Stok Kangri - July 2012

Shang Fu – Here We come – @ 14250 ft – 16^th July

The day broke early and we got up…. It was cold outside….. Raghav & I went out first… although in different directions…. looking for a good position…. This was to be an important routine for the coming days…. Finding a good place to do the morning job….. J

We came back, having enjoyed first mover’s advantage…. J others were now scrambling for space…. After a while…. Brahma took us all out… made us to stand in one circle and to our utmost surprise made us do some warm up exercise….. @ 12000 ft doing warm up is not an easy task and half the energy was spent in those 30 minutes. We then had our breakfast, cleared the tent and got ready for the day’s trek.

We got ourselves divided in 3 groups. Each group was to have one leader who would set pace for the group and one sweeper who was to ensure that no one from the group was left behind. I became the sweeper of our “Golden 30’s” group (Kamal, Hrishikesh, Hari, Deshmukh, Jagan, Subhash & yours truly). Kamal was the leader. And thus we started our ascent to Shang Fu village. We were to climb about 2250 ft today.

The Curious boy from Shang village

We passed through Shang village, a few villagers were looking at us disbelievingly. They were perhaps used to watching foreigners treading there, us… Indians seldom get into doing silly things like trekking in Ladakh….. and that’s why they were amused.

Walking on this terrain is mesmerizing to say the least. Its so colourful, the barren mountains with different shapes and a few green patches….. Soon I realized that I was sweeping 2 groups as Hari & Nani were finding it a bit tough. Although the ascent was steady it was surprisingly quite hot and the wind had just vanished. Slowly we reached a small hamlet. There was a small temple with a walled compound. And it was surrounded by the Yak horns. I didn't know the logic behind keeping these horns…. Perhaps it suggested that we needed to take the bulls (the mountain, the ascent and the altitude) by the horns (i.e. patience)…..

Colours

The whole path was through riverbed and thus it was a bit difficult. The group had already gone ahead and I was shepherding the tail. Hari & Nani were exhausted but both just kept walking “Johnie Walker” style…. J We soon reached the camp site…. tired, hungry & thirsty….. Our tents and other stuff still had not reached so we just sat there catching our breath. We understood later that this is also a common camping point in another trek i.e Markha valley trek however on that day we were the only group camping there.

Walking through the riverbed

To take the bull by the horns....

Raghav - Starting the acclimatization climb

We did some cooling down exercises (Brahma at it again….) had our lunch, took a quick nap, and generally spent time lazying around out in the sun….. It was time again to catch up with new friends and getting to know more about them. The gujju gang started playing cards and we just kept discussing random topics. Around 4 pm it was time again to go for an acclimatization climb. So Raghav & I started climbing the ledge of the hillock beside our camping site. It was a steady ascent again and all of a sudden we found a few yaks descending in our direction….. we forgot about taking them by the horns and just got out of the way. We went ahead & Raghav was so enthu he wanted to climb the next hillock as well… I had to keep a tab on him and we returned just in time to have hot chai and some pop corns… Btw, corns help acclimatization.

As usual, the wind started and it became pretty cold as the sun was about to set. I was still on my solitary T shirt, getting used to the cold while others were comfortably wrapped up. After dinner, we took our sleeping bags, into the tents and off we went. I don’t know about others but I was quite tired by the day’s excursion and I was dead asleep in the next 2 minutes.

The campsite @ Shang Fu - View from Top