Day 20 was an unintended rest day in Chharka Bhot. Actually, my memory of the plan had a rest day all along, but Kinna had been planning to press on until he discovered the person who had promised to arrange yaks had never followed through. In any case, we were happy to have the day to restore our bodies and to explore this rather pleasant area.

Bhot is a word used by Nepalis to describe a frontier village of Tibetan culture that is at the fringe of what Nepali consider civilization. Chharka Bhot is six days’ walk for us over several high passes to the nearest town with a road, though locals hoof it in as little as two days.

In a way, though, Chharka has feels closer to Nepal than the even more inaccessible depths of Dolpo. Trekking stores are springing up with English advertisements for the hundred or so foreigners who come through annually, and one shows a mobile phone number, even though there is no signal here. It is telling that Nepalis don’t even bother to use bhot to name the other Dolpo villages, considering them truly beyond the frontier.

Chharka is very compact, almost like a medieval fortified village. Houses are closer together than in other Dolpo villages, and they seem to be built higher, three stories in some cases. There is only one entrance into the old town, and the houses’ yak pens form a kind of wall around the town. It may be that the narrow valley limits the amount of arable land, so the locals have chosen to limit sprawl.

We bathed in the morning, and after lunch walked out to a Bön gompa. No one was there but it was unlocked and we were able to go inside. Bön practice seems to go heavy on masks of human and yak heads with scary features, used to frighten away evil spirits.

The Chharka Stampede happened just after we returned to our guest house. We had been warned that “more than a hundred” yaks would be coming into town around 4pm as the herders drove them down out of the mountains where we would be headed. Eventually they will all be driven to lower elevations where they can escape the harsh winter weather, which can dump several meters of snow and cover all the grazing. In earlier times, the yaks would have been taken to Tibet, but now that border is closed.

The first sign of action was townspeople driving about 30 yaks into household pens in the old town, probably to avoid mixing them with the yaks about to come through. I followed them in with my camera, and it got a little hot with a few stray yaks running back through the narrow lanes. I kept my wits and jumped on a rock wall when a local person signaled one was coming. Yaks of both sexes have horns, and they can be deadly if they run you down unintentionally.

I was taking pictures back at the hotel when I spotted a cloud of dust at the east edge of town. I went out to look from a safe place, and soon there were hundreds of yaks arriving in wave after wave. By the end of the afternoon, close to a thousand had arrived.

Everyone was out, with both townspeople and nomads directing herds of yaks. Out in the pastures, different families’ yaks mix on an open range, but when they return to the city, they need to be separated. Gradually, the herders moved groups of 20 to 50 yaks into separate pens all around the town.

The herders knew what they were doing, and I didn’t see anyone hurt. Many were women, in some cases wearing babies on their backs. A single person with the right noises and arm motions can stop a herd in its tracks, and the herders are accurate and effective throwing stones at errant beasts. Although I was in a relatively safe place on a side lane, I needed to imitate these motions in a few cases where yaks started to come in my direction.

The action didn’t stop even once they got the yaks in their stone-walled pens. Several men needed to go inside and remove harnesses from animals and to flush out stray yaks that belonged in different pens. These men seemed amazingly calm right next to half-ton beasts that were fighting and humping each other. But I imagine their life expectancy is short.

Yaks are amazing climbers that never fall, like mountain goats. During the rush, I saw huge yaks going down steep slopes that I would not have tried. One yak got away and ran among the tents of a Swiss party that was trekking in the opposite direction. Sensing he shouldn’t be there, the yak ran up a 3-meter-high rock to the next terrace.

Now that they have arrived, three of those yaks will carry our bags the rest of the way to Jomsom.

Today we began our final push to Jomsom. It is still quite some distance and we have to cross a couple of passes. Our best guess from the maps is that it will take us five to six days, but none of us has traveled this route before.

