Day 9: Tilicho Lake

10.11.08 (day 8) / 10.12.08 (day 9)

Tilicho Lake Base Camp
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- hiked to Tilicho base camp via Kangsar. We stopped in Kangsar to have tea and a 2nd breakfast. Our hostess runs the place by herself; her folks are in Kathmandu and brothers and sisters are in Canada, NY, Singapore. We can see people working from the rooftops - I think they're separating grain from the husk. The radio is playing classic Hindi songs.

The hike to base camp was interesting through alien looking landscape: wind weathered rocks, look like rock tee-pees, lots of scree and landslide area. We can see the river below as we carefully make our way across - the landscape is quite Gray, a great location for a sci-fi.

The hotel at the base camp is most expensive one yet with worst service. I guess they have a monopoly and I don't think the people that are here want to be here - it's pretty lonely. They do it for a living so I guess I don't blame them for not catering much to people like us that actually enjoy being up here, since we're only here for a short time but they have to stay for the entire season.


Tilicho Lake
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- up at 5:30am. Since breakfast is not served at this hour, we had ordered bread the night before which we now ate with jam and the rest of our nak (female of yak) cheese. It was cold but still good. The only casualty was the milk tea, since it's made from powder milk, the powder separated and it didn't look so good.

- I headed up the lake at 6:20. About half way up, I left the pack for Alex since it had the water; though, perhaps not such a good idea since he doesn't drink much anyway. I made it to the snow field in about 2hrs but it was cold so I decided to come back to the less windy area and hide behind a rock and wait for Alex since the pack has more clothes. The lake is about 30-45mins on the snowfield - simply spectacular!

Deep blue water,
Fed from glaciers,
Not a cloud in the sky,
Surrounded by snow covered giants,
A white landscape
with a blue jewel in the centre.

Nestled between beautiful mountains, the 4km by 2km lake stands at 4920m. We cannot see Annapurna I from here. We head down after lunch and stayed at the Tilicho peak hotel above the gompa. I was reading Tagore's essay on woman which gets us started on a discussion about male-female gender differences .. probably one of Alex + my favourite topics :-) .. Rita is also with us though Misha is out photographing things. The Swiss guy sitting next to us is amused by our discussion and jumps in on occasion. He too is on his journey, not sure how long he will be gone. He's heading over to India next for a spiritual and meditative quest.

This is nice hotel. Another family run establishment. A young guy manages it - he's the son I think. He has a big stack of bollywood movies and the food is great!