crossing Thorung La going to Muktinath

see some nice places in the world ...

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Day starts at 4 AM. I sort my last stuff and eat a powerbar quickly, brush my teeth and dress up for walking in the rain. At app. 5 we start the steep

ascent to the high camp. A Nepali group of 25 people or so, mostly women, started a bit before us and we pass them on the way.
So 400m steep climb, we need app. one hour and finally reach the high camp and have a cup of tea. At least the daylight is up now, as we started in the dark with headlights. After half an hour of rest and meeting some of the people we met in the last couple of days, we went on.
Another 600 m ascent to the pass. It gets harder and harder as we ascent and reach 5000m. On the way we met the Nepali group a couple of times and most of the women ,but also one men, were dressed more like they want to go to the bus. It started lightly snowing also and they were dressed like it was summer with very thin clothes, all having an umbrella and some things to carry and shoes like what we call houseshoes or some even sandals without socks. They are on the way to a festival to Muktinath. Some of them were hardly hit by AMS ( Acute Mountain Sickness) with heavy headache and vomiting. I gave them some Diamox which dampens the symptoms a bit and let Jhamka tell them they better descent as they take the risk to die. Of course they did not.

Every time they passed us again because we had a rest another one was having problems. The last 150m height was so hard for me, I knew it from my Kailash Kora, but hell, that was pain again to get up there. And it was cold, as mentioned the rain changing to light snow. When we finally reached the pass after I think 4 hours of course all pain was forgotten. I made it to the highest pass of Nepal at 5416m. So I attached my prayerflags I brought and built the small stone tower and then I started down, with the relatively good feeling no to have to climb any more today.
But, it's 1600m down to Muktinath and all the way between High Camp and Muktinath there is no teastall. So after one hour going down my legs and knees started hurting, but what to do. And rain all the time. So, after 3 hours walking down we finally found a small teastall 1 hour before reaching Muktinath and I was so happy to get a rest from walking and rain. After some tea and a hot soup we went on. Jhamka, my guide had told Kiran, the porter, to hurry down because there were relatively many people on the way today, to book rooms. When we finally reached Muktinath we found him, but he could not find proper rooms ( there was that festival) with attached bath, which I payed for and demanded strongly after this day.
So Jhamka had a look at the simple rooms Kiran booked to have at least a room, but Jhamka knew I would not accept and so he tried (again walking) to find something until I then suggested to get a car and go to Jomsom directly. Again, we needed to walk on, as the place to hire a Jeep was of course at the end of Muktinath. They have kind of a "bus service" there with these Jeeps and push in 12 people in one car, luggage on the roof. So we asked for a price for a private car and they told us a wopping 7000 Rupees (app. 70 Euros) which is a real fortune for Nepal.

We aggreed then on 5000 Rupees and it turned out to be the tourist prices, the locals pay much less, which is ok.
We finally started and after a while short before Jomsom we had to change the car as the street was washed away and we needed to cross the knee deep water by feet to get to the next car. The car took us to Jomsom and of course the Airport, where we wanted to have a room, as I told Jhamka to try to get a flight a day early because of the rainy weather, was at the other end of Jomsom, another 3km or so.
We then finally got a really good Lodge and were also able to chnage the flights to go next morning when the weather is ok, as also here the flight sare only going when the sight is good and the wind is calm.