We have a new yak contingent. Paruwa was coming with us only until Chharka Bhot, and he returned today to Dho Tarap. Instead of three, we are traveling with about 30 yaks, which one of the local property owners wants to sell in Jomsom. Three of them will carry our luggage and the rest will come along for the journey, probably their last. The owner is none other than the 61-year-old father of Dawa, the school coordinator and bridegroom we met two nights ago, and Dawa will also be making the trip as well as a paid yak man.

For most of the morning, we traveled up the Chharka Valley along the river of the same name. As most river trails do, our path climbed the lateral moraines to avoid obstacles, but it was a relatively easy walk looking down on the crystal clear waters of the stream.

Around 11am we crossed a new suspension bridge across the side stream that we will be following for the next day and a half. It didn’t match our maps, but that’s not a surprise given how much infrastructure was destroyed and rebuilt after the Maoist revolution.

I was already feeling we should have stopped for lunch there, since the trail on the other side climbed high up the moraine with no obvious water. But apart from Sonam who had stayed with us to let Kinna arrange the yaks, our kitchen staff had already run ahead with all the food and equipment. So we continued up the moraine.

Sure enough, the trail just climbed and climbed with no water to make lunch. By 1:30, Marcia and I had consumed our last White Rabbit candies and we were getting quite tired and hungry, having been walking for five hours straight.

A few minutes later, we spotted two of our kitchen boys running back from far up the trail. Often one of them will meet us with hot juice a few minutes before the lunch stop, but this time they were also bringing soup. In the time it had taken us to climb the moraine, they had hiked another three kilometers, set up stoves, heated juice and soup, and run it back to us. Although Marcia and I asked Kinna to remind them to stop for lunch earlier, we appreciated that they made the best they could of the situation.

Another hour of walking brought us to a grass-covered alluvial fan, where we could get water and the rest of our lunch. We had some worries that our yak people would push further based on some confusing instructions from Marcia, but they were fortunately there as well, having concluded that the slow Westerners would need to stop here for the night. We made camp a few minutes down the trail.

Dawa told me the weather had changed as of yesterday, and indeed it was feeling like November. Marcia and I spent the rest of the afternoon huddled in the cook tent, which is a little warmer and more spacious.

As we went to bed, the second-quarter moon was casting an otherworldly light on the snow-covered peaks above us. For me that sort of thing makes up for all the discomforts of a trip like this. Marcia isn’t so sure, but she’s being a good sport and looking forward to warmer nights in Kathmandu.

Last night and tonight are our high-altitude camps in Dolpo, and they are definitely the coldest. We are definitely feeling the cold through all our layers, and we can only imagine how cold our staff must be in their inadequate Nepali sleeping bags.

Our last full day in Dolpo was an easy walk up a gradual river valley toward Niwar Pass. As we approached 5000 meters altitude, the valley opened up into a wide alluvial flat with streams feeding in from snow-covered mountains on each side. We went as far towards the pass as possible, camping on the last possible place without snow cover. My GPS puts us at around 4950 meters (16,500 feet), which makes this the highest camp of our trip.

Marcia and I spent a few minutes talking with the school coordinator Dawa and his father the yak owner. The yaks are all 16- and 17-year-old males who are no longer needed in the flock. Females (called nak) are always kept since they can make milk and more yaks. A good yak is worth about 50,000 rupees (US $650) once taken to market. They have made this trip twice this year, and Dawa will be coming this way again in 10 days to winter in Kathmandu. He is still negotiating whether his new wife will join him there.

Dawa also told us a bit about himself. He studied for 14 years in Shimla, India and only returned to Dolpo a few years ago, probably after the Maoist uprising was settled. During his 14 years in India, he was only able to travel twice – one overnight trip each to Delhi and Dharmasala. He was never able to return home, not even to Kathmandu.

He also told us a bit more about the satellite telephone systems that have been installed in each village. The one in Chharka has been operational for only a year, and he had to put it together himself because the technician who had come in by helicopter had to make a quick exit due to altitude sickness. Eventually the Nepali government plans to add mobile phone transceivers, but for now the only mobile phone service is in Dunai.

Today we made it over the major passes separating us from Jomsom, but it was very hard on us.

