HIMALAYA: MAKALU

"I felt it was the most beautiful valley I had ever seen...As we sheltered under an overhanging rock one of our senior and highly respected Sherpas told us a story. Dawa Tenzing had never been in the Barun valley before, but Sherpa mythology told of its existence. The valley contained an invisible village - a Shangri-La - where the gods lived and holy men came to die. It was a place of great beauty, as we had seen, and people lived there forever. I asked Dawa Tenzing if he hoped some day to end up in the invisible village, but he said he had been too great a sinner." 

Ed Hillary, on walking out from Makalu after the 1952 Cho Oyu Expedition with Eric Shipton