Himalayan Days 4-7

Coming to you live from camp at Spanglung at 5250 meters. We arrived during a torrential hailstorm filled with lightning and all sorts of goodies. I had split with the group just after brunch, and I chose a path that allowed me to somehow catch up with the staff and horses about 30 minutes ahead of the rest of the group. After walking another 30 minutes uphill with Tempa, the clouds started to dump. We luckily had just about made it to our campsite and everyone started getting all the gear off the horses asap. Since this usually is a 45 minute process in sunny skies, there was no way it was going to be a smooth in these conditions. I was of minimal help, and after throwing tarp over all our bags, Tempa yelled at me to get under the tarp myself. By this point the hail was intense and lightning was on top of us so I gladly obliged and chilled under the tarp for the next 15 minutes while the staff went to work setting up camp as best they could.

Eventually the storm let up, and they came to take me out from under the tarp. It was hilarious. Slowly they started building tents and warming water as the rest of the team arrived. All were much wetter than myself. It was certainly uncomfortable for an hour but now everyone is dried off, warmed up, and relaxing as we sit inside a cloud.

This is definitely the most excitement we've had yet on the trek. The last couple of days were absolutely amazing as we trekked through the vast valley of Tso Kar, with endless desert landscapes surrounded by snowcapped peaks and a gorgeous lake. I actually went for a swim as we walked past the lake. It is quite salty, and was fun to float in, though nowhere near as bouyant as I was in the dead sea. I wonder if it is the highest (4500meter) saltwater lake, as that would be a nice feather in my cap to have swam in both the highest and lowest saltwater lakes.

The night before we reached the lake valley, we stayed in another spectacular valley where a nomad tent nearby was selling rum, so I bought a bottle to share with the staff and Tempa whipped up a mixer of water, ginger, cinnamon, and lemon, and it was fantastic. Our staff is truly awesome. They are fun, smart, strong, hard-working, and passionate about mountain exploration. They all do their best to communicate in English while I learn a little bit of ladakhi, nepali, and tjbetan from them. Harish, the main horseman, is my favorite. Dude just got a haircut and with his ballcap and sunglasses looks total gangster just like Eazy E. Vivek rocks a Chicago white sox sweater. I want them to trade to complete the look.

I've been extremely disciplined with my yoga practice, waking up every morning around 5:25, and getting in at least an hour of practice before breakfast. I think the breathing exercises have been incredibly useful for adjusting to the altitude, and the surya namaskar and headstands as well have made me feel great throughout the days. I have some great scorpion pics that I look forward to sharing.

Pooping has been an adventure! I am averaging about 4 sizable movements per day. They are of a nice consistency just above the threshold of diarrhea. Sliding right out without explosions. I'm getting really good at the squatting and I've finally figured out how to do it without entirely removing my pants. It's heavenly, as it feels like everything I'm eating is either being converted into energy or passing right through me. I am eating like a King of vegetables and grains, so it's also rather healthy. I just need to cut down on crackers and tea. Still peeing in the middle of the night is annoying me. The other thing is, my farts are deathly. Must be the eggs or some seasoning Tempa is using. I really am not sure if I'll be able to continue to use this sleeping bag after the trip unless it gets fumigated.

I tore up cricket our first night at the lake. They couldn't get me out and I just kept smashing the ball over everyone's head. I eventually broke the ball in half and one half got caught, thus ending my innings. I'm definitely going to figure out a way to play legit cricket when I finish this trip.

Speaking of returning to reality. These past 3 days have given me ample opportunity to really do some soul-searching. The long gorgeous big-sky walks allowed our group to separate, and I had hours at a time where I put in my headphones, enjoyed some great mixes, and just took in the scenery, oblivious to my body. This meditative vibe was pure bliss.

I also just got through Gandhi's autobiography last night. While the book was a bit long, it was full of incredibly inspirational passages and stories that I found very meaningful.