We began the day thinking we only had to climb a few hundred meters to the very gradual West side of Niwar Pass, after which we would leave Dolpo and have a long downhill to Sangdak, with Jomsom a couple days further along lower-altitude trails. The maps showed a deep canyon on the East side but no apparent obstacle.

We left camp at about 8am and it was indeed easy to climb up the wide glacial valley to Niwar Pass. It was all snow-covered, but the cold snow was as hard and safe as concrete to walk on. By mid-morning we had indeed reached the high point of the valley and we could see the start of the deep canyon. My GPS read about 5200 meters for Niwar Pass, which roughly matched the maps.

Only we didn’t stop there. Unbeknownst to us and apparently even our guide Kinna, the yak men had pointed us up and over a steep ridge to our left, which looked anything but easy. Apparently the regular route down the canyon was too treacherous for yaks and they used this alternative route called Thuje Pass. It was not clear whether the regular route was also impassible for humans in this season. Although the yak men convinced Kinna it was impossible, we learned later that a Swiss party had recently come up that way. We will never know if it was better or worse..

We climbed and climbed this steep ridge. It was impressive to watch the whole team of yaks obediently walk up the steep path, but Marcia and I took much longer. When we finally reached the top of Thuje Pass, I was shocked to see that it was almost 2pm, and we had only three hours of sunlight left for a much more difficult descent. My GPS and maps agree on 5600 meters (18,500 feet), the highest Marcia and I had been on this trip and probably ever.

It was absolutely gorgeous, to be sure. On the side we had climbed, the peaks of Dhauligiri I and II (8167m and 7751m respectively) were both visible behind a series of peaks that would have been remarkable in their own right anywhere else in the world. The canyon was very deep, and a side valley rose toward Tukuche Peak (6920m), connecting up with an unseen Hidden Valley that runs between Dhauligiri I and the rest of its peaks. To the other side of the pass was a continuation of the canyon and in the distance the valleys and mountains of Mustang and central Nepal. One of these peaks was surely Manaslu, though the Annapurna massif was hidden by nearer mountains.

It would have been great to enjoy this view longer, but we had to get down. The initial descent went straight down a steep snowy slope, which although not dangerous took a lot of energy and concentration.

The right thing under the circumstances would have been to set up an emergency camp in the snow-filled valley below. We would have flat ground and water at least in the form of chopped ice. It would have been cold and unpleasant but easily attainable and safe.

But we could already see our yaks with all our gear moving on to the next ridge and subsequent descent. Of course the yak men didn’t want to stop in a snowy valley where there would be no food for their yaks, and they didn’t think anything of another long descent.

We reached the first valley a little before 4pm and we had to continue despite the difficult suncups on the 20-centimeter thick snow, which was not quite hard enough to support my weight. I was already quite tired and I knew Marcia must be approaching exhaustion.

The trail led mostly along contours to a crossing of another ridge that we’d been able to see from the pass. When we finally reached the prayer flags that marked that crossing, it was 5pm and sunlight remained only on the highest peaks. The valley below us was beautiful but as deep as the Grand Canyon with no water or camp in sight.

We had to get off the highest ridge before it got dark. The way down was not dangerous but it was steep and occasionally icy enough to be difficult for Marcia, even if she weren’t exhausted. She at least had a down jacket – I had stupidly sent mine ahead in my pack on the belief that we would be down lower long before this. I led the way and found the indistinct switchbacks in the failing light while Kinna helped Marcia step by step. Somehow we managed to get down off the rocks just as we lost the last twilight. The moon was almost full, so it was no problem to follow a normal trail.

My plan was to get us down to a flat place where we could spend the night in a tent. Our people would need to bring a tent, sleeping bags, and a bit of food and water, but they could do that with their flashlights and strong climbing skills. At the bottom of the first descent we did in fact find a rock enclosure that could have served in a pinch, but it was uneven and not really large enough for our tent.

