Oxygen is Highly Underrated

Oxygen is highly underrated. We have been descending now for 6 days and with every step down we savour the thicker and richer air. I have never been so grateful to take a long deep breath in my life. We laughed leaving Namche as a store was offering wifi and oxygen for sale - in that order. It struck me as sad commentary on our “connected world” that a wifi connection ranked ahead of air. Personally - give me the air.

Tonight we are back in Nunthala. We have been enjoying the lower altitude and the jungle environment, quite a contrast to the thin Gokyo Valley air. Once again we find ourselves admiring banana trees and listening to a symphony of crickets. Humidity is high and the long, cold nights of Gokyo seem like a distant memory.

It has been an eventful few days since crossing the Renjo La Pas. The descent to Lungdhen was a whopping 3500 feet through the Thame Valley. This unique valley is harsh, barren, unforgiving and beautiful all at the same time. It reminded me a bit of the Scottish highlands. Large rock walls formed Yak corrals and the mist and fog hung on the hillside. I half expected to hear the sound of the pipes. Fortunately, we had the trail to ourselves and it felt incredibly special to be walking through this unique valley.

We have enjoyed stream crossings, some quite icy and slippery in the early morning hours, suspension bridges, mule trains, countless ups and downs and endless cups of tea. Our little tribe has become trail hardened and although steep downs still hurt our knees and steep ups still leave us breathless we are moving well and enjoying each others company.

I continue to find myself puzzled and intrigued by the mix of old traditions and new technologies. Porters carrying live pigs in baskets made of bamboo listen to music pumping out of blue tooth speakers. At one of the tea houses located near the road construction, I watched a driver unload three goats from the back of a brand new four wheel drive jeep. I assumed the tea house owner had purchased a few more goats for his farm. To my great surprise I popped round to the back of the facility to look for the loo only to discover, the tea house was also a slaughter house and my new found goat friends were not heading out to play in the field. In fact, freshly slaughtered meat was being hung directly across from the toilet. I tried not to look the goats in the eye as we bid farewell.

Over the next few days, as our trek comes to an end we will begin retracing our steps back to Khamding, so downs will be ups and ups will be downs, and should we find an undiscovered stretch of flat terrain we plan to celebrate!

Giggle of the day:

As we approached Paiya, we could see the road construction and landslide area across the valley. Suddenly a loud siren rang out signalling a blast. Several minutes went by, to the point we mistakenly thought that the alarm might have been a false warning, when suddenly there was a huge boom and the earth shook. We then heard rocks falling down the cliff side to the valley below. We were all quite shaken considering we were going to have to trek through this section the following day. It was then that Tendi piped up and said, “don’t worry, it’s just rocks falling!”