So I'm going to save my "spiritual" thoughts for another blog, as I'd like to keep that separate from the physical recap.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a rest day, as the team needs to acclimate to sleeping at this altitude (same as Mt. Everest base camp). Wednesday morning the plan is to explore 3 6000 meter peaks just above us. However, I am feeling very strong and Luke and I might head out tonight and try to sneak in an additional 6350 meter summit if the weather is decent. If we succeed, that is higher than any point in all of North America. Will keep you posted.

Himalayan Days 1-3

Himalayan Days 1 - 3

Our trip out of leh was pretty easy. Took us about 2 hours to get to our camp for night one. We pulled off the Manali-Leh highway into a parking lot if a small Indian army compound where we met our team of Ladakhis, Tibetans, Nepalis, and some other local ethnicities who were waiting there with all the horses and all the gear (tents, food, etc). Immediately we started setting up camp alongside a small creek in the valley behind the military barracks while about 50 Indian officers watched us intently. A few cane down to check out what we were up to, adn made us relocate toilet tent across the creek, which meant whenever we wanted to take a dump it would require a leap over a creek before you could do so. Useful for loosening you up!

Immediately we had lunch and I realized how spoiled we are going to be on this trek. I've never camped beyond slices of bread, fruit, and trail mix. Here we are loaded with every kind of snack and tea or coffee or hot chocolate at any hour. Filtered water 24/7. Breakfast is oatmeal followed by eggs cooked to order (yes omelets), lunch is some really good sandwiches and pasta and rice, which we either have in camp or stop for a break while trekking , and dinner starts with soup, followed by a main course of like 5 veggie dishes, and then fruit for dessert.

Now while this seems like we are all pussies, I have to say that with our itinerary, this kind of full service is necessary. We've revamped our plan to try and mount 5 6000 meter peaks in 21 days. Our elevation changes are quite dramatic versus other treks which just follow trails or do short 5 day summits of one 6000 meter peak.

Today (Day 3) was a rest day (our second night camping at 4600meters) but we all decided to climb this random mountain near camp which ended up being an incredibly demanding 5600meter summit which was far more dangerous and took way longer than we had thought. This on our "off day". So yea, the nice meals make the 21 day adventure possible otherwise we'd be completely spent after 5-6 days max. I'm totally cool with that style of trekking obviously, but it's nice to experience the 5-star version as well.

I slept horribly the first night. Many issues a play. First of all, I had eaten and drank way too much so I was constantly up to pee in the freezing cold night, plus bloated and farting like crazy because I really didn't want to use the toilet across the creek in the middle of the night. Second, I'm getting used to my mummy style sleeping bag which severely limits my leg positions, so they were getting very cramped. Third, I was sleeping on a slight slant and needed to adjust all the time. Fourth, it was a very dewy creek and misty night and somehow some water was seeping into my tent and that made things uncomfortable. Fifth, there was some damn dog barking all night.

Night 2 I eliminated most of these issues (still needed to pee and fart) and got used to my sleeping bag and had a much better sleep. Tonight is night 3 and I'm optimistic it will be good.

I've got up vey early each moving with the sunrise and put in about 45-60 minutes of yoga. I think the breathing exercises are really helping me perform in this environment. Today I skipped the yoga in lieu of a solo hike to watch the sunrise over the valley. When we did our 5500meter peak later on, I came back with a pretty rough headache, so I did about an hour of yoga (breathing for 30 minutes, relaxing for 20, then headstand for 10) and it practically eradicated my headache without any pills. I was super happy this worked.

Every day at camp we've been setting up a cricket pitch with the staff and it's super fun. I'm a very accurate bowler but can't get the ball passed anyone. Batting, I usually swing for the fences and get out by tipping it to the wicket keeper. Its kind of ridiculous because the field is set up in the middle of camp so half the time the ball is going into a river or nearly taking someones head off as they do their laundry or cook.

I've been reading a lot during our spare time and before bed. I've gotten halfway through gandhis autobiography. It's a very interesting book, and it's perfect that I've spent time in Bombay, South Africa, and studied Hinduism at the ashram because the book is far more understandable to me due to having all those experiences. I'm looking forward to finishing it and starting shanturam.

