Day one began in Besisahar with sixty kilograms of gear split across three bags and a porter named Kancha who would become the unofficial art director of the whole expedition. 'Photo here,' he'd say, pointing at things I'd walked past. He was right every time.
Cold is the real enemy of high-altitude photography. Batteries that last a week in Kathmandu die in ninety minutes at 4,500 metres. I slept with them in my sleeping bag, rotated them against my skin during shoots, and still lost two mornings to dead cells.
At Thorong La, minus twelve and gasping air, I nearly kept the camera bagged. The client had every image they needed. But Kancha stopped at the pass, turned back toward the valley we had climbed, and stood completely still for four seconds. That frame — a silhouette against fourteen days of effort — became the cover of the entire campaign.
The mountains teach the same lesson every time: the photograph you almost don't take is usually the one you were sent to make.