Just as we were voting to continue, we saw the light of our best kitchen man Mahendra coming up from below. He brought us juice, yak cheese, and news that they had established a camp at a point below that required no more tricky climbing. It had taken him an hour to climb up, so I estimated it would be at least that long for us to get down. But we all agreed it was better than trying to stay there. Mahendra led us down the trail in the moonlight, and we arrived in camp a few minutes before 8pm. Marcia was so exhausted that she could only eat one bite of Sonam’s pizza, normally a favorite.

I gave a piece of my mind to Kinna and told him he needed to get control of the trip. Although he has been a good guide and organizer and almost excessively helpful, he is not well tuned to maps in this area where he has never traveled before. So effectively the yak men have been leading the trip for the last week, and yak men have no sense of what works for aging Westerners who were not born in these mountains. I have told Kinna repeatedly that above all we must keep the days short enough to be safe and comfortable for Marcia and me despite our slow pace. But today we were forced into a 12-hour day that was too much for both of us, and potentially dangerous.

We have only two and a half days left and no more passes, so we should be okay. But I wanted to make sure Kinna regains control of the trip and that he arranges an easy day for tomorrow. He has agreed.

Today was tough for Marcia, who hurt all over following yesterday’s ordeal. Although the hike was a moderate 4 to 5 hours descending and following contours, those things still put strain on Marcia’s old knee injury and her newer pulled muscle. Sonam was great in staying with her and helping her the whole way, but I knew she was in pain with no easy solution until we got to Jomsom.

The scenery was very beautiful in a different way than Dolpo on the other side of the pass. We spent the whole day in the deep canyon we had seen in the setting sun from the mountain the previous evening. The mountains on both sides were snow-capped and the 6000-meter peaks on the south side had several glaciers. With the river at the bottom at roughly 3000 meters, the canyon was roughly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and three times as deep as Yosemite Valley.

We ended the day at the summer village of Sangdak, built in a tight cluster at the top of farming terraces. The harvest was finished, and the village abandoned for the winter. The altitude of our camp was 3750, the lowest since Lake Phoksumdo. But it still felt quite cold.

It remains uncertain whether we can finish the trip tomorrow. Under normal circumstances, it might be possible, but I told Kinna we must make plans if the long descent proves impossible for Marcia. We will get an early start and make a decision at our lunch stop.

We woke up at 5:30 for an early start and we were on the trail by 6:40. Marcia and I were motivated to get to Jomsom if possible despite our pains, but within an hour the older yak man was muttering that we would never make it at our slow speed. We spent the whole morning, in fact, climbing an ever-ascending slope around various drainages, which was much longer than it appeared on the maps. By the time we had reached our predefined lunch spot next to a half-frozen spring, it was 11:30 and we had climbed 800 meters (2500 feet).

Our agreement was that we would make a final decision whether to camp or push through at this lunch stop. Even the yak men knew we couldn’t make it, but Kinna was still pushing us to try since there would be additional costs and flight rearrangements if we could not make it by early in the morning. I was firm and told him we had no choice since Marcia could not do an 1800 meter (6000 foot) descent on top of an already long morning. He agreed to stay with the yaks and keep them behind us so that we could stop at or before the first water if Marcia’s health required it.

Almost immediately the situation again got out of control. Around the next bend, an avalanche had created an icy patch that was difficult to cross. The yak men cut enough steps for the yaks, and they were off like a shot. Kinna and Sonam stayed to help me and Marcia across, which was necessary but allowed the yaks a kilometer’s head start. On top of everything, Marcia and I were hit with almost simultaneous bouts of diarrhea, which slowed us further.

The trail was long, even in descent. We crossed two more drainages before a slight climb across the final shoulder of the mountain. From that point, the view was spectacular, stretching from the desert canyons of Mustang past the Thorung La (pass) where the Annapurna loop crosses the divide to the full massif of Annapurna to our right. The Kali Gandaki valley and various towns lay tantalizingly close below us. One loses a sense of scale in such huge surroundings, and it’s only through experience and map-reading that I knew that it would take us at least 4 hours to reach the bottom, which was almost 2 kilometers below.

