Darkness descended over our trek last night as Topden, our guide, was informed by another guide (who had run the entire trip up from Yuksam that day) that his uncle had passed away. This morning Topden set off back to Yuksam where a jeep would take him to Gangtok for the funeral. Our new guide, Suresh, is a Nepali guide and chef with over fifteen years experience, but choppier English than Topden. We bid farewell to Topden and the Bear sent him off with the headlamp he had borrowed a few days before.
Our Czech, Indian and American fellow trekkers work early this morning to trek to Goecha-La in order to save time while we ate breakfast and packed up for Lamunay, a closer camp to the final destination. The previous night in Thangsing was by far the coldest: negative five Celsius in the tent. The Bear had to break open one of our emergency "astronaut" blankets and cover me with it, even so, the cold combined with my aching shoulder prevented me from sleeping more than a couple hours.
Fortunately the path to Lamunay was flat and we got to catch some blue sheep (which aren't anything close to blue) along the way. The snow started the minute we got to camp and it was difficult to emerge from the ten for lunch. Suresh took us on a two hour hike to Samiti Lake, on the way to Goecha-la, to help us acclimate. We climbed to about 4600m to a lake that seemed to exist only for itself and the astounding peaks that are reflected in its surface.
For the rest of the day we rested and wondered what the trek the next day would entail.
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