Ningali

Freshly fired up from our morning serving of Nepalese chapatti and honey, we set off for the beautifully clear day with a 1000+ m of ascent in mind before dark. In fact, with the altitude rising ~1200 m in a span of only 3.6 km, there was only one order for how today would go: uphill, uphill, then finally some more uphill.

But where to incline was where our confusion lay at first; steep, mazey tracks unmarked on our maps criss-crossed the mountainside making it tricky to find a consistent route. Hey, uphill is uphill, we thought, all roads lead to Rome, and kept hauling ourselves up blindly. Luckily, we did find our intended path, and managed to slowly crawl up in elevation, taking occasional shady breaks to discuss nonsense like every member of Bournemouth's championship winning side back in the day.

Visibility was stunning and once we'd ascended beyond 2450m, we could peer back down into the deep valley out of which we'd emerged, while, in the other direction, a magnificent cast of towering snow-capped characters emerged on the skyline. It was our first true view of the Himalayan massif (and wow they're beautifully big, and beautifully terrifying.)

Cue some more upward slog and Thomas using the camera's mind boggling zoom abilities to inspect the wildlife's tonsils, and we find ourselves at 3,000 m in Goli Gumba. And good golly (Gumba) indeed, there's no shortage of vantage points nor monasteries up here. Meanwhile, our teahouse for the night is again (and unsurprisingly at this point) completely empty, although the language barrier did result in us accidentally ordering double the amount of food to what we intended (oops). We then marvel at the sunset before I write these rambles* and call it quits until tomorrow.

*I'm also now preparing to run out into a storm to wangle some signal to upload this footprint, so you better be damn grateful to see this.Read more