Condiments of Destruction

Short Version:
We walk from the place of yaks, past some yaks, to High Camp, which is very nice indeed, thank you very much. Altitude.

Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 12 = 4:00
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 55:30
Beer Time = 39:30

Long Version:
Yak Kharka Morning:
We like condiments.
One of us likes salt*. The other likes pepper.
Unfortunately, there's no certain way to tell in advance whether it's salt or pepper in any given shaker in the high-mountain lodge dining halls.
Certainly once the lid comes off during shaking, sending a cascade of pepper onto one's breakfast, you know which one is which, but that's cold comfort when one's Lovely Wife is laughing uncontrollably at the look on your face as you contemplate the small mountain of grotty brown pepper that's now the only thing visible on the plate that was once adorned by a delicious-looking omelette**.
Luckily, the salt-shaker had the same issue, so the scores are balanced soon after when Lovely Wife's delicious fried-egg-on-chapati breakfast is indundated with salt.
Our cabin-neighbors, a British couple, tell tales of how their knees were broken.
There is no electricity. We watch a man break the ice which has formed on part of the hydro power station next-door. Power is restored.

********

In an unexpected twist, we spent the day walking uphill, with some across in the mix for variety. Yaks were relatively abundant, as were fancy T-marked pigeon-type birds. And trekkers.

Most of the other trekkers stopped for the night at Thorong Pedi, 2.5 hours uphill from Yak Kharka. That's a short day of walking, but hard work at altitude. The main reason for stopping, though, is the fact that many people experience difficulty sleeping at altitude, and the higher one goes the worse it gets. We paused for 2 minutes, then resumed our climb towards the upper reaches.

The hill upside of Thorong Pedi was steep. It took us an hour of hard work to climb to the top, to High Camp; our destination for this last, highest, pre-Pass-crossing night. Crossing the 5400m Thorong La Pass was, at the start of the trip, a remote and not-particularly-significant prospect, but as we'd drawn nearer, and as evening-time dining hall conversations had become dominated more and more by its imminence and difficulty, and after at least two other groups of trekkers - including a couple of Canadian women with whom we'd become friends - turned back rather than incur the wrath of altitude effects beyond what had been struck above 4000m... crossing the Pass became a bit of a big deal. The climb to High Camp, for example, would have been hard even at sea level, but at altitude was really something else; breathing is hard work, and you're breathing hard just walking slowly along the flat***.

High Camp was really nice, mostly. The rooms were on the small side, but on the positive side of the ledger, they were clean, and had windows and nice curtains, and the dining room - despite a floor that sloped noticeably downvalley - was spacious, and warm, and had amazing views down the valley towards Yak Kharka and of the mountains surrounding us on all sides**** - including the side we were to walk up in the morning. It wasn't all plain sailing, though; we were warned to take care in the toilets, as the water so copiously spilled (by tourists) and poured (by staff) on the floor of the toilets had become ice, and was slippery. This, of course, meant that one of us (clue: not a woman) concentrated so hard on not falling into the toilet that a vehement connection was made between head and ceiling support beam. Lucky the roof didn't fall in.

The omelette sandwich came with fries. Seven of them.

The post-lunch walk took us up a rocky knoll to the north of the lodge. Brightly-colored Buddhist prayer flags flapped in the wind as we played silly buggers for the camera and tried not to fall down cliffs while spellbound by the incredible views on every side. Annapurna III, Gangapurna, Khangsar, the Tilicho Range, several Chulus, Thorong Peak, and more. Many of the trekkers staying at Thorong Pedi made the climb up as an altitude acclimatisation exercise. We were pleased we weren't walking back down the hill; the knowledge that every step on the downward path was a step you were going to have to reverse - again - in the morning surely rankled.

The puddles outside were frozen at 3:30pm, which made us suspect we were in for a cold night. We were right. We ate delicious foods and played cards with Ganga and Uzir, and with a Belgian couple who had become engaged four days earlier, at Ice Lake. She sang Stevie Wonder songs under her breath but still lost.







* = Nun [pr: noon] in Nepali

** = Omelet, usually, on menus. Sometimes omlet. Once, omleet. Pie was once written as pai.

*** = Not that there's any flat in Nepal

**** = All of which were very unlike Tilicho Base Camp