Conversation around camp has been fun. As usual, I'm talking too much. But everyone else has good things to discuss and I don't think they mind me just yet. We'll see in a couple days.

I earlier mentioned being bloated and farting all night. Let me say that the craps I've taken the following mornings have been spectacular. Our crapper tent is basically a hole in the ground that we dig, surrounded by a tall skinny square tent. I swear I have nearly filled the entire hole up each time. It's really tough to hold the squat for such an extended period of time. My legs are falling asleep, so wiping and standing up are incredibly difficult.

Showering also is quite primitive and involves freezing yourself to death in the glacial streams. But hey why not. Laundry same, but it's not bad because we've got a really bright and hot sun during the days so far. Hoping this weather holds (but honestly the heat and lack of any form of shade outside of our tents is tough as well). When a cloud comes in front of the sun, the temperature immediately drops like 20 degrees. It's nuts. Sunscreen is essential, though I've picked up some minor burning on the back of my legs. I should be quite tan by the time it's over.

Tomorrow and the next day are major moving days, and we'll be camping at 5000 meters, which should be fun. I doubt I'll be able to upload this blog anytime soon but just wanted to journal the experience while it's fresh.

Recapping a great trek

I kept a blog throughout the 21 days that I was without Internet in the Ladakhi mountains. I will slowly post those updates day by day.

Locked and Loaded

All packed and ready to roll. There's gonna be a lotta cricket goin down. See you in 3 weeks!

Rock and roll!

Just finished shaving my entire body. As most of you know, this indicates that I'm about to head off on a journey where cleansing oneself should be an incredibly efficient process.

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.

Passing through Dr. Ass

I got up early on the 15th to head out of Srinagar. Had one last tea and breakfast with Rayiz' wife and daughter and then jumped in a rickshaw to the taxi station. I ended up throwing them some extra cash as the family had been so nice and helpful, even doing all my laundry for me cleaner than I would ever have been able to do myself.

The bus and shared-taxi station in Srinagar is kinda nutty. It definitely feels like a ripe place for a terrorism attack if that was gonna go down. It's nice to get out of there quickly, so I dd my best to get in a shared jeep for the "8 hour" trip to kargil. The drivers are quite aggressive, trying to get you in their taxis by offering such things as "only Englishman in the car" or "only 3 people in the back. They all say that they are the best driver in the best car. Eventually I jumped in the backseat of a chevy jeep with a British girl and local guy sharing the side-facing back section with me, while 2 Swedish brothers, an Israeli, an Indian an another Kashmiri sat up in the front 2 rows with the driver.

The drive was rather tense, as it seems all the drivers are racing each other. Our driver was funny but crazy. There were a few times when all the cars were stopped because traffic was only allowed to go in one direction, so most of the passengers and drivers would be wandering about on the side of the road. As soon as the signal was given that we could go, our driver would start screaming at all of us and run back to the car so we could get the wholeshot and be the first vehicle to head forth. Of course this advantage was always short lived due to poor road conditions, construction, and traffic.

When we stopped for lunch, he was adamant that we only had 10-15 minutes to eat. It was kind of sad because the drive was so beautiful, it could have been nice to get to enjoy it more. We passed over the Zoji La, which is a dramatic road up across a 4000meter pass and continued through spectacular valleys. At one point in a village the road was blocked for an hour as some locals decided it was a good time to build a ditch across the road and insert a water pipe. Another annoying thing was that the Kashmiri guy in the back with me kept blasting the Moslem prayers through his phone.

Let me pause for a second here to discuss the logistics of Moslem prayers. I get it, pray 5 times a day, it can be beautiful thing. But holy shit when you publicly blast the prayers through loudspeakers from every mosque and through cell phones, it's the most annoying sound in the world. I'm not talking about the language or the words or the meaning of the prayers at all. I'm sure that is all a very nice thing. I'm talking about the acoustics. When you play any high pitched sounds through a megaphone, it may as well be projecting a baby whining as loud as possible for the whole city to hear. And when they start every morning at 3:30AM, it makes the noises of China sound like heaven. Point is, use headphones, buy some subwoofers, do anything to change that horrendous sound that you force upon the world around you.

