A little after 7 o’clock we strolled through a light sprinkling of rain in Kathmandu to our 30-seat light blue and purple Tata bus. Our journey had officially begun! The road was generally in pretty good shape but an enormous rock blocked one spot. Kumar and the rest of the trekking crew tried to move it, but to no avail. A road worker helped us, his arm and leg muscles rippling as he used a crow bar to move the rock out of our way. Bill Norton had missed his British trekking group who were also going to the Kangshung Face and hitched a ride with us. We arrived at the few lodges making up the Nepalese border post at Kodari (1873m) just before noon. After completing formalities, I gazed up the road to the Friendship Bridge, the true border, and the Chinese town of Zhangmu (2300m) strung along a steep mountainside 11km away with pine trees on all sides.