Trekking in Thin Air

Our 10 day trek started out easy. Kristi, Sophie (our soon to be good friend from France) Tserring (our guide) Bobbi (our cook) Driver-ji (Our driver)and myself in the jeep. We headed out to a little town where the Dalai Lama lives when he is in town. It was His Holinesses birthday and there was a big celebration. We took a tour of HH's house, watched some dancing and toured a temple. Afterwards we headed out to Rumtse where our trek was to start and set up camp to wait for our ponies and Pony Man.

The next day started the way the rest were to start, with a "Good morning!" from outside our tent at 7am, and Tserring opening the tent to give us our "bed tea." We would then pack up, have a huge breakfast served to us, and head out with our lunch boxes for the day.

We covered over 160kms and hiked through 5 mountian passes, our highest being 5500m! We never never dropped below 4400m and we felt it. While walking up hill I was panting and my heart was racing like I had been running for hours and when I would look down at my feet I would see one foot slowly moving to take a small step in front of the other.

We would usually arrive at camp sometime between 1 and 3pm. Bobbie and Pony Man would have already made it there and would be waiting for us with chai and bisquits. Our afternoons would usually be spent lying around reading, journaling or sleeping. Sometimes we would also have language lessons with Sophie teaching us French and Tserring and Bobbie teaching us Ladakhi and Hindi. Tserring chose his own phrases he thought would be useful for me to know:
"Where is the bus station?"
"Give me your hat."
"I love you" and "Would you like to marry me?"

The only one I can remember is "Give me your hat." and I have yet to find a use for it.

Everynight Bobbie served us copious amounts of food ensuring our bodies did not get any weight loss benefits from our day hiking.

I really don't have the vocabulary to describe our incredible surroundings. Everyday/hour was different and on some of the mountain passess I felt like my mom, (sorry mom) I would get teary because it was so beautiful. You could see snow-capped mountains for miles in every direction. Between the passes we hiked in nomads land of big green valleys. We didn't run into any villages but did see some herds of yaks and goats, lots of marmets and pica, some wild ass and two wolves.

The last day we arrived at a little village on Tsomoriri lake. We stayed one extra day to see the nomads come in for the festival at the Buddhist monestary. The last day was spent driving all the way back to Leh.

Overall the trek was one of the highest points (pun intended) of my trip. We felt like a little family by the end and only the thoughts of a shower, soft bed and possibly a full breathe of oxygen filled air lured us back to Leh.

We didn't stay long though. After giving ourselves one day off Kristi and I were eager to fit in one more trek. We mistakenly thought the trek made us strong, not tired us out. And decided to do a 4 day trek in 2 days without a guide.

On day one we some how missed the last stop for drinking water and got completely dehydrated before finding a relatively clean stream to refill on water (totally worth carrying around the chlorine drops for 5 months)

After 8 hours of hiking up hill I thought I was going to collapse (actually I felt this way from hour 5 on) I have new sympathy for anyone that I have ever hiked or ran with who told me they could not go on. If you felt the way I did that day I am so sorry.

We made it to the idyllic village of Rumback and it made the day worth it. It felt like we were in a some magical village straight out of "Lord of the Rings." It was surrounded by huge rocky mountains and in a little valley with only a few fields of their own crops. The village had 67 people living there and 9 homes. All 9 houses were set up as "home-stay" options for trekkers.

We spent the night with a lovely Ladakhi family that spoke little English. It was a very cool brick home where we had dinner with the family and I mainly slept the whole time we were there and didn't even have the energy to take pictures. We were both so overwhlemed that we had the chance to experience staying there.

The next morning we filled up on water and electrolights and managed to make it 3 hours and 1100m's up top to the pass which, once again, too amazing for words blah blah blah.....
I felt completely on a high, partially from the beauty and partially from knowing I only had down-hill to hike from then on.

After 5 hours of hiking down we arrived at a little Ladakhi village where the women were having a big water fight. Filthy dirty we got a taxi home and walked straight into a Tibetan restaurant for some Momo soup after which I finally felt normal again.

The next few days the only exercise we got was shopping and visiting with all our friends around town (Mainly shopkeepers and the guys from the German bakery.)

I had plans to continue on to Srinigar in Kashmir but there have been some terrorist attacks and the city has been under curfew for weeks. Even though people insisted it was safe for tourists there was a possibility I could get stuck there so I decided against it. Despite my raving about the drive to Leh from Manali I was not eager to repeat it. But as the "Leh-Manali" road was the only "safe" route from Leh I headed back to Manali. I had to say good-bye to Kristi (who was an AWESOME travel friend for over month) and headed out on the world's 2nd most dangerous highway (according to the people in the van you may may want to varify that fact yourself) for the 19 hour bumpy ride back to Manali.

I am now relaxing back at Dharma guesthouse where I stayed last time I was here. Very nice to be greeted by friendly faces returning. They even convinced me to stay an extra day which was not hard as I am not eager to do another overnight bus or deal with the hot monsoon-ridden India that awaits me.