In the mountains

Today should have been an easy day, so we didn't start until 9 am. I had gone to sleep at 10 last night, and was awakened by TP at 8. I could have kept sleeping.

Right after leaving Donagyo, we came to a fork. The left branch went up, the right stayed level. I knew from my book that the usual route is the low one, but I saw Ian and Jamie going up, and I thought they were following TP. After about 30 minutes of climbing, I asked them about this, and they said TP was behind us, and they were just following the sign to Chame. Unfortunately, the right trail said Chame too. Rather than go back, we decided to press on, until this trail rejoins the main one. It was a hard climb, and we walked fast because we were worried, so it was very tiring. However, the scenery was spectacular. We were finally amoung the mountains. There were stunning snow peaks all around us. As cliche as it sounds, pictures do not do them justice.

Really, they don't

We got to a small town with a checkpoint, and didn't see Mike or TP in the register, so we went for some dal bhat. Two hours later they showed up. They had walked back to the junction, then TP walked up the high path looking for us. In the future we'll have to be sure we know where we'll be stopping for the night.

We ended up only walking about 4 hours today, but we climbed 300 m at a fast pace, so I was bushed by the time I got to Chame, a pretty big little town. By day it was hot in the sun, cold in the shade, but by night it was very cold, probably 40 F. We'll be looking at a cold 10 days or so. The hotels are uninsulated, being only wooden shells, and unheated, so bundle up. Going to the toilet at night is an especially complicated process, involving finding a torch (flashlight) and flip flops, then heading out into the freezing pitch blackness.