When the yaks disappeared, I knew Kinna might again have trouble enforcing our agreement to stop at the first water. To begin, there was no water or campsite on this steep slope. The yak men had told Sonam that there was water just around the bend of the mountain, but that was not the case. In fact, they were clearly proceeding to the first real campsite in Phalyak, which was almost all the way to Jomsom and too far for Marcia. I do not think that the yak men were intentionally misleading us. More likely they were just oblivious to the distances and vertical changes that are nothing to them but exhausting to us. But either way, it was clear that their focus was on their yaks’ pasture and not on our health.

I did what Kinna should have done and ordered Sonam to run ahead and stop the yaks at the first water. This saved the day because he found a small stream in a deep chasm just at the point where daylight ended and Marcia ran out of steam. There was no campsite, but Sonam found a flat place about 500 meters further on and set up our tents in the middle of the trail, having the kitchen staff haul up water from the stream. Had he not caught the yaks and made them unload, we would have had another exhausting moonlight walk downhill.
My US cell phone had reception from a village across the valley, so Kinna called Ngima in Kathmandu and asked him to take care of all the hotel and flight rebookings. With some luck, we should be relaxing in Jomsom by lunchtime and flying to Kathmandu the next day.

Day 26 was the last of our trek. We were now less than ten kilometers from Jomsom, most of it downhill. As we came past the first farming village, we could hear a symphony of animal bells and farm workers singing. We climbed over a small ridge and descended a long, steep scree slope, which was very hard on Marcia.

The scenery was of unbelievable scale. Directly across the valley was the face of Nilgiri, part of the Annapurna massif. Further down our side of the valley was the peak of Dhauligiri I. Between the two, the Kali Gandaki river flowed through the Himalaya in a valley 6000 meters (20,000 feet) beneath the summits on either side. This is generally considered the deepest valley on Earth, though the Chinese recently dispatched a team to the Tibetan border to “scientifically prove” that the great bend of the Yarlung Tsampo / Brahmaputra is deeper. Regardless, it was a sight to behold during our last descent.

And then suddenly we were in Jomsom. After a few hundred meters of trail along the riverbank, we found ourselves walking down a stone-paved street past jeeps and motorcycles. Our hotel was near the airport on the other end of town, and along the way we passed the Nepal Army School of Mountain Warfare, a bit of a joke considering how badly they fought a loosely organized band of 15,000 Maoists over the last decade. Marcia and I hadn’t seen a military or police presence since we left Dunai 25 days ago.

Jomsom has changed since some of our friends visited in the Eighties. A road down the valley now lets motorized vehicles bring people and goods in and out. The stretch near the airport is lined with dozens of trekker hotels offering nice rooms and international dial telephones to the thousands of foreigners passing through on the popular Annapurna loop.

We took hot showers and had a big lunch in our hotel’s upstairs dining room. From our window we could see groups of trekkers stopping in at the checkpost. They all looked so clean! Personal cleanliness must be a lot easier in the local teahouses than in a tent in Dolpo.

In the evening, Sonam and his crew served a huge feast now that they had access to better ingredients and equipment. After dinner, we gathered everyone to give thanks and the obligatory tips, a standard ritual at the end of any trek. Marcia handed out ceremonial katas (scarfs) and I distributed wads of cash to each person in proportion to their contribution. Everyone seemed genuinely happy. We had been through a lot together.

We arose early for the flight from Jomsom to Pokhara, the only quick way out. Jomsom has a new airport and control tower, though it fortunately still uses the old entrance surrounded by Tibetan prayer wheels, which I used to ensure a safe flight. Those should be a feature of all airports!

The flight took off about an hour late because the Agni Air pilots decided to have breakfast. But once we got in the air and did the steep turn in the valley, we had a spectacular view flying down the valley between Annapurna and Dhauligiri. After crossing the shoulder of the mountain, the plane descended over farming terraces into Pokhara, the only developed city in western Nepal.

Although Pokhara seems like a delightful place to spend a few days, Marcia and I plan to come back later, and we were motivated to get back to our clean clothes in Kathmandu. So we had Kinna negotiate to get us the last two seats on a flight leaving right away, and by