Kangchenjunga

Don’t tell Kangchenjunga there’s no prizes for third place! No sir, this colossal giant of rock and ice and sheer-cut precipice is the veritable king of Sikkim, commanding the plains of the Brahmaputra River basin like none of the other summits around. At 8,586 meters above sea level, it’s the third highest peak on the planet and comes up just shy of Everest as the second highest in all of Nepal, a country for which it forms part of the Himalayan bulwark of a border.

Today, travellers flock to spots like the Darjeeling War Memorial and Tiger Hill to enjoy some of the most dramatic broadsides of the mountain, while hikers and trekkers embark on expeditions like the now-popular Goecha La route, running close to the base of the mountain, or the Green Lake Basin hike, which comes out below the mighty Zemu Glacier, the largest in the Eastern Himalaya. Due to the sacred esteem in which the local Sikkimese people hold the mountain, permission to ascend to the summit is rarely given and most expeditions head out from the Nepalese side. Others content themselves with searching for the fabled valley of immortality that many a Kangchenjunga tour guide will say exists somewhere under the shadow of the summit.