It's 6:45 AM and I am sitting in my tent. Despite Joel's explicit instructions to "pick a yellow or green tent", I successfully picked the red-brown one. More on this later. This was last night. Yesterday's bus trip was long but beautiful. We started about 8:30 AM and were all packed into a "ten seater" van. A.R. had "shotgun" part of the day and I had a right mid window seat. First it was up and over Rhotang Pass. When I was here years ago, there was a wall of snow everwhere; this time it was high and dry. Lots of switchbacks. From the pass there are impressive snow views but the pass itself is not an overwhelming mountain environment. Down and down to a passport checkpoint and dhaba, where we had curds and Indian food. After this, we headed downstream on the Chandra (moon) and then combined Chandra-Bhaga river. This is the same route I travelled in 1985. The road is greatly improved. After the usual road blocks, etc. we arrived in Udiapur, which I hardly recognized, it has grown so much. We then turned up the Miyar Nala. In 1985, I hiked from the river. Unfortunately, at least for me, we drove up perhaps 20 miles up the Miyar, and bypassed the villages of my fond memories. There is electricity all the way up and very definite deforestation. We arrived at our campsite quite close to the onset of darkness. Our tents and 29 Nepali porters (and food, etc.) had arrived earlier in the day, leaving Manali with L.C. in a bus at about 3 AM. It was raining lightly and our gear got a little wet. After a sprint for the tents and my ill choice, we spent a night in the steady rain. Wet gear in the tent meant damp sleeping bags.
We passed around the oxygen saturation meter in the dining tent. My O2 sat was 93%: not as good as Joel at 95% or L at 97%. My pulse was a little high at 80-90. To summarize this game from throughout the trek, in general my O2 sats were among the lower, but my pulse quickly went low, and in terms of aerobic capacity, as measured by being if front vs. lagging, I generally did fine. I have a few comments here in my diary about the trekkers, but these random observations don't warrant dissemination. My goal for today is to keep things dry.
3 PM: It is raining again, and has been raining on and off all day. We passed through the village of Khanjar
and are camping at the basam of the Tarsalamu La at about 3810 meters. The pass is a high one (5450 meters). We will stay here for one day to acclimitize. The next stage looks quite flat too...only a few hundred meters elevation gain maximum. Hopefully we will acclimitize well. I am listening to Johnny Winter and various yelling outside...perhaps horses?I passed the pictures of the Miyar Nala from 1985 to two locals. Unfortunately, as we drove in about 22 km, we passed the key lower villages. This AM a lady came to camp to sell socks. I bought some as did M.F. The sock-seller recognized some people in the pictures and I have her a copy. She pointed to on woman and indicated she was dead (I got this in Hindi and expressed my regrets). Later in the day, a local came up to see us on the trail. Ditto, she recognized a few people. I asked L to ask her to let others look at the pictures.
It is really raining now and very windy. I have the single wall tent...the chump tent!. But it is fast to put up. It will be colder with no dead air space between walls. It did stay pretty dry last night. It is really raining. It rained most of last night and hardly any on the trail today.
Joel has given a run down of the days to come. He summarized the 3 trade routes across Ladakh: the Shingo La, a summer route with 8 passes, the winter Chadar route, and the Jumlam or Zumlam, the middle way that we will be taking. It is only open in September and October and goes to Kharnak and Nimaling.
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