Goecha-La Trek Day Four

This day was spent staying put at Dzongri to acclimate to the altitude before climbing even higher in later parts of the trek. The morning involved our only real work of the day-a 4:30am climb to Dzongri viewpoint to catch the sunrise amidst a panorama of the Singalila and Kanchenjunga Ranges. We stepped out of our tent to a gray near-dawn and sipped tea with Topden before heading up the skinny, winding path with the rest of the trekkers, including a Polish couple, three Singaporeans and a group of eight Indian men who had met up on India Mike to climb Goecha-La. As we ascended  we saw the dzo camp in a valley beyond our own-as we climbed even higher we saw the valley of Thangsing which we would hike to the next day, considering that our pressure headaches from the altitude calmed down before the morning.

The entire group was grateful for clear skies and a moderately colorful sunrise as we huddled on top of the point among the prayer flags that whipped in the increasingly furious wind. The Bear, of course, took  a million pictures, with all four lenses, with and without the tripod. Topden pointed out Mount Pandim, which we now seemed to be hunting even more than the red panda (which we had been told numerous times by now are "lazy and shy"), as well as Kabur rising before the Singalila Range which marked the border with Nepal and, eventually, once the last of the night's fog had lifted, the craggy peak of Kanchenjunga, the guardian of Sikkim having been recognized by Guru Padmasambhava himself as a holy presence. Coming off the hill the wind picked up and I was grateful that the drop-off was not more steep as I was almost knocked clear over the edge by one virulent gust.

Later that afternoon we carefully avoided the ubiquitous dzo dung to walk around camp and eventually fell into conversation with Jana and Ivan, a Czech couple who were heading to Thangsing the next day as well. They had spent the previous night in Tsokha where they had originally planned on ending their trek due to Ivan's sickness on a trek of Northern Sikkim the week before. Luckily he was feeling better now, as were we, and we all fell asleep after our respective dinners at the respectable time of 8pm, as had become our norm.