Monday, December 18, 2006

09-10-2006 [Lamadug (~3017m) - Riyali Thach (~3400m) ]

Last night, I was able to sleep properly. This is surprising since I have never been able to sleep for the first night on a trek. We woke up around 6.30 am which is late by our standards. In the morning we went around to explore the campsite a little bit more. The surroundings were absolutely marvelous. While we had our breakfast, Prem told us that there were signs that Black Bears had foraged around the campsite in the night. I was secretly a little relieved that the bears didn’t bother to forage near our tent.
We started for our today’s destination Riyali Thach [3400m] at 9.15AM.




Today was disappointing day for me. I was breathing very hard and with each step I was feeling tired. I was not able to understand the reason. In the last trek, I was always energetic ready to walk any number of miles. All the while, I was praying to God to give us strength. I have to make myself stronger.
We ascended for around 2 hour on a steep climb and then descended down slowly. The trail was quite well defined and passed through thick rhododendron and pine forest. After a while we were above the tree line.
On the right side, there were excellent views of the Manali Pass.



Manali Pass is another pass towards the Bara Bhangal village but it is very difficult then the route, which we are following. Further the Manali Pass, one needs to negotiate the even trickier Taintu Pass. These routes close in the last week of September itself.
Towards the right of the pass, we got excellent views of the Deo Tibba, Indrasan , IndraKilla and the CB Range. We passed through Rani Sui, another Gaddi camp. From Rani Sui, it was a moderate descend to the meadow of Riyali. We reached our camp at 2.30pm. The weather was not very clear when we reached the camp and this got Prem and Rinku a little worried.


After reaching our camp while we had our lunch, the weather turned sour. Suddenly, the whole camp was surrounded in mist and fog. This got the worried Rinku and Prem worry even more.

We went into the kitchen tent at around 7 pm for dinner. Today Rinku prepared my favorite sabjii [Bhindi]. The food was awesome but I have a very stupid habit, when I am worried, I lose my appetite. I couldn’t eat much.

We had campfire after dinner and it was good. Around 8pm we went to our tent.
Sandeep has a mild headache. It might be because of the altitude.

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