Please read the previous post if you haven’t.  This is a continuation of that post:

Anyway, at the end of the fourth day, we got to camp and as we were setting up, the Army told us we couldn’t camp there and we had to hike another click and about 300m up.  I was done.  I used all my willpower to get to the first camp.  I couldn’t handle the second camp.  On my way up that last kilometer I stopped and puked up all the water I’d drank, then once I made it to the tent, I lay in there and shivered for about an hour, even though I wasn’t cold.  On the plus side, I think I lost fifteen pounds or so from the whole hike!  Walk at 4000 meters until you puke, kids.  That’s my weight loss strategy.

The fifth day, we hung out at camp and recovered.  It ended up raining most of the day anyway, so it was good we stayed put.  We’d met up with a group of three French Trekkers from Mirabel in the French Alps and were moving along with them. Rochelle, Lucianne and Benjamin were their names.  They were very friendly, possibly because they chain smoked pot every time we stopped.  We had some good conversations despite a bit of a communication barrier.

I also visited a gypsy hut that day where they gave me salted tea.  It wasn’t as bad as I expected.  They apparently walk hundreds of kilometers every year and make their money by harvesting roots and plants that only grow in these mountains and are used for Aryuvedic medicine.  The gypsy man, as well as Ismael, swear that they have seen a Yeti in the mountains.  A yeti is also apparently different from an abominable snowman.  Yetis are humanoid, wide, have thick fur, short arms and a face like a monkey.  I told them that it wasn’t a yeti, I was just bathing.  In all seriousness, they swear they’ve seen them.  It was unfortunate, and also convenient, that everyone who says they’ve seen one didn’t speak English.  Who knows?  Nabi swears he’s seen with his own eyes tigers, lions (which he calls loins and which makes me laugh) and snow leopards.  He tells a story of snow leopards attacking one of his ponies that sounds pretty believable, despite the ridiculously small number of them that are supposed to still exist in the wild.  One thing that makes me believe these sightings only a little is that we are fifty kms from the Line of Control that separates India and Pakistan and I highly doubt National Geographic spends much time in these hills cataloguing wildlife.

The sixth day we had to move because we only had supplies for three days left, so we made for the next pass.  Because this pass was a little easier and I felt acclimatized, God saw fit to make it more difficult with rain.  It rained a large part of the hike and that made going up and down incredibly slippery in the mud.  Coming over the pass, the clouds parted and I was treated to the most beautiful view I’ve ever seen.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture because my camera was on the pony, so I have to give it to you in words.  I looked down from high above on two lakes, nestled between sharp rocky peaks, coated in glaciers.  As the sun drifted through the clouds, the water was illuminated in patches, so that the lakes shone in three colors, a dark blue, a sharper sky blue and a light turquoise.  Parts of the lakes even seemed transparent so I could see down to the bottom.  On the left, the rain was still falling so just beyond the lakes, the clouds were dark and I could see the angled lines of the rain falling along a river that flowed off into a valley separating even more ancient peaks.  It was really the most beautiful landscape I’d ever seen and the strange weather made a five minute sight that will probably never be the same again.

The night was freezing cold and rainy and we woke up the next morning to see that it had been snowing about 100m above us and all the peaks were covered in snow.  We were not prepared for snow, so the next pass was quite an adventure.  I bundled up in a t-shirt, a fleece and a poncho and we ascended to 4800 meters again.  About halfway up the pass we met the snow on the ground and the rain became hail and snow periodically.  The wind blew in my face, feeling like it wanted to push me back off the mountain.  The footing was impossible so my boots were caked in what felt like five pounds of mud and I had to watch every step.  It was really quite uncomfortable.  Once we made the pass, the down was almost as tricky, especially a portion beyond the tree line where the wetness had accumulated and I felt like I would slip down the steep hill at every step.  Some of the “paths” in these mountains really weren’t.  They were a single boot wide of flat ground dug into the steep mountainsides by others walking.  I felt like if I made a misstep, I would slide right down to the bottom with no way to stop myself.  And the more tired I became, the harder it became to place every foot, especially in the mud.  Nabi swears he knows of no one ever dying on these mountains, but I find it hard to believe that no one has ever misplaced a foot on a steep slope.

The last camp completely made up for any of the struggles that preceded it.  If Kashmir is paradise on earth, this bright green meadow, cut by a snaking stream and surrounded in forest with views of sharp Himalayan peaks in every direction, must be the garden.  Words won’t do it justice but I hope some of the pictures I took will give you an idea.  I sat out on a blanket with the French as our gear dried around us and we laughed and watched a rooster fight off about twenty crows from a patch of feed.  The French were inspired by the rooster’s success since they said they’d always been embarrassed that the symbol of France was a chicken.  They had new respect for the rooster.

The last day was a short downhill through the forest.  It was raining hard the whole time so the footing was the most treacherous we’d seen, but the lower altitude made the walk much easier.  We reached the road and after some time, our jeep showed up to take me back to the houseboat.  I was a little sad to leave the beauty of the mountains, but I was excited to get a hot shower and dry clothes.  The comforts of the houseboat, which seemed meager compared to home seemed glorious coming off the mountain.  I think I can handle budget Indian accommodations now.  In fact, there are two things  in these mountains that I doubt will be matched in the remainder of my trip: the discomfort of the rain, cold and camp and the beauty of the landscapes.