In fact, toilet tissue was but one of the Himalayas’ many problems. Along with the 300,000-plus tourists visiting Nepal annually – a quarter of whom go trekking – come sewage-polluted rivers, mini mountains of non- biodegradable rubbish, deforestation, erosion and landslides. Or fly from Gatwick to Salzburg on Lauda Air (0171-630 5924) for pounds 202. From Salzburg rent a car (driving time is two and a half hours) or take a train from Salzburg to Innsbruck (two hours) and then a bus.Few operators feature packages to Kuhtai; two that do are Inghams (0181- 780 4444) and Alpine Tours (01227 454177)Austrian Tourist Board: 0171-629 1461.. Toilet stories are always popular with travellers and the British media, so when the route to Everest became known as the “Kleenex Trail” in the Eighties because of all the toilet paper left behind by trekkers, the story struck a crude chord in the public imagination.
That morning, anyway.There are no longer any scheduled flights to Innsbruck from the UK. Air UK (0345 666777), which used to fly the route from Stansted, now offers connections from a range of British airports via Amsterdam.Swissair and Tyrolean Airways (0171-434 7300) can get you from Heathrow to Innsbruck via Zurich for pounds 224 return, including tax. And the great splodge where you fell over.Sitting in the restaurant wolfing down great mounds of ribs and sauerkraut and gallons of red wine, you can afford yourself the little glow of self- satisfaction which comes with the knowledge that, not only have you been on top, but you’ve been where no man has been before. The joy is skiing on untouched domain, trekking across to a valley or bowl which you have gazed longingly at from the chair lift and finding yourself floundering happily through unskied snow.It feels like an adventure, you can’t hear the racket of the lifts or the shouts of the skiers. And there is a fantastic sense of achievement when you reach the bottom – one way or another – red-faced with exertion and look back up the hill at the tracks left in the snow. Exit touring, enter the untrammeled delights of skiing off piste It doesn’t matter how good you are. Anyway our guide for the day looked as if he too had discovered the village’s night life.
Indeed it looked as if he had been the night life.There was no way we could miss out on a sunny day with new snow. Touring? On a day like this? Probably not – missing the point in our eagerness to be on the slopes, that a climb into the empty distance would have been a spectacular experience. We huddled in the lee of the buildings as we searched for a little light night life.We awoke to find fresh snow and brilliant sunshine. One purple crocus is bravely showing through the newly revealed, bedraggled grass.We were ready for more adventures until a blizzard broke that evening The little community shuddered in the blast The stuffed cow was blown over. We take off the skins, carry our skis around an outcrop and swoop down a virgin slope with a surface as lumpy as an alligator’s skin. Round another corner and we are whizzing over corrugated traverses, then into soft snow and finally we are forced to take off our skis for a stumble through the shrubs and little streams.We pause for breath in the valley The sound of silence is broken only by the cawing of a crow. The wind whips round your woollies and freezes your hands as you fumble in the rucksack for emergency rations of chocolate and slivovitz.The point of going up is the coming down.
