The trek continues...

Well rested and with countless chess games  (Nouri still yet to win a game) behind us from our rest day in Manang we set out for our side foray to Tilicho Lake (the highest lake in the world!). Although only planning to head to Khangasar after a awesome meal that we hung out with the cook as she made out meal over the wood fire we pushed on to the town of Shree Karka (which turned out to be a building rather than a town per say). The next day we headed for the Tilcho base camp. We lucked out with awesome weather to complement a bizzare but beautiful landscape ( Think Lord of The Rings Mordor.... on Mars...  in the small town Anakien was raised in from Star Wars). Several sketchy scree slopes later we arrived at base camp famished. Unfortunately we continued to be famished after lunch as well .... turns out vegetables are hard to come by at 4100m. Which translates into curry= wisps of cabbage in luke warm fluid. As we are all self admitted food lovers, tears nearly ensued until we were able to fill our selves with replacement dumplings to ease the panic hungry.  Taking advantage of the bluebird skies we spent the afternoon basking like turtles in the sun, reading and taking in some great peak views of Khangasar Khan. We were even treated to a yak caravan coming down the valley (complete with baby yaks!).  After a long, cold night at the base camp lodge (it was almost like...gasp... real camping) we set off early for the lake.Within the first hour we were treated to a great photoshoot with some blue sheep frolicking about! Turns out 1000m elevation gain hurts a little more at above 4000m. With Nouri and Vanessa coming down with some form of illness we set a relaxing pace- which made more time to savour the awesome views.  The alitude didn't treat Vanessa to kindly, in good news this resulted in some great sibling photos of me checking to make sure she was still having an okay time breathing. Mountains, rivers, sisterly love--these photos would make the selection comittee of Hallmark cards heart melt. Finally we made it up the lake for some awesome views and our highest elevation thusfar on the trip (5010m). With one of the longest day of the trip we made it all the way back to Shree Karaka.

Over the next several days we made our way over to Thoroung Phedi, the jumping off point to tackle to pass! Within this span Vanessa and Nouri got increasingly sick, so we scheduled another rest day in Yak Kharka (read more chess). We also met a man from Georgia who had spent significant amounts of time in jail and been on jeopordy. He was an excellent conversationalist.

Read the next post for more details on the last leg of the trek.

Cheers!