A trekking holiday in the Himalayas, among the magnificent ski property in Nepal takes an unexpected turn for Amy Cooper.

THEY'RE partying on the streets of Kathmandu. Crowds and laughter spill from cafes, car horns sound fanfares and clusters of peace candles burn in the alleys between bazaars, temples and bars. A frenetic town at the best of times, tonight Nepal's capital resounds with something more than its usual exuberance.

By chance, we've arrived in the valley on the day a landmark treaty promises to end 10 years of violent unrest. The agreement has been signed by the Nepalese Government and the country's anti-monarchy Maoist rebels, and all sides view it as the end of a conflict that has caused 13,000 deaths and nationwide poverty. From today, they say, things are going to be very different in Nepal.

Fresh from a 10-day trek in the Himalayan foothills 200 kilometres to the east, we've flown back to our base here. The first time around, we were dazed by Kathmandu's chaos, the scrum of motor vehicles and rickshaws, the noise, the crush, the hustlers and livestock, the prowling "professional Holy men" with their unruly dreadlocks, the tourists, the roaming children and the woolly-hatted hippies. We'd known this melee would be a jolt after the serenity of the peaks. But we hadn't expected to wander down from the mountains straight into live, boisterously unfolding history.

As it turns out, we have begun our trek in one era and ended it in another; a future hopefully free from Western government travel advisories and perceived dangers from Maoist guerillas. How great those dangers really were has always been hotly debated, with most tour companies adamant that risks to tourists were minimal (certainly very few incidents have been documented).

Our operator had already reinstated its Nepal trips as peace talks progressed, but now the home of 10 of 14 of the world's tallest mountains is truly open for business again.

The week before this breakthrough, we boarded a 25-seater, twin-engine Otter at Kathmandu airport to fly east over the Khumbu Valley to Lukla. At 2800 metres this little landing strip in the sky is the world's highest airport and perches implausibly among the mountains. Its 475-metre runway gives way to a 700-metre drop, affording absolutely no room for pilot error. The weather over this stretch of eastern Himalayas is mercurial. While these facts enrich the experience for roller-coaster enthusiasts like me, other first-timers were understandably jittery.

It's best to put your face against the window and lose yourself in the view, because if you've never met the Himalayas before, you will never forget this first encounter. The thin white line on the horizon looks like angry surf, then, as you draw closer, grows into a jumble of jagged shapes - pyramids, battlements, faces - until individual mountains emerge in formation; a rank of towering, white-robed royalty. To look deep into these peaks is to gaze at the face of another planet.