Ascent of the White Mountain

Short Version:
We walk up a big hill, and back down again. Yak v dog: Yak wins! Yak v Uzir: Uzir wins!

Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 16 = 8:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 80:45
Beer Time = 47:45

Long Version:
Larjung Morning:
In direct contrast to yesterday's leisurely start, today we're up at 0545 after a fitful night's sleep.
Barbie Girl by 90s Danish one-hit-wonder pop group Aqua plays softly on the radio as we eat breakfast and sterilise water.
No other tourists are awake; it's just us and a whole bunch of Nepali folks, who are scurrying about doing the stuff that people in service industries do when the people they're paid to service are not around. It's an interesting glimpse into a world that overlays ours.
We're out of the lodge and heading downvalley by 0630. Stars, mountains, cold.


********


The mountain called Dhaulagiri had been largely behind clouds as we travelled down the valley the day before. Every so often the cloud would clear, and we'd get a glimpse of its looming immensity. It's pretty big: 7th-highest in the world at 8,167m. We decided to walk up it.

First, though, we had to walk along the road, where we acquired a dog. Then we had to walk up the wrong trail a little bit, and crash through bushes and down a small cliff to get back to the road near the start of the right trail. Then we walked up, through forest and across open, grassy slopes, to a field of poo with a wonderful view. A small cottage lurked at the top end of the field. We broke in, a little bit, and looked at the stuff inside. Based on possessions, the inhabitants were not particularly wealthy. Having said that, they might have had lots of love in their lives, you never know. And they really did have a spectacular view; poo, stretching away to the edge of the high plateau. And then an enormous, gorgeous mountain that filled the rest of the eyespace; the Nilgiri Himal, which is a group of three high peaks agglomerated together to form one whopping great big hunk of impressiveness.

Then we walked up a near-vertical face for a while. Notes say:
Up.
More up.
Snow patches. Some thrown.
Up. Steep. Tired legs. Slippery bits.
Reach snowline after many yaks.

Neither the "Up"/"Steep" comments nor the "many yaks" one really convey the full extent of their subjects; it really was blimmin steep, and if we hadn't shaken sticks at the yaks I'd be saying that there were more yaks than you could shake a stick at*. As it was, though, stick-shaking was necessary in order to proceed up past the seasonal yakherd houses, currently inhabited not by yakherds but by yaks.

Yaks!
Big yaks, small yaks,
Yaks of white, yaks of black.
Yaks on knolls, yaks in dells,
Yaks with horns, yaks with bells.
Yaks up high, yaks down low,
In the houses, in the snow.

Serious, extreme yakkage, and we blundered right into the middle of it. It was like we'd rounded a corner and found ourselves in the middle of a loosely-agglomerated convocation of grumpy behemoths. Scratch that; it wasn't LIKE that, it WAS that. And, just as you'd expect from any group of big, tetchy critters, one of them moved to block our path, and made grumbly noises.
Fortunately, our new dog was on the case, growling throatily at the big lummox** and baring an impressive array of toothy weaponry.
Unfortunately, the yak agitator was singularly unimpressed.
Fortunately, Uzir was on the case, yelling mightily and brandishing a big stick. That sent the lead yak's impressedness rating rocketing from none to some, and when Uzir leaped at the yak, swinging his stick in a serious "I'm attempting to hit you" manner, the yak bailed.
Hail Uzir, banisher of yakky aggressors!

Path clear, we were free to keep going. Up.

Grass/Rock/Dirt with patches of snow gave way to snow with patches of grass/rock/dirt, and then the bald spots ceased and we were slogging through shin-deep snow up one last major pitch to a ridgeline where we fixed the fallen sign:

Dhaulagiri Icefall Viewpoint: 3900m

Less than halfway to the summit, we'd reached the bottom of the huge icefall that spills down from the shoulder of the mountain that suddenly filled half the sky ahead of us. Victory is ours! We danced around a little bit in the snow, then parked ourselves in one of the roofless houses scattered around the flat spot where ridge meet massif to eat boiled eggs and chapatis.

Best lunch ever!

The post-lunch snowfight was pretty awesome also, especially when handfuls of snow were dumped down the back of Janine's pants. How we all*** laughed: Ha ha ha!

Then we walked back down. Took a lot less time than the walk up. Featured snow-throwing until the snow disappeared. Then featured yak-dung-throwing, which was all fun and games until someone (Nene) hit someone else (Puppet) in the face with a robust chunk, engendering a PuppetSulk that lasted down the steepest pitches, past the grovelly cottage and its returned inhabitants, past the found sunglasses that made Ganga look like an elderly Japanese woman, and through to the first of the small lakes nestled amongst fields of bhang and thistles and ferns.

And then we got a bit lost, and Uzir climbed down a cliff that the rest of us went around, and we found a holy lake where praying for rain happens, and where Nene really should have stopped the dog chasing the endangered nesting birds.

And then we hit the road, and the dog went home, and we found Uzir, and we reached Larjung and the lodge and the beer and the popcorn as the last of the sun disappeared behind Dhaulagiri, which we'd just climbed, but not all the way to the top like Eva Martinez did in 2007, making her the first Mexican woman to reach the summit.

Beer Stats:
Beer Drunk = 2
Beer Time = 31:45
Time to Next Beer = 0:00







* = No-one really knows whence came this expression, but the term slush fund can be traced back to the olden days, like the early 1800s, when fried salt pork was a staple food aboard ships. At the end of a voyage, the grease at the bottom of the pork barrel, called "slush," was sold to candle and soap makers. The money usually helped provide little extras that the crew couldn't otherwise afford, hence the term "slush fund." After the U.S. Civil War, the term was applied to a contingency fund set aside by Congress, outside of the regular operating budget, that was often used for bribes and other corrupt purposes.

** = Not actually a type of ox, and not a Dr Seuss critter; a lummox is a clumsy person, possibly derived from a lommock, which is a large chunk of food from the 1800s

*** = May not have included Nene