Now I'll be the first to admit that this expedition to Burma was half-mad from the beginning and that the chances of success were perhaps small. So what? If you're sure you can do it, what's the point?

We picked up Bruce Lee, master of chicanery, in a large city in central China, and flew to Lhasa, where Bruce found us a truck driver who for a cool $500 was willing to hide us in the back of his lorry and lie his way through one military checkpoint after another. Three hundred miles later we switched trucks and roared on, right into our first arrest and escape.

Three days later, we've holed up in the tiny Tibetan village of Rawu, waiting for another truck to take us south, but we're now so deep in the hinterland that only yaks appear to use the road.

Steve is flat-eyed and somber. Keith, on the other hand, is gradually loosening up. He makes faces at the kids who follow us everywhere and chases them in play. He's still gamely convinced we'll reach Hkakabo Razi and climb it. Bruce is anxious but unhurried. He spends his time drinking tea and making friends with the locals.

I am ridiculously happy. Rawu is a Tibetan village you can no longer find in central Tibet. The waterwheels that turn the stones that grind the barley are still made with hand-carved cogs. The women still thresh the barley on their roofs by hand, singing rhythmic songs that sound almost African. The mountains rising in every direction are unspeakably gorgeous, and as far as I know every single one of them is unclimbed. I while away the hours wandering around the village trying to buy potatoes or eggs using my Tibetan dictionary, mangling the words so badly that the children, hiding behind their mothers' woolen skirts, giggle hysterically.

Finally a truck. A traveling salesman with a load of brass pots and pans. We grab our bags and clamber up on top, hunker down among the kettles and ladles, and again begin slipping through military checkpoints.

We travel beneath peak after peak after peak of sheer ice and rock, most rising above 20,000 feet. Over high passes, through Tibetan villages so remote they speak a different dialect, have a different architecture, still wear handmade clothes of leather and silk. I watch the landscape roll slowly by and dream about spending five or ten years wandering here.

After two days, when we're less than 50 miles from the northern border of Burma, the truck halts in a dirty village some distance off the road. The next checkpoint is at Zayü, a military stronghold almost on the border. The driver will take us no farther. From here on, we'll have to bushwhack.

Bruce hires the village mule-skinner and his donkeys. We aren't up the path two miles before the mule-skinner pops the slipknot on our loads and demands more money. We haggle, he wins. The next morning he pulls the same stunt. We haggle, he wins. The following day he refuses to go farther. He points south, holds an invisible machine gun in his hands, and mows us all down. No amount of money will make him cross the border into Burma.

Steve groans. He now believes this was a half-baked expedition from the beginning. He decides he's going home. We're so close to the border it only makes sense that Bruce go with him. The mule-skinner is delighted. He repacks the loads, leaving Keith, me, and two hundred-pound backpacks crammed with climbing gear plus food and fuel for ten days.

We shake hands all around. Bruce Lee grins. He has done what he said he could do and knows he'll see us again. Keith and I shoulder our packs and stagger toward a snowy pass.