Anyways,

We made it to kargil in the afternoon, and I split off with the Swedes and Israeli. We had a decent dinner at "New Las Vegas restaurant" and then I passed out. I shared a room with the Israeli guy, he took the floor and I got the bed. I was getting a bit sick from all the dust we breathed in on the ride, plus had a headache from sitting sideways for 9 hours so I needed a good night sleep, and popped a sudafed which helped a bit. I was awoken by the fucking loudspeakers and tossed and turned for a bit before the sun rose. I eventually got up and did a nice hour of sunrise yoga on the rooftop which definitely made me feel better.

We caught another ride that morning in a better car with a Buddhist driver who was far less stressful. The road from Kargil to Leh was a lot nicer than the road from Srinagar to Kargil, but it still had some hairy parts as we had to wait for a few bulldozers to remove landslides. We had some great meals along the way and made it to Leh a little after 2 in the afternoon. I parted ways with my car buddies and searched for the hotel where I was to meet my trekking team...

Pahalgam overnight trip & return to Srinagar

It's been about a week since my last post. I only just regained Internet yesterday after 4 intense days of travel.

We last left off in Srinagar where I used an actual computer for the first time of the trip because my SIM card didn't work in this state. I later managed to somehow buy a local SIM card off the kid at the shop which kinda works for edge connections but not very fast. Either way, it was totally illegal for him to sell it to me like he did so I'm lucky to have it plus it has been useful.

The next day, Rayiz, Tessa (a girl who was also couchsurfing with rayiz) and I headed thru Pahalgam to a small town called Aru, where we set off onto a trek through the Lidder Valley. It was
Absolutely spectacular from start to finish. Lush green meadows flanked by pine forests along crystal clear rivers and small glaciers. Grazing animals everywhere, local herdsman and local hut people doing their daily routines. It was simply incredible.

The goal was to go as far as we could, then set up our sleeping bags and sleep under the stars. Rayiz was amazingly helpful throughout the day as not only did he arrange the transportation to aru but he chatted with locals to figure out where we should go on the trek. We totally had a million options to pitch camp but the valley was just so stunning we kept going further and higher. As it got later, the skies became ominous and rain started coming down when we were in the middle of nowhere along a ridge. We quickly found some herdsmen who told Riyaz there were a bunch of families huts up ahead. We figured it was our best bet to see if any of these locals would host us for the night seeing we didn't have any shelter from the rain. Eventually a group of 4 locals caught up to us and told rayiz it was cool. After they led us on an absolutely grueling final ascent to their hut, we quickly realized we were in for a hell of an experience. This hut was a combination o 2 families. The 2 adult males looked exactly like Osama bin Laden. The female mothers were a bit phased ar first when we showed up, but their combined 13 kids absolutely loved us. They were captivated by my camera and attempted their darndest to speak English.

We eventually settled in for the night in their hut, and they fed us tea, roti bread, and a rice & dal dish all cooked on a makeshift wood burning stove. The hut was crammed with like 17 people and a cow an a rooster. We eventually slept in the middle of the tent and as we were going to bed, the kids were hovering over us staring. It was pretty scary and I then mixed all my valuables into my sleeping bag with me. Nothing got stolen but there definitely was a little bit of a weird vibe despite their hospitality.

I didnt really get any sleep that night, but what was I to expect in that situation. I did wake up to a cow very nearby. After a nice tea and roti breakfast, we hiked up to a beautiful glacier lake beyond their hut and ten retreated back the way we came for the day. The kids were all very sad to see us go.

We made it back to Srinagar that evening after fighting rain much of the way.

That night I met up with Rebecca ad khuram (who I stayed with in Delhi) and they treated me to an amazing buffet dinner at this amazing hotel/historical government building up on a hill overlooking the lake. It was great to see them again and talk a bunch before I was to move on the next day.

To be continued...