Thank you for putting the Stok Kangri trek together. It all worked out as envisaged and went perfectly smoothly. We are full of admiration and thanks all round as it enabled us to succeed in our once in a lifetime challenge of scaling this mountain.

The itinerary was accurate and gives a good account of what actually occurred on each day. It is worth remarking that the Trek 3 acclimatisation walks we did, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, were quite challenging as in sum we ascended and descended about 1,000m that day. We had some poor weather for Treks 2 to 5 in the form of rain/hail/sleet showers, cloudy skies and cold winds. But fortunately this cleared up on Trek 6 as we walked to Base Camp. Incidentally, the Mankarmo camp is actually at 4430m and not 4830m. This only matters inasmuch as Trek 6 is not quite as easy as it would appear as it is a 550m ascent to Base Camp, although it only took two hours and was in fact an easy day as advertised.

Trek 7 was useful as we practised with crampons, ice axes and roping up on the glacier at Advanced Base Camp at 5300-5400m. "Trek 8" was the rest day which was a luxury that most other groups did not have but was quite useful for acclimatisation and getting some sleep.

Trek 9 was summit day. As we were fast walkers, we set off at 0200 hrs and were the last group to set off that day by at least an hour. Most others set off at midnight. The key challenge for us, all quite lean with young children, was to stay warm, so with our guide, we walked much faster than other groups and did not stop very much. I reckon it was around -10 degrees in the dark and we learned that our bladder bags were not ideal as the drinking tubes froze solid if you did not drink every ten minutes or so to keep the water moving, but it was hard to drink while trying to walk quite fast uphill at high altitude! There was apparently a lot of snow this year compared to previous years, but our guide judged that snow conditions were good in that it was not too hard and icy and therefore we did not need to use crampons. We did of course rope up for the south ridge and enjoyed the rising sun in the fnal half hour approach to the summit. It was cold at the top and so we also pushed the pace on the way down to keep blood flowing through cold little toes (our nine year old daughter's feet were too small to fit any proper four season boots and so we were constantly aware of the need to keep moving). Our Guide got it just right - he used our fitness to maintain warmth and we all returned successful from a very tough day with nothing more serious than exhaustion. Our cook (Damu) insisted on accompanying us for Summit Day to help look after the younger children and carry food - having supported treks for decades and been to BC at least 50 times, this was his first time to the summit - he didn't need to do this but was totally committed to helping us. Meanwhile another of the staff was on the move to Advanced BC to meet us with hot tea and biscuits to help our final descent while the remaining third had prepared hot lemon for our return.

Your local agent was excellent. The boss in Delhi spoke to me twice and was clearly motivated to help us as much as possible. He selected the best staff for us - I cannot speak highly enough of them. The food was astonishingly good and so was the general care around camp. The guide Andy (Nawang Dorje Shelipa) was absolutely brilliant and deserves a medal - he was perfect for us as a family and we already miss him. He was as excited as us that we made the summit even though it was his 42nd occasion - we were certainly the first family and (forgive the boasting) the fastest group he has guided to the summit. On return to Delhi, they provided a very nice, very chocolate heavy congratulatory cake - a nice touch and appreciated by us, while the boss called me full of enthusiasm that we had made the summit.