Day 23 Thorung Phedi to Muktinath – 21st July 2009

Daylight didn’t come for me and sleep didn’t come too… Slept at about 9pm and woke up at 0018hrs exactly after hearing the bells on the horse or cows… It went on thru the night till 0300hrs, time to wake up for the climb!! My goodness I am so exhausted and so not looking forward to the climb up… It is really freezing inside and outside.. We slept in our sleeping bag which can support to extreme low of +3 degree celcius and with a thick blanket covering with my long sleeves, marmot fleece jacket, my base layer pants and long pants and 2 pair of socks… It didn’t keep out the cold … Wooooohh… And got worst when we need to brush and wash our face with the freezing water… my teeth aches when I gurgle …. Ouch!!

Sigh time to pack up and go for breakfast, but today its not as usual… Rahul is carrying my bag and Ramli loading some of my stuffs in his bag too.. I feel so bad for both for them, but I know if I insists on carrying my own bag… I might not reach the destination.. So thanks a million guys…. Breakfast was so difficult to swallow and as usual I didn’t finish my breakfast and Ramli had to help me…

Time to go off at about 0430hrs as the cook got up later so delayed our time… Daylight didn’t come yet and we had to climb up the steep steep slopes with our torches… Ramli’s torch went off about 15mins later and Rahul had to borrowed him his… He knew where he was going so he said he didn’t need the torch… Sigh… this is real bad … 10 steps and I had to stopped to breath… 966m to go …. When will this be over…


at the Base Camp






Sunlight on a peak

10 steps and hoo hoo hooo, breath breath breath… it went on all the way up.. at about 0530hrs we arrived at High base camp at 4925m… Another 491m to go… The view at the high base camp was fantastic!! We could see the Annapurna snow caped mountains from where we were.. Wooow!!! The morning light came and we could see the clear skies with the snow caped mountains with a good view.. Ramli went up a little higher to take some photos and while taking he saw a carcass of a dead goat or cow.. Seems that it was fell down and broke it’s body….. Sad…









Continued for about another 45 – 50 mins up to our destination with the same stops I had to take… And finally we arrived and when we saw the signboard “Thorung La Pass Congratulation for the success ! Hope you enjoyed the trek in Manang!” Yahooo!!! Both of us was so so relief and excited!! I even teared and really felt that the suffering was worth it as we could see the view from way up high and also see the mountain range of Upper Mustang… The extreme expensive protected trekking area… Snap snap as much pictures we could and headed down as it was getting very very cold…. With the knitted gloves we bought my hands are still freezing… Cooooldd!!


Resting ...

After that victory!! The suffering came back again… we had to descend 1656m downwards to Muktinath village… We didn’t expect it will be that bad.. But the steep slope downwards was a real killer for our knees and for me my already bad knee it is damn frustrating… During the way down we both fell down once and I wanted to break my walking stick… Ramli the same and with the bag weighing about 15kgs doesn’t help at all… We could not believe that we took at least 5 hrs to get down that F*&%^#)% steep downhill… My god we wanted to kill someone !!! A few people pass us but we couldn’t be bothered… Just took our time…

Nearing the end of the journey, Ramli had really aching knees and shoulder pain but still he didn’t take up the offer from me or Rahul to carry his bag…. Anyways we arrived in Muktinath village at about 1400hrs, ordered lunch and still went walking around the village after… Even the last day of the most strenuous walk took us about 10hrs, we were super relief and happy that we had completed what we came for in the first place!!

Hopefully we will be training for Everest Base Camp if we do…