Yak Butter Tea and Life on the Solar Clock

We got back yesterday from a 3-day trek from the village of Zingchen to the village of Chiling, over Ganda La, a pass that is 4,900 meters high (that'd be 16,076 feet, thank you Internet). Definitely the highest I've ever been without overhead bins or plastic tray tables.

On Friday, we'd gone to a small, new organization in town that is run by women, with women guides, and hired one to set out the next day. We chose a trek from homestay to homestay, rather than camping. Homestays offer a source of income to local people and, it turns out, are administered by the wildlife department; snow leopards and wolves sometimes eat people's sheep and so villagers would like to kill them, but homestays offset that loss and get the villagers to let the already very rare predators survive.

Early Saturday morning, we got a ride in a truck to the trailhead, the entrance of the Hemis National Park.We bounced over an apparently untravelled, skid-prone road made of oversized gravel, many meters (or feet) above the Indus river.

Turns out the Indus river divides the Indian and Eurasian continental plates (you know, the ones crashing together to make the Himalayas). I just didn't want to fall between them. I have a healthy respect for geology. And gravity.


Looking down (way down) at the Indus

Fortunately, we made it to the trail. I didn't even drop the camera out the window while taking pictures between truck lurches.


A sure sign you're hiking in the Himalayas


With our diminutive and very capable guide, Kuntzen


Definitely the best part of this is the drawings of animals. If you click on it you can see better -- but at this size I think you can see the pictures of the majestic snowcocks. We didn't see any of those but we did see so many chukkars that Kuntzen and I agreed that instead of calling this place "The Snow Leopard Kingdom" perhaps it should be called "The Chukkar Republic"


Tea tents, also known as parachute tents, mostly run by women. They provide a source of rare and welcome income for local women -- and a very welcome source of milk tea for trekkers


"Tea tea tea!" as Kuntzen said, and biscuits


One of a couple of sightings of blue sheep -- neither are they blue, nor do they look like sheep. Discuss.


A particularly decorative stone on one of many mani walls (walls with carved stones covering the top -- most of the stones say "om mani padme hum")


Our first homestay, the one-house village of Yurutse


It's barley-cutting season; people stack the barley in neat squares to dry


Uphill from the homestay -- the landscape is positively littered with shrines


Our lovely little room


The rather less lovely guardian?, decoration? at our door
(its eyes are pieces of blue plastic bags -- isn't that nice?)


Fortunately there's more to a sheep than its head


The beautiful Ladakhi stove, dotted, even, with turquoise. Wood or yak dung burns behind the door on the right, and a bellows behind it (made again from a sheep) helps fan the flames.
The cat sleeps behind the door on the left. Talk about nine lives.


Making momos! This was also where we got to try yak butter tea


The next day, slowly trudging our way up to the pass, beneath the imposing Stok range


They grow the marmots even fatter here -- they waddle along the ground like little bears


Made it to over 16,000 feet! Time for peanuts below the prayer flags

Coming down from the pass, we saw a lot of raptors -- still need to grab a bird book to sort them out. I'm hoping this one was a golden eagle -- it was enormous -- but I don't really know.


Massive mystery raptor


Night two's homestay, in the teeming three-family village of Shingo


Enjoying the late-summer light after rinsing our feet of enormous amounts of dust


Another cozy room -- no sheep-head to lull us to sleep this time, though


Third day, on the way out along the Markha river -- the jagged Zanskar mountain range ahead of us

At the end, after a relaxing day of meandering down streams and stopping in at tea tents, we had to cross the Zanskar river. To do this, it turned out we needed what was -- I don't know how else to put it -- the craziest transportation mode I've ever used. The "trolley" was a small wooden box, big enough for one or two people, attached by some loops of wire to wheels over a cable.First you free-fall to the middle, then you get pulled across, using some extremely shaggy blue ropes.


The surprise ending to our trek


Since nothing broke, it was REALLY fun

[Posted by Elizabeth, not Marty -- ignore what Blogspot says...]