Long walk to Langtang Shisha and back

The next morning Joanne's feet were still not any better and I had noticed that we had made a mistake in thinking that our other planned “side walk” from Kyanjin Gompa went to a glacier; in fact it was just a long walk further up the valley to a view point. Realising this, and feeling a bit sorry for Joanne being left alone for two days, I said that I wasn't that bothered about the trip and would be quite happy to start descending that day. It also looked like rain and the clouds were very low. Al said he was still keen though, so I agreed to go with him after all. Although there wasn't much ascent (it was only up to 4300m) it was a tougher day.

Heavenly Path get everywhere

Maybe it was just because we were tired from the exertion the day before, but it also seemed a very long way. The walk started out over what looked like a glacier near to the village, but which was confusingly not marked on the map and seemed a bit low to stay frozen. When we walked to it we realised it was just lots and lots of white stones, the outwash from the glacier retreating from its maximum extent. Someone had used some of the stones to spell out “Save Tibet” on the banks of the river. This walk took us probably even closer to the border than the previous day: maybe 3km from Tibet, yet so inaccessible; although it already felt like we were in Tibet. Nobody up here was speaking Nepali, only Tibetan, although they told us that their children, who were all away at boarding school, spoke Nepali and Tibetan, and quite good English too.

A crow, mani stones, prayer flags, and mountains

Bet they were glad when the big rock didn't crush their house

The clouds were low for most of the day so we couldn't see the surrounding peaks. Again I was reminded of Scotland. The valley was punctuated with ruins of stone houses, a very common sight in Scottish glens. Although the whole valley had reminded me of Scotland quite often, the one thing that was always very different was the scale: there were boulders scattered around the valley, which you also find it Scotland, but here they were huge; the river running down the valley was much bigger than any mountain river I could think of in Scotland; for much of the walk, it was a glacial flat-bottomed valley, just like you get it Scotland, but far broader than anything I could think of at home; of course when you look up the sides of the valleys to the peaks the scale difference there almost completely obliterates the similarities.

I wish I was up there

Again the path was very easy although we lost it a couple of times and wandered onto much rougher terrain, more like the kind of ground you find yourself walking over on the Scottish hills. The route hardly climbed at all and most of what we walked through was flat yak grazing ground. There were hundreds of yaks now and they were definitely much more yakky than the yaks of previous days. We also saw quite a lot of horses, left to roam around on their own. The further up the valley we went, the clearer it became, until we were rewarded with some more lovely views.

Mountains

We were exhausted at the end and we lay down to eat our lunch, out of the freezing wind. The walk back was a real slog, but we at least managed to save some energy by sticking to the path this time. As we neared the village, a Nepali guy coming the other way spoke to us. Had we seen any horses, he wanted to know. We told him we had seen lots, but they were most of the way to Langtang Shisha, where we had finished. Apparently they were his. A little further on and we passed another guy on the same mission. Neither of these guys looked Tibetan and they were dressed more smartly than any of the locals, so I suppose they must be Nepalis who just check on their horses every now and then.

Alas poor yak

Then, just before we got back to the village we came across a dead horse. It was sprawled out at the edge of the valley and it looked as if it must have fallen down the steep slope above. We had seen a few horses very high up the previous day and I suppose horses are really made for the plains not the hills, so it must have lost its footing and tumbled.

Yaks grazing

December from Yaks 2010 Calendar

written by

The Happy Couple on June 5, 2009 from Kyanjin Gompa, Nepal

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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