Treking!

I'm starting to feel like a broken record that keeps calling everything "amazing." But treking was really, really great. I think we were all starting to feel a little cooped up by the time the trek started. Here we were, outdoorsy type people nestled in the Indus Valley with humungoid, gorgeous mountains calling out to us. Instead of running out and scampering about the mountains, instead we were driven from place to place to look at one Buddhist monestary after another. This was for our own good as we were freshly arrived from the low-lands rich in oxygen, but it was still making us a bit stir crazy I think.

I can't possibly write down everything interesting, amusing, gorgeous, phenomenal, other-positive-adjectives about the trek so I'll just do random snippets of some of the highlights.

* We were utterly unprepared for the trek. Rather, we were utterly unprepared for the weather of the trek. Coming from 105 degree weather I think the warmest article of clothing I had with me was a thin, button-up wool-blend sweater and a 3/4 length long-sleeved shirt. I had packed these with Leh in mind thinking that it would be at least 20 degrees warmer than it actually was. Not exactly adequate for treking at 14,000 feet in the snow with night time temps below freezing. Luckily Leh is rampant with knock-off North Face and such. I got a great "North Face" fleece jacket for about $12 and an "Adidas" windbreaker for about $7. Then I also got wool socks and such, all handmade by Ladakhi folk.

* Day two we crossed a snowy pass at 4,700 meters (something close to 15,000 ft). As we were hiking up that morning it was snowing and the horsies carrying all of our stuff almost didn't make it. The snow was about two or three feet deep and very mushy with ice underneath. The horsies got about half-way up and then started sinking and couldn't go on. What ended up happening was our guide, the pony-man, and the cook unloaded the horses, helped them make it up to the top of the pass and then took several trips running down to get the offloaded material and lug it up themselves. Mind you, this is all at insane elevation where it feels like there is almost no oxygen. Despite the 3-days "acclimating" down in Leh (at a measly 3,500 meters) I had a headache the whole trek and generally felt like my heart was going to explode even though we plodded up the mountains quite slowly.

* Mountain yoga. I had what was one of the nicest yoga practices ever. The last day of the trek dawned sunny and gorgeous. I spent 20-30 minutes doing some easy, unstructured yoga while basking in the morning light with the Himalaya mountains towering around me and a stream dancing by. Technically I'm not sure if the exact mountains we were in and around were the official Himalayans, but you get the idea.

* The day we left for the trek was the same day the villagers left the village with their herds of donkeys, sheep, bulls, cows, goats, etc. They go up to the mountains during the summer so the animals can graze on something other than their crops. As we made our way up the mountain we were moving in and among the villagers and their herds. The donkeys are my favorite. In general, the donkeys and horsies are MUCH smaller than the creatures we see in the west. Even the full grown larger horsies aren't much more than 4 1/2 feet tall and the donkeys don't get much more than 3 feet tall. My favoritest of all are the little baby donkeys (aka "donklings.") They are soooo cute and little!

* Full moon while treking. I'm not sure if it was a full full moon, but it looked just about as full as it could get on our last night up in the mountains. We were so exhausted from the hike up to the pass (even before the snowy, icy part) that we didn't even make it all the way to the normal camp that evening. Instead we stopped a bit early in a lovely spot right next to a snow-melt stream. Damen passed out pretty early but Sweet Pea and I valiently struggled to stay away until after the sun set. When I emerged from the tent to pee before going to sleep (with the notion that I'd waited until "dark" so I wouldn't have to walk all the way to the big rock to get out of sight) it was amazing. The moon was just rising over one of the mountains and was insanely bright. There were no clouds and maybe the thin atmosphere made it seem even brighter, but it was hard to look directly at the moon. It cast so much light that the mountains in front of me seemed bathed in a sort of ghostly sun-light and when I looked behind me I had a sharp shadow. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

* River crossing! It is best to get as much of your day's trek done by around 2pm. This is because that is the time of the day when the snow really starts to melt and the snow-melt streams swell, sometimes quite sinificantly. This is relevant because as you trek you tend to go up and down by the easier routes, which are also the routes the water takes. You end up crossing these little streams a number of times each day. Often they are easy and you can just jump across or step on a rock or branch that is in the water, but the later in the day it is, the fuller the streams are. Our last day we got started a bit late as we were all pretty wiped out from the day before and hadn't really grasped the importance of starting early. That day the streams were rather vigorous and were a bit more challenging to cross. At one point it really looked impossible. We ended up jumping from the shore to a rock sticking up out of the stream, stepping to a near-by rock from there and then with the help of the guide (who pulled us as we jumped) leapt to a rock close to shore. Vaidya managed this pretty well and Damen quite easily (he might not have even had help from the guide.) I also did okay, but I nearly took our guide out in the process. In the final jump I leapt and sort of made it but our balance was thrown akilter and the guide was nearly flung into the stream. We had been joking about what could possibly knock our guide down to our level - he was running ahead and then back, stopping to smoke, lugging supplies up the mountain, etc. while we could barely plod up the mountain carrying a day-sack. I figured, enough with the piece meal stuff, just take him out altogether!

* Dystentary Mountain Climber Action Figure. Day one of the trek Delhi Belly caught up with Damen. It wasn't as extreme as my bout of it, but still I wasn't trekking at 11,000 - 15,000 ft elevation for three days when I was sick. We decided that we'll create a new action figure. We have just enough time to market it before Christmas. I'll let your imagination fill in the details as to what the figure does.

* Chung. Chung is the local alcohol. It is sort of beer-like and made of barley. It is a bad idea to drink alcohol when you first reach a high altitude, but when we finished the trek the guide had arranged for the driver to bring some Chung with him for us. We finally plodded up to the car around 3:30 in the afternoon and there was a bottle of moonshine-Chung waiting for us - being kept cool in the stream. I know Damen was still rather ill and I wasn't feeling so hot myself and home-brew moonshine was about the last thing I should have been trying. But how could we be so rude as to refuse??? Instead, we each took a big swig from the bottle (that had barley seed thingies floating around in it) and nearly vomitted. It wasn't really that bad, it just hits the stomach in a rather hard way. The idea was that we were supposed to drink the rest after dinner, but we never actually did that.

* Julley! Pronounced somewhat like the name "Julie" in French, Julley is a great, jolly phrase. It is Ladakhi for "hello" and "good bye" and "yeah" and about 5 other phrases. It takes you pretty far. It is also a very perky, friendly phrase. I plan to incorporate it into my day-to-day useage even when I get back home.

Julley!! That's about it for now.