Trek Adventures and Misadventures

Editor's Note: Maps here and everything else are in metric, when writing this post I don't feel like using a converter every 5 seconds, so I will use metric. Don't worry when I get back to the US I will go back to normal.

You may notice that I am writing about the trek one day early, read more to find out why... (don't worry everyone and everything is fine)

Day 1:

Leave the hotel that orginized the trek at around 9 AM with a pickup truck full of supplies and our two compainions on the trek. Our compainions are two Stanford students who are here for the summer, and as it turned out were a lot of fun. Drive around 15 minutes to the start (4200m) and when we are arrive there are 6 pack horses ready and waiting. After fooling around for a few minutes, we head off with the guide up the trail letting the cook and horse driver pack everything up and catch up later. The guide is a pretty nice guy, a little quiet, but pleasent. The first day we hike for around 5 hours, on a mostly gentle jeep track. The scenery is as spectacular as would be expected, as we were mainly hiking across and open desert plain then up a deep gordge.

During lunch the guide takes and nap for about half and hour and the horse caravan passes us. As we would figure out, this after lunch nap is a pretty regular thing for this guide, but everyone but me also passed out, so it was no problem at all.

Eventually we reach the campsite, which is at around 3400m (lower then our hotel in Leh, which is 3500m). This was the nicest campsite as it was a little manger in the riverbed, with the river at one side and a diverted irrigation stream at the other. The orginization of the trek was pretty top notch, so by the time we arrived camp was more or less set up and we were served tea pretty much right away. The food was quite good as well. We would alwase get at least 4 fresh dishes and a canned fruit dessert. Incedentily, we figured out that we were served tea 5 times a day on this trip, wake up tea, breakfast tea, arrive at camp tea, dinner tea and post dinner tea.

Also, we got some entertainment during dinner from our compainones. One of them brought his Ukelale with him and was pretty good at playing sing along songs with it. Make fun if you want, but his renditions of the Betles and Paul Simon were pretty damb good. The other funny thing about this was that our cook, a nice guy named Ram, had to carry the thing by hand all day long since they were afraid to strap it to the horse, making for a pretty funny scene when they walked by.

So the first day was pretty good except for that Nisha was working pretty hard even at this low elevation and was developing a cold that was not helping matters either.

Day 2:

Woke up and was served tea and a very nice breakfast and got moving on the hike, once again leaving the horses and the cook behind to finish packing. Hiked for around 2 hours up the gordge, having to get my shoes wet a few times crossing the river. No big deal however as things dry up here faster then I have ever seen. We reach a really cute village at around 3900m where I pick up a coke and a few others get tea. The village is an hour hike past the end of the road, but was really pretty, with fields of barley and grazing livestock all in this very deep valley. Stop for lunch next to a donkey pasture and once again take the half hour nap break.

One thing about the weather here is that the sun is really brutel. Even though you may leave camp in the morning wearing a fleese and a hat, by the middle of the day it is really hot, and just sucks the energy right out of you. Nisha got cought bad by this in the afternoon as we hiked up the valley to the campsite at 4300m. She really ran out of gas and the last 1km or so to the campsite was a real death march, with several stops to dip towels in the cold river and some really slow hiking.

That night we all got headahes for the altitude, but Nisha had it the worst. She also was getting a cold and this campsite was very exposed, with a bitter wind coming up the valley after dark. We ended up hanging out with a young british couple that was camping in the same site, and hit the bed around 9.

Day 3:

Was already thinking during the night that if Nisha did not have any improvement in her physical condition, there was now way that she was going to make it over the 4900m pass that was on the docket for today. When we got up in the morning, I had her try climbing up the 10m high ridge next to the camp and it just was not happening.

My initial plan was to head back down with her to the top of the road, and see if we could get her a ride back to Leh. Then I would get a ride to the town at the bottom of the next vally and do the 3 hour hike back up to where they were going to camp, bypassing the pass. After talking this over with the guide, he said that he would take Nisha down and get her back to Leh, and then meet back up with us either that night or the following morning, which was basically my plan. But since he is Nepelese (altitude no problem) and knows the area it did seem like he would be a better choice then me, so we aggreed to this plan.

So we split and the two college kids and myself go flying up the pass and make it to the top in around one hour and a half. Did not have any big problems making it up, but it was pretty steep and the air at 16,000 feet is pretty thin. We proceed to spend around 2 hours up at the top, climbing up to the nearest high point on the ridge that just reached 5000m. It was also pretty cool watching the horse teams go over the pass, I have never seen horses breathing so hard or climbing such a steep slope.

I spent a little too long up there however, because as I started to eat lunch I got a pretty bad headache that I would attribute to the altitude. I then decended pretty quickly to our next campsite at 4300m, and was just completely wiped out by the sun and the altitude. I napped for 2 hours right after I got there, which is definately a rarity for me.

Luckly the nap fixed my headache and we had another nice dinner spread and hung out with the brits around the campsite again, going to bed at around 9 PM. I was sleeping great until around 2 AM when I woke up with a terrible headache and thirst. I am pretty sure that it was mainly dehydration, but the problem was that I did not have any drinking water left, and would not get any more until morning, making for a pretty crappy night of sleep.

Day 4:

I woke up in a pretty bad mood, but willed myself to drink two liters of water and felt a little better. The problem was that we packed up and left to climb the next pass and there was still no sign of the guide who was supposed to bring Nisha back to Leh. I was not feeling so hot already, and the prospect of the guide never reappearing ment that the following night and day were not going to be very much fun, since I was mainly just going to worry about weather Nisha was alright. So, I decided to forgo another day of high pass climbing and headed down the valley to the town at the base. It was a pretty easy 3 hour hike to the pretty little town at the bottom, and I was lucky enough to get a cab to drive me the 40 minutes back to Leh for only 2 dollars.

There I found Nisha checked back into the hotel, with her own story to tell.

So I did miss one day, but I did accompish what I wanted to do, which was hike over one of these 5000m passes. My biggest lesson is certainly that altitude is not to be messed with and can humble anyone. I thought I was immune until my issues on the high pass. I was glad to do the trip, certainly the landscape, the scenery and the alitidue are something that you will experience in very few places in the world and I am glad I made it.