Friday 18.10.2024
Summary:
Trekking Yak Kharka – High Camp
Start: 08:10, 4050m
Finish: 13:45, 4800m
Weather: partly cloudy, windy at times, long trousers and shell jacket
Drink: 2 L
Expenses: 400 (Coke at lunch)
Today the plan was to approach Thorong La Pass and prepare to cross it. We would first walk to Thorang Phedi at 4450m for lunch and decide there, based on the health of the group, whether to stay there or continue on to High Camp. The journey to Thorang Phedi was reasonably long and we didn’t arrive until 11:30am. Since everyone was in good health, we could continue to High Camp 350 meters higher up. Although High Camp could not be seen from Thorang Phedi, it was pretty much directly above Thorang Phedi. The section was all uphill, but fortunately it didn’t take more than a little over an hour.
High Camp is a bleak place. It is surprisingly large and consists of several buildings. There was literally nothing in the rooms except beds and thick blankets. There was no electricity. There were no lights, which meant that after six o’clock headlamps were needed in the rooms. There was no heating either, similar to everywhere else, but at 4800 meters that meant it was very cold in the room. There was no electricity in the large dining hall either, so there was nowhere to charge anything. Fortunately, there was a stove in the dining room, so it was warm enough to eat dinner. Amrit asked if he should book me a pony ride for the next day, but I was feeling pretty good so I declined the offer. In fact, we played with Amrit’s oxygen saturation meter and I got a surprisingly good result of 89, which was actually better than Heikki’s or Pude’s values.
Saturday 19.10.2024
Summary:
Trekking High Camp – Thorong La – Muktinath
Start: 04:30, 4800m
Thorong La: 07:20, 5416m
Finish: 14:00, 3700m
Weather: Well below zero at night, windy at times, sunny during the day, thermal base layer, long trousers, down jacket, ski gloves, hat
Drink: 2 L
Expenses: 300 (energy drink at lunch), 1000 (coke, energy drink, Khurkha rum from minimarket), 2500 (drinks with Amrit and porters)
Wake-up time was literally in the middle of the night at 03:15. I was cold in the room and the windows were firmly frosted. Our gear had been pretty much packed before bedtime. This time the gear bag was easy to close, as for the first time I was using my bigger hiking boots and the down jacket while hiking. Along with the sleeping bag, they are the biggest single items in the bag, so using them freed up a lot of space. Today was the day I wanted to minimize the weight of my daypack, so I packed all the chargers and the main part of the toiletry bag into the gear bag. The daypack still carried the computer and the camera. Of course I also had drinks, nuts and a windbreaker for the downhill when the temperature warmed up and the down jacket became too much.
Since we didn’t have to pack much more than the fleece liners and miscellaneous odds and ends after waking up, we were in the dining room well in advance, ready for breakfast. Soon we had our usual breakfast: oatmeal with apple slices for everyone, two plates of eggs (2 per plate) and tea.
We set off as planned at 04:30 by headlamp light. We had seen a small section of the trail from the viewpoint hill, but after that the trail disappeared behind the hilly terrain. Of course, we couldn’t get a very good overall view of the trail while walking in the dark, but at least it kept going up. As before, the sun started to glimmer from behind the mountains after five o’clock and a little before six o’clock we were able to switch off the headlamps. But unlike on the previous night hike to Tilicho Lake, we had to wait for almost another hour for the warming direct sunshine. It’s hard to say how cold it was, but it was presumably somewhere in the region of minus ten degrees. That’s nothing to a Finn, but at 5000m, the body’s heat production is no longer in pristine condition, so full gear including thermal underwear, down jackets and ski gloves was absolutely essential. Despite being well dressed, one thumb at least was a bit numb.
Around seven o’clock the sun started to warm up. The hose of my water bag had frozen, so there was nothing flowing through it. The contents of the bag itself hadn’t frozen, so I could have poured the drink into a Nalgene bottle, but I felt way too lazy to start hassling with it. I figured the hose would thaw out soon as we headed downhill, as the sun was already shining. In hindsight, it did melt, but definitely not quickly.
The hilly terrain meant that at no point could the route be seen very far ahead. Every time you got on top of the nearest hill section, you were greeted by a view of another similar uphill section. This went on for a really long time. At one point, however, Amrit said there was about half an hour to go. At this point, everyone was getting pretty tired, and we were wondering whether we were talking about an European half hour or a Nepalese half hour. Suddenly, however, we saw our porters coming down the hill without their loads. At that point we knew we would have to be close. The porters offered to take our day packs, but we still had enough pride left that we didn’t give them to them. We staggered along together for the last 15 minutes. The tea house, the prayer flags and the big sign only came into view when they were almost in front of our noses. Just before we reached the pass, a pony rider passed us again. We made it without one.
Amazingly, there is a tea house at the pass. I would have loved a Red Rhino or even the horrible Thai version of Red Bull, but this tea house was literally a tea house. In hindsight, how could they have had cokes or similar drinks on sale when they would all have been frozen solid. How the guy running the tea house was able to be up at the pass serving clients so early in the morning remained a bit of a mystery. It’s a long way from High Camp, so he can’t climb up to the pass every morning, and on the other side of the pass there was a 1700m descent to Muktinath, so commuting from there was also impossible. Perhaps he rode a pony occasionally between High Camp and the pass. But it’s grim if he spent several days in a row in the pass to sell a few dirt-cheap cups of tea to trekkers trudging through the pass.
We spent maybe half an hour at the pass taking scenic photos and group shots in front of the sign. Surprise surprise, there was a rush to pose in front of the sign, so it all took quite some time.
After the pass, an insane descent to Muktinath at 3700 meters awaited. In theory, it sounded spectacular. More oxygen and warmth with every step down. In reality, descending 1700 meters meant at least five kilometers of hiking down a rather steep and rocky slope. And it didn’t take long before I felt a need for a ‘number two type of a toilet stop’. However, the frequency of porcelain pots along the trail left a lot to be desired. A quick squat behind some stones had to suffice and a pile of pebbles to build a little poo temple as a cover up. It took us three hours to reach the lunch spot, from where it was another hour downhill to Muktinath. It was a really bad day for the toes.
Before reaching the actual village of Muktinath, we arrived at a large Hindu temple area. A cultural tour after eight very strenuous hours isn’t really very appealing, but on the other hand, it was out of question that we would have climbed up from Muktinath to the temple area later. After the temple building we stumbled into a kind of swimming pool area where the locals were bathing enthusiastically as some kind of purifying ritual. Next to the pool was a wall with 108 small water jets. According to Amrit, it meant good luck if you walked from the beginning to the end of the wall and touched each jet of water. So I did, but the locals had a slightly more devotional tactic for this too, running through the water jets in their shorts.
We arrived in the village and at our hotel around three o’clock. A shower and a cold drink definitely were on the top of the priority list. On Pude’s initiative, we decided to offer Amrit and the porters some drinks. The bar in the dining room also had Somersby cider, which of course I took. I told Amrit that this is exactly what I drink at home. He had never tasted cider, and that was something that needed to be rectified immediately. Somehow the cider tasted strangely diluted, but the bottle did say 4.5%, so we didn’t get a non-alcoholic version. Somersby was in fact on sale in several places, and I cannot imagine it being imported as such from Europe. It is probably produced under license somewhere closer, perhaps in Thailand or India. The hotel had a very extensive menu and after drinks we had a delicious dinner. We also went on a little tour of the town, which fortunately was about half a kilometre long. We each picked up a small bottle of local Khukri rum from a nearby little shop. A couple of sips after dinner ensured we didn’t have to wait long to fall asleep.
