Ḍeku Kholā

A funny one today. The hubbub of activity outside our door at the busy guesthouse made us hesitant to leave our beds, and only once our not so friendly Russian neighbours had cleared off, we emerged from our room for some breakfast. Eventually we set off for the day as late as 09:30, making the laborious ascent up to the top of the pass, 3071 m at Taksindu La. Here, after a pause for some sweeping views, we were shepherded for a while by a friendly black dog, who we dubbed 'Shishapangma' in homage to the 8027 m Tibetan mountain. Our friendly accomplice sadly didn't follow us for long though, and the 1500 m+ of elevation loss that followed became a feat of lengthy concentration and accurate foot placement. And yet somehow, as we'd descended onto perhaps the easiest terrain of the entire day: a dusty, descending road, I clearly lost my concentration and rolled my ankle, taking a tumble and scuffing my left knee. Patching up the blood in Nunthala and filling up on some bland (to Thomas's delight) spaghetti and apple pie in a fine teahouse, we soon got back to our descent. And boy did we descend, down to 1490 m, the lowest altitude we will experience for the remainder of the trek. With it now being Thomas' turn to question the motions of his stomach and pounding of his head, we then ascended back up again to Jubing, where we are once again the only guests. Over dinner, we discussed our dream meal each to distract from the heavily heaped greens on our noodles and took it in good spirits to pass out for another day.Read more