We're back (with aches & pains) from 5 days of trekking - great stuff. For a region that's sometimes incorrectly described as a 'high altitude dust bowl', the landscape was ever changing and extremely colourful - red rock, green rock, orange rock - you name it , we saw it.
The trek involved 3 mountain passes (from 4300 m to 5000m) - one pass in particular stands out, with a 1500m non stop climb which brought back the 'horrors' of the Kilimanjaro submit climb - really tough.
For those of you following previous posts, we did get treated to corn-flakes for breakfast and banana-apple tart for dinner dessert - in between some tasty noodles, veg-fried rice, and some local food for more acquired and refined tastes buds - e.g. salted butter tea. This may be good fuel for the steep terrain, but I couldn't find the way of getting it down me.
Unfortunately, It wasn't all plain sailing and wonderful - this morning we were 'stranded' on the highest pass (5200m) in the middle of a snow blizzard - our guide had asked us to start the ascent to the pass on our own (we should have refused), and by the time the blizzard hit us on the peak he was nowhere to be seen. The mist closed in on us till the visibility was down to a couple of metres - it was bitterly cold and , although, I was trying to keep moving, I could feel myself getting colder and colder.
Our guide finally surfaced 45 minutes later - in my disbelief, he had decided to come up with the ponyman, helper (and gear), singing and whistling as he reached the summit. In outrage, I ran over to him and screamed:
' Where does your responsibility lie? With the donkey or with your trekking party? '
-No response-
'F***cking get us down this mountain NOW!'
And he did just that - a struggle at times with normally visible paths erased by the blanket of snow, but we made it all right.
We're now back in the comfort of Leh and doing what most tourist do here: Take it easy, slow down and help ourselves to more curry jalfrenzy and cold Kingfisher beer - lovely.
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