Salehin Arshady

As the clock struck 4:00pm, I caught sight of two tiny figures descending from the rocky slopes of the Tukuche massif. With each passing minute, the figures gradually grew more recognizable: Samiur and Arif were returning after scaling Little Tukuche (5879m), one of the formidable peaks of the Dhaulagiri range.

We reached Pungro, a small town in northern Nagaland’s Kiphire district, late at night after covering about three and a half hundred kilometres on a dusty, winding mountain road. With no lodges available, the car driver took us to a government rest house. However, as foreigners from Bangladesh, we were told we needed permission from the zone’s additional district commissioner. 

Why do you climb? Why do you risk everything over scaling a summit?

It was easier than we anticipated.

It was a cold night in mid-September. The thick darkness was so depressing that I switched on the red light of the headlamp.

It was a cold January night in Delhi. As I boarded the first flight to Leh, the night was about to end.

A blunt, frosty night hugged me as I went out of the wooden cottage at Shayla, one of the beautiful tiny hamlets on the slopes of Mansiri Himal.