Keep on Trekking...

As we descended from the yak pastures and the Pungan Gompa monastery, we passed a herd of Himalayan Tahr (mountain goats). The males are much hairier and with bigger horns…

… than the females -

We had not only donkeys pass us on the trail, but yaks too. (another video here, so click the link at the bottom of the post to open it in your browser so you can watch)

(note the variety of horn sizes and orientations above)

Now a few words on accommodations on the trek. We were told we’d be staying in “tea houses” but had no idea what that meant, other than it wasn’t camping in tents. We had to provide our own toilet paper, shampoo and soap for the trip, as well as bring our own towels. A ‘luxurious’ room would have a double bed and in room electric socket to charge our devices, while less fancy places had a bed and hopefully an “en suite” bathroom -

For those who might not recognize it, the attached bathroom above had a squat toilet. These are everywhere in Nepal, and our thighs got very strong on this trek! Sinks and running water are a rarity, and soap and towels are not to be found. Locals think nothing of running their hands under a pipe at the side of a trail and then letting them airdry in freezing temps. We were lucky to have hot showers at a number of our stays, but most of the time, they were in a separate shed away from our room, and if there was a window, it was just a square opening in the wall with minimal cover over it. Try getting all wet standing on a cold concrete floor with 40 degree wind blowing on you, and I’ll bet you won’t be too happy with your “hot” shower. So we treated this trip as glorified camping (but definitely not glamping). Nicely, every bed had clean sheets and comforters with clean duvets, even if none had heat.

On an acclimatization day, we stayed at our tea house (at 12,000 ft) for 2 nights, and only took a short hike to Biendra Lake (above). There we met a cute little guy sharpening his pencil to practice writing his English letters -

We also strolled through the village, discovering that the locals lived in the house level above the yaks and chickens in the yard, and laundry was always hung out to dry everywhere on a sunny day -

This was also where we saw yak dung drying on walls…

… and higher up the trail warmed up next to stoves in tea houses (above the treeline) powered by dried patties.

Our hiking next led us to a stop around 12,700 ft where we did a short walk above the village…

… to sit and watch for marmots -

We were surprised at how stocky and muscular they were -

From what I read about Himalayan Marmots - they are among the largest in the world, weighing 9-20 lbs! I found their long tails, legs and toes fascinating.

Onward and upward was the plan every day. Our itinerary originally had us spend another rest day at this altitude, but because we hadn’t developed any signs of altitude sickness, and the weather was forecast to be great for the next 2 days, our guide recommended we push on. We were game for this, so we just kept climbing…

… past glacial moraines…

… until we found the Stairway to Heaven. :)

At this altitude, we were just crawling up the mountain. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other at an unbelievably slow pace (about 1 mile per hour) so I wouldn’t be panting, and we always finished our planned hikes. We were among the oldest people we saw during this trek, with most hikers being 20 - 40 year olds. The younger ones would blow past us, but then take longer breaks, and we would be the turtles, just plodding by them, not stopping.

This was the camp where I started the Nepal posting…

(sorry it’s kinda distorted - I must have tapped the ultrawide option on my cellphone)

… and there definitely were no en-suite cabins. In fact, the stone hut in the left side of the picture above contained the only 2 squat toilets for the 15 or so hikers spending that night, at over 14,000 ft. Of course, that would be the night that I had to get up three times during the night!

So that we would be at the pass the next day before winds would pick up, we had to leave at 0430. Steve took a reasonably good selfie -

And we hiked on… and up … and on…

It was brutal, but gorgeous -

there were hanging glaciers everywhere we looked

The Larke La Pass was anticlimactic…

… as we still had to climb higher…

(see the tiny people near the right side of the picture?)

… before we could start to descend. Steve’s tracker marked our highest elevation gained at 5133 m (16,840 ft). Thus, this is officially the highest we have ever hiked. It took us 5 hours to get up, and more than that to descend to our tea house for the night. We were completely wiped out by a grueling descent in snow, ice and loose rocks, which made us glad we had brought micro-spikes to attach to our boots. As our toughest hike ever, we were glad that this is now in the books. I didn’t take many pictures as we cursed, slid and trudged our way down, but I’ll close with this one, and take up the rest of the story later -

(did you notice the glacier at the right side of the photo?)