The last week has been quite possibly the most eventful and rewarding week of my life. While in Manali I met up with Mike and Jamie, and we enquired about booking a trek through the Himalayas. We spoke to a local bloke called Yogu, who told us of three good local treks we could do. Two sounded OK, but when he spoke of the third one, his eyes lit up and a wry grin spread across his face. "This one, this one exciting sir." We were sold. It was six-days and would take us to Baralacha La, at 4950m, which rather conveniently was half-way to Leh, where we all wanted to head next. Our rs2000 (£25) per day would include a guide, a chef, a horse-boy, four-horses to carry everything (including tents for us to stay in) and all the food and drink we would need. Bargain.
The journey to Leh from Manali by road is no mean-feat; it is the second-highest road in the road, and arguably the scariest. Indian drivers are notorious and the road is likewise. Although it is said to be the most beautiful road in the world, we were happy to trim off 12 hours of the 24-hour trip from Manali. Yogu said we could leave our main bags at the guest house and a jeep would pick us up, with our bags, from Baralacha La six-days later, as long as we could get there by 10am - which, he said, was perfectly doable.
How easy it may have seemed. How wrong we were.
The first day of the trek was easy; we drove to 3000m and camped in a field to acclimatise ourselves.*at this point my travel blog came to a dramatic halt as I had an 'epileptic' fit in the internet cafe I was in. I am now sat back in Delhi, will continue where I left off and get to this point in a moment...
Acclimatising was not easy. As soon as we hit 3000m, I had terrible headaches, which felt like my head was in a vice. I kept taking paracetamols and ignored the signs my body gave me, rather stupidly and at my extreme cost...
The second day of the trek was the hardest for me. I had several blisters and my lips became very sore. It became apparent we were getting a rather good service for our money; our chef was excellent and we had so much food we could barely move after meals.
On the third day, whilst walking across a baren rocky part of the Himalayas, Jamie suddenly shouted 'WATCH OUT!' as large jagged rock hurtled down the mountain and missed me by a matter of inches. Mike said it was less than 6 inches from hitting my leg, which it would have taken clean off. It wouldn't be our last scrape with death.
sorry this post is long, I have been too scared to use the net since my 'fit' last week, I'll try and get up-to-date over the next few days...
pics from the trek are at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=97341&id=515404564&l=66294a577a
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