when the long copper horns start. The trail ends at Base Camp, 5,364 metres, on the moraine beside the Khumbu Icefall, which groans and shifts all day. The nights up here hold their own: with almost no light for a hundred kilometres, the Milky Way comes out hard and sharp over the glaciers. The last climb is done before dawn. You go up Kala Patthar, 5,545 metres, in the cold and the dark so that you are standing there when the first light of the day reaches Everest, and it lands on a few metres of grey limestone full of seashells.