The Himalayas have always fascinated and enticed me. Over the past few years they have been a frequent destination, many people questioning why I head here again and again.
Since my first visit to Leh I had heard about a mountain called Stok Kangri. She stood there in the distance, with her snow capped peak clearly visible from the city. Conversations with other travellers got me face to face with some who managed to summit that peak and caught my attention. While I knew I wanted to join this club there were a 100 reasons I couldn't. So this year I planned to do something about these 100 reasons, cut them down to 50 maybe, and give it a shot.
So after a few months of training I reached out to trek planners to head out to Stok sometime in July. As luck might have it all batches were full, combined with my trekking experience, it looked highly unlikely I would be able to attempt it this year. But then finally indiahikes pulled me in just 2 weeks before the 13th July start date.
One of the interesting parts of heading out is meeting new people. Here I joined up with 17 other unfamiliar faces to try and summit this peak. This gang turned out to be great fun to say the least. The experienced ones were guiding the others and some even slowing their own pace to ensure everyone was pulled along. We followed the longer route to reach the Stok base camp, which helped with the acclimatization. But more than that it gave us the time to enjoy the beauty of the mountains from a vantage point that a regular traveller never sees. We got the awesome panoramas of the great Himalayas the gushing streams as constant companions, the magnificent edifices of the mountains and my favourite - the amorous night skies with elusive shooting stars but quite a few zipping satellites.
While everything was taken care by the organizing team there is one thing that you need to own, and that's your health. The beauty of the mountains is not digestible by all. Altitude sickness is dangerous and unfortunately quite common. You have some pre-emptive medications and if you haven't been above 8k feet you should be on those before you get there. I have been here multiple times so I took a calculated risk of not using medications. Remember medications are not fool proof either so listen to your body and seek help as soon as you feel the first need for it. Some things need a good night's sleep while others need you to call it quits and head home. Be prepared for either.
We slowly marched towards base camp with many eventful happenings, lack of mules to carry our bags, borrowing donkeys to do the job, donkeys nearly falling off cliffs with our bags and being saved by our helpers, camp site water getting murky and the team having to walk back to fill our bottles etc etc. But come day7 we were at base camp. Yay!!
The camp site was awesome. There were multiple European teams - from Denmark, a family from Austria, a team of Brits who seemed like school kids and another team from India. Tents all around. You could feel the sense of excitement in everyone's face. The summit was a 7-8hr walk with a 4k ascent from here. We rested this evening to refresh ourselves for this final push. The skies were clear and things couldn't have been better. The steep incline towards the Advanced Base Camp at approx 17k feet was staring at us and we decided to take a stab at it first thing tomorrow.
One of our team falls sick. What we initially thought to be fatigue turned out to be a lot worse and after various attempts to bring him back to health it is decided to take him to lower altitude. A team of 4 helpers take him on a stretcher and head down at 8pm. Descending during the dark. They trek down through the night and get him to Leh hospital. We hear just how serious it really was the next day. Touchwood all is well.
Mid afternoon it starts to drizzle. We just shrug it off as some high altitude freak show but it just keeps pouring. The dining tent is flooded and then we hear that one more of the team is heading down. This time nothing serious but more precautionary. We are all packed, dressed and loaded to start the ascent to the summit by 9pm but due to the rains the trek leader decides to call off the ascent for a day. But not before another team member faints right during tea time. Again everything under control.
The next day didn't improve. The ascent trail to ABC has gone from barren brown to wet grey. The few of us who didn't do this yesterday quickly try the ascent and pray for a summit attempt tonight. The rain slowly turns into snow. The first real heavy snowfall in India for most of us. While we were enjoying that we all realized that we will not be able to summit today either.
We wake up to see the mountains around base camp covered with snow. The ascent to ABC is not clear any more The call is finally taken to abandon the summit trek and move down to Leh. With mother nature's twist we are instantly pulled down to sea level while physically at the 16k feet. She proves again that it is not us who decides which mountain to climb but the mountain who decides who will climb and when.
Path to ABC on Day1
Path to ABC on Day2
Path to ABC on Day3
We walk down via the shorter route to Stok village but without remorse. The lack of accomplishing our end goal possibly surpassed by the beauty of the journey taken and memories created with new friends.
