Tashi Gaon to Kauma:
from 7000 to 12000 feet
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Today we needed to gain 5000 feet in height because there were no suitable campsites permitted between the two spots. I strode around in my boots at breakfast time, but the boots still rubbed against my heels, so I went back to the slippers again. I stuffed my rucksack full of all sorts of 'just in case' items today, including my boots and extra water. Mistake! |
Later on, seeing me in some discomfort, Pat offered to exchange his bag for mine. On realising how light his bag was, I resolved to empty every single non-essential item out of my bag in future.
What a day. We moved from covering ourselves with sunscreen in the morning and travelling through fairly flat terrain, to freezing temperatures, steep slopes and deep snow in the afternoon.
| The
sting in the tail was that the last 1000 feet or so consisted of deep snow.
My carpet slippers were not much good at kicking steps in snow! Soon the
socks and slippers were just a soaking mess. Dawa fashioned a second ski
pole for me by cutting a branch off a nearby tree, which worked extremely
well, while Tim came back and kicked steps for me for the last and steepest
bits.
I was feeling rather tired in the middle section of the day, but the challenges of the deep snow woke me up and I enjoyed the last third of the day. My twisted knee began to give some trouble, despite wearing a support bandage. |
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| We arrived
at our destination, the small hut at Kauma, about an hour ahead of
the porters. There was no room inside the hut, so we tried to dry off our
feet on the bench outside. I was very glad to make peace with my boots.
Eric followed us fairly closely, but the last of his porters did not appear for several hours. As Eric said, his porters were not professional porters like ours, but simply lowland people recruited from around Tumlingtar, with some of them never having seen snow before. Eric said he was weakening when he got to the snow line and was about to give up for the day. Then he saw the tracks of 'someone in carpet slippers', so he just had to keep going after that. |
Eric the Anerican arrives at Kauma |
| There
was very limited flat ground at Kauma. Our tents were pitched about fifty
feet up a steep hill, all except for the mess tent, which was right next
to the hut.
This meant that having come down to the mess tent for tea and biscuits at around 4 pm, I was less inclined than usual to trudge up through the deep snow to go back to my tent, knowing that dinner would be around 6 pm. The drawback was that it was clearly light at 4 pm when I first went down and unclearly dark (a totally black night) at 7 30 or 8 pm when we had finished our dinner - and I had no torch. |
Looking down at the hut at Kauma |
| As I left the mess tent I was pretty confident I could find my way in the dark. After all how far wrong could I get? When someone shone a powerful torch a few minutes later, I was about forty-five degrees out in direction, about 20 yards away from our tents. |  |
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Once we were in our tents there were violent thunderstorms and torrential rain, rather worse than last night. Because our tents were pitched on snow, it was a very cold night. My tent-mate Pat was extremely uncomfortable. He had been complaining how restrictive his sleeping bag was. Tonight he was too cold to sleep; he was inclined to leave the trek entirely. |
When Dawa looked at the sleeping bag, he simply sniffed and exclaimed: "OK for a lodge trek, but utterly unsuitable for camping at altitude." Later Pat was given a down sleeping bag and an additional down jacket. Would he stay and try it for a night? When he went to bed he was like Michelin Man. Of course he stayed.
Next The Shipton La Back Slippers Before The Snows
