Himalayas with a guiding light

Sometimes, within sight of the slippery slopes of Everest, you fall on your feet. Tharchen Sherpa met us bleary-eyed off the overnight train from Calcutta. He was to be our guide in Darjeeling for the next four days.

Sherpa did not mean "porter", he explained. It was a family or tribal name. He laughed constantly. A merrier companion you could not have met.

But it was not until our third day in the Queen of the Mountains, as the rulers of Empire called the hill station to which they moved their headquarters each summer when Calcutta was capital of India, that we realised our luck. We were visiting the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, founded by Tenzing Narsay, who, with Sir Edmund Hillary, made the first successful assault upon Everest in 1953.

Among the exhibits were the Union Jack that flew over Everest on that historic occasion, a bottle of water melted from snow collected at the summit, antique oxygen cylinders and ungainly boots and clothing worn in the days before Goretex.

Tharchen, himself an accomplished mountaineer, pointed to a photograph, one of a small number that formed an Everest Hall of Fame. "My father," he said, proudly.

Ang Tshering Sherpa was no minor mountain guide. A cutting from a Darjeeling newspaper, headlined "Old Man of the Mountains", called him "the Tiger of the Snows" and told how, still in his teens, he had run away from home in Nepal "for the lights, fun and frolic of Darjeeling". Life in old Nepal must have been dull indeed.

Ang Tshering climbed on Everest five times, his first trip being perhaps the most significant. Just 21, he accompanied Irvine and Mallory on their ill-fated expedition of 1924 when Mallory may or may not have been the first climber to reach the summit. In 1934 Ang Tshering was the sole survivor of a German attempt and lost his fingertips to frostbite. Hitler sent him a medal.

But the greatest surprise was to come. That afternoon in Chowrastra Square, where the equivalent of a passeggiata takes place, I shook those fingertip-less hands. Ang Tshering is now 99 and his hearing is very poor, so he finds conversation difficult.

But, as we looked out over the deep valleys to Kangchenjunga glistening in the distance, Tarchen related how his father had once spent the night in a cage acting as bait for the fabled yeti. Although he never saw the creature, he heard its cry and, next morning, saw its footprints.

Way to go

Sean Hignett travelled to Darjeeling with Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000; www.coxandkings.co.uk), which specialises in group and tailormade tours throughout India. An 11-day Bengal and the Eastern Himalaya trip, which includes a stay in Darjeeling, costs from £1,595pp, including most meals, staying in four and five-star hotels, and excursions with a guide and return flights.