Nepal · NP

Machhapuchhare

Machhapuchhre is the mountain everyone photographs in Nepal's Annapurna region and almost no one ever stands on. Rising 6,993 m above sea level with a double summit that splits like the tail of a fish, it is the defining feature of the skyline north of Pokhara, and it is closed to climbers by a decades-old ban that the country has never agreed to lift. For travellers this is not a summit to bag but a presence to keep company with. It glows pink and gold at dawn from the shores of Phewa Lake, it walks beside you for days up the Modi Khola gorge on the way to Annapurna Base Camp, and from the ridgeline at Poon Hill it appears as the sharpest, whitest blade in the whole panorama. Locals revere it as the home of the god Shiva, which is exactly why it stays virgin.