I slept badly last night, partly because of the dusty indoor space and partly because I was pondering what to do if we couldn’t complete the trip. I accepted that if we had to cancel, we would find other things to do, but it would be really sad to miss the final part of a great trip. Not to mention wasting about $1000 in non-refundable permit fees.

Marcia had already more than accepted it – she had had enough of life in a tent and would have been perfectly happy to find the straightest route back to Kathmandu, even if it went by way of Nepalgunj.

Whether good or bad, Kinna arrived first thing in the morning to say that he had worked everything out with the yak men and there will be no problem completing our trip as planned. The five mules and their two handlers would return to Dunai, we would have three yaks to take our stuff to the next town, where we would switch to another team of yaks that would have no problem getting through whatever snow there might be on the pass. People and yaks have been getting through. The only problem was the mules.

So we gave the obligatory tips said good-bye to our mule men Hari and Danjeet and their five mules. Kinna explained later that the mules actually belonged to Hari and there were originally six before one was killed on a trek by a snow leopard. That explained why they were so careful to keep the mules right near our tents. Kinna also reported that they had commented when leaving that Marcia and I were the kindest Westerners they had ever met, a nice compliment and maybe a sign that we’ve had some positive effects in an area that has mostly seen the west through military and Hollywood eyes.

After all that, we set out on Day 17 as originally planned. There are two routes from here to Chharka Bhot. One passes over a single very high and difficult pass. We will take the other, which crosses two slightly lower passes. Locals do the thirty kilometers and two passes in one day. We will spend three.

Walking east from Dho Tarap, we followed a gentle desert valley at first, then started climbing towards our next pass. After lunch, Kinna told us the afternoon’s walk to the pass’s base camp would be an easy 45 minutes. We didn’t believe him, fortunately, because it turned out to be two and a half hours straight uphill. We were actually happy about that, though, because it means less climbing tomorrow to the pass, which we can now see still way above us.

While we were climbing, a family passed us going the other way on foot and on horseback. Two women were wearing beautiful local costumes. We later learned that the family was traveling to a wedding to be held in Dho Tarap, and one of those beautifully dressed women was the bride. They and the rest of the party were traveling 30 kilometers over two passes on foot.

Today’s and tomorrow’s camps will be among the highest and coldest of the trip. At 4800 meters (16,000 feet) we are as high as the tallest mountain in the Alps. We are both well acclimatized, so there is no problem, though Marcia is feeling some effects from her asthma. Overall we seem to be fine and ready to cross the pass in the morning.