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Our march from Khamba Dzong to Tinki and from Tinki to Shekar was exactly by the route followed by Colonel Howard-Bury in the previous year, and calls for no particular comment on my part, with the exception that two small parties of Finch and Wakefield and Mallory and Somervell made a good attempt at Gyangka-nangpa to climb a 20,000-foot peak, Sangkar Ri, on the way. This they were not quite able to do.

We had no difficulty in crossing the great sand-dunes where the Yaru River joins the Arun, as we were able to cross it in the early morning before the wind had arisen. But on that morning, when we came to the junction of the valley of the Arun, we had a most wonderful and clear view of Mount Everest to the South. Although it was over 50 miles distant in a straight line, it did not look more than twenty. The whole of the face that was visible to us was smothered in snow. The entire setting of the piece was very strange; the country was almost bare enough to remind one of a crumpled Egyptian desert, and the strangeness and wonder was hugely increased by the South of the valley being filled with this wonderful mountain mass.