As Mt. Kanchenjunga celebrated the golden jubilee of its first ascent Wednesday, there was little of the hype generated two years ago when the world rejoiced 50 years of the first conquest of Mt Everest.

On May 25, 1955, a British team led by Sir Charles Evans had put two mountaineers atop the 8,586 m peak - Britons George Christopher Band and Joe Brown. The next day, two more members toiled up - Norman Hardie of New Zealand and Tony Streather of Britain.

The first team, barring Brown, has now arrived in Kathmandu to take part in the celebrations.

But there is none of the frenzy that erupted two years ago when Sir Edmund Hillary, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler - the first men to climb Mt Everest without bottled oxygen, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay's son Jamling, Japanese Junko Tabei, the first woman to scale Mt Everest, and a host of legendary climbers gathered in Kathmandu.

Perhaps that has much to do with Everest snuffing out Kanchenjunga's glory long ago.

Till 1852, Mt Kanchenjunga, towering on the border of eastern Nepal and Sikkim state of India, was considered to be the tallest mountain in the world.

It was only four years later that a hitherto obscure peak, dismissively called Peak XV by surveyors, was found to be higher than Kanchenjunga and re-christened Mt Everest after British surveyor-general Sir George Everest, whose great trigonometric survey led to the discovery of the tallest peak in the world.

Today, Mt Kanchenjunga, which means "Five treasures of the world", a reference to its five high peaks, is recognised as the third tallest mountain in the world, ranking after Mt Everest and Mt K2 in Pakistan.

It is also one of the most neglected. Despite being one of the most challenging peaks, few climbers show interest in summiting it, though it can be accessed both from India and Nepal.

This year, while of the 32 mountaineering expeditions from Nepal, a record 23 are heading for Mt Everest, according to the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA), which is hosting the golden jubilee of Mt Kanchenjunga's ascent Wednesday, only one expedition has set its sights on the neglected peak.

Some attribute it to the difficulties in climbing the peak.

Band called Mt Kanchenjunga a "mountaineer's mountain" because of the challenges it poses, far more than Everest. Statistics shows it to be more dangerous that the world's tallest peak, with the highest casualty rate among mountains - 22 percent while Everest claims 9.3 percent of mishaps.

It is also time-consuming. It takes nearly three months to scale the peak while Everest takes about two months.

Finally, while Everest is also a ladies' mountain, Kanchenjunga is not popular with the fair sex.

While this year Mt Everest is being attempted by an all-women's team from Iran, the Indian Army and China and Japan and scores have summited it since Tabei, only one woman has summited Kanchenjunga so far - British mountaineer Ginette Lesley Harrison in May 1998.