Since my first visit to Leh I had heard about a mountain called Stok Kangri. She stood there in the distance, with her snow capped peak clearly visible from the city. Conversations with other travellers got me face to face with some who managed to summit that peak and caught my attention. While I knew I wanted to join this club there were a 100 reasons I couldn't. So this year I planned to do something about these 100 reasons, cut them down to 50 maybe, and give it a shot.
So after a few months of training I reached out to trek planners to head out to Stok sometime in July. As luck might have it all batches were full, combined with my trekking experience, it looked highly unlikely I would be able to attempt it this year. But then finally indiahikes pulled me in just 2 weeks before the 13th July start date.
One of the interesting parts of heading out is meeting new people. Here I joined up with 17 other unfamiliar faces to try and summit this peak. This gang turned out to be great fun to say the least. The experienced ones were guiding the others and some even slowing their own pace to ensure everyone was pulled along. We followed the longer route to reach the Stok base camp, which helped with the acclimatization. But more than that it gave us the time to enjoy the beauty of the mountains from a vantage point that a regular traveller never sees. We got the awesome panoramas of the great Himalayas the gushing streams as constant companions, the magnificent edifices of the mountains and my favourite - the amorous night skies with elusive shooting stars but quite a few zipping satellites.
While everything was taken care by the organizing team there is one thing that you need to own, and that's your health. The beauty of the mountains is not digestible by all. Altitude sickness is dangerous and unfortunately quite common. You have some pre-emptive medications and if you haven't been above 8k feet you should be on those before you get there. I have been here multiple times so I took a calculated risk of not using medications. Remember medications are not fool proof either so listen to your body and seek help as soon as you feel the first need for it. Some things need a good night's sleep while others need you to call it quits and head home. Be prepared for either.
We slowly marched towards base camp with many eventful happenings, lack of mules to carry our bags, borrowing donkeys to do the job, donkeys nearly falling off cliffs with our bags and being saved by our helpers, camp site water getting murky and the team having to walk back to fill our bottles etc etc. But come day7 we were at base camp. Yay!!
The camp site was awesome. There were multiple European teams - from Denmark, a family from Austria, a team of Brits who seemed like school kids and another team from India. Tents all around. You could feel the sense of excitement in everyone's face. The summit was a 7-8hr walk with a 4k ascent from here. We rested this evening to refresh ourselves for this final push. The skies were clear and things couldn't have been better. The steep incline towards the Advanced Base Camp at approx 17k feet was staring at us and we decided to take a stab at it first thing tomorrow.
One of our team falls sick. What we initially thought to be fatigue turned out to be a lot worse and after various attempts to bring him back to health it is decided to take him to lower altitude. A team of 4 helpers take him on a stretcher and head down at 8pm. Descending during the dark. They trek down through the night and get him to Leh hospital. We hear just how serious it really was the next day. Touchwood all is well.
Mid afternoon it starts to drizzle. We just shrug it off as some high altitude freak show but it just keeps pouring. The dining tent is flooded and then we hear that one more of the team is heading down. This time nothing serious but more precautionary. We are all packed, dressed and loaded to start the ascent to the summit by 9pm but due to the rains the trek leader decides to call off the ascent for a day. But not before another team member faints right during tea time. Again everything under control.
The next day didn't improve. The ascent trail to ABC has gone from barren brown to wet grey. The few of us who didn't do this yesterday quickly try the ascent and pray for a summit attempt tonight. The rain slowly turns into snow. The first real heavy snowfall in India for most of us. While we were enjoying that we all realized that we will not be able to summit today either.
We wake up to see the mountains around base camp covered with snow. The ascent to ABC is not clear any more The call is finally taken to abandon the summit trek and move down to Leh. With mother nature's twist we are instantly pulled down to sea level while physically at the 16k feet. She proves again that it is not us who decides which mountain to climb but the mountain who decides who will climb and when.
Path to ABC on Day1
Path to ABC on Day2
We walk down via the shorter route to Stok village but without remorse. The lack of accomplishing our end goal possibly surpassed by the beauty of the journey taken and memories created with new friends.
