That's right! 21 days in the Himalayan wilderness starts tomorrow morning!
My team consists of: Luke, the leader who has been running serious outdoor trips in colorado, alaska, india, and nepal for over a decade, Leo, an anesthesiologist from Sydney who has been my roommate in Leh, Lars, a Swedish software engineer who has been living in Sydney for over a decade, Piotr, an astrophysicist from Poland, an Ana, a very cool girl about to start her PhD in physics at CalTech. Everyone is incredibly interesting and has plenty of shit to talk about. There shouldn't be much silence during our trip.
We've all been acclimating in Leh for 3 nights now. The city is like an oasis town nestled in a desert valley between huge mountain ranges. It is incredibly touristy. Historically it is a Tibetan village, and feels nothing like the rest of India or Kashmir. There are so many white people here it's scary. 70% of the town is Buddhist, and many of the locals all look more Chinese than Indian. There are also many nepalis who work here.
The first day was sort of an orientation, the second day consisted of sightseeing in the morning and then a nice 2.5 hour trek over a ridge in the afternoon. Today we took mountain bikes up to the highest motorable pass in the world, the Khardung La, at 18380 feet, and biked 46km back down to Leh which is at 11562 feet, so needless to say it was epic. We rode trek mountain bikes an my gears were complete crap, but I still had an amazing time and definitely need to do more mountain biking in the future. I may try to bike up the pass when we return from the trek on august 9th or 10th.
We've been in leh also with the rest of the project himalaya team. Kim took her group out on a 30 day trek today. Her group was a bit larger than ours an they'll be doing a beautiful trek in a different region as ours. Jamie has been spending time with us during meals. He's climbed Everest 4 times and know everything there is to know about trekking and mountaineering so it's certainly awesome to converse with him.
Our trek will head aoutheast of leh towards the Tso Moriri region, which runs along the disputed border area between India and China. There are a few large lakes there surrounded by towering 6000+ meter peaks. We have a tentative itinerary but also have a few plan b's and plan c's depending on how things look. Luke and the team of locals will make day by day decisions to decide where exactly we'll go. The goal is to scale 2 of the 6000 meter peaks in the 21 days. We've got ice axes and crampons (which are like ice spikes that attach to our boots) to help in this endeavor. If we're really lucky we might stumble upon some snow leopards!
Along the way we will be supported by 7 locals who basically lead the donkeys ahead of the group, set up re entire camp, and cook all the food every day for us. We'll only be carrying day packs, and all of the rest of our crap will be waiting for us when we reach camp. I know this sounds totally pussy, but I have been talking to other Trekkers who told me about how awful it is to set up camp every night for just 5 days. So I'm okay with the 5 star service this time around!
3 of the group members (Luke, Lars, and Piotr) have serious Nikon cameras with tripods and the whole 9 yards, so they will have some amazing shots from the trek. I'll make de with my canon point and click, as of course I am in the top 5 best users of canon point and click cameras worldwide rankings.
We've also got all sorts of fancy amenities like iPhone speakers, a solar panel battery charger, camp chairs, a library tent, etc. The donkeys do all the heavy lifting!
Most of the days we'll be up at normal hours and hit the road by 9 after breakfast. The days that we try to summit will be 2AM starts so we can be at the peak during prime weather.
I've been getting up around 5:30 for the past 3 days and doing 1 to 1.5 hours of yoga. I'm going to try to keep it up during the trek. I was speaking with folks at the yoga course and they said that yoga and especially the associated breathing exercises are the best physical tool to assist in acclimatization. I'm going to focus on making sure I do breathing exercises every morning in lieu of taking diamox or the other weird pills I got in China to combat altitude sickness.
I'll likely be entirely out of touch with society until August 8th, so don't get worried if you don't here from me. If you don't hear from me by the 10th, then you can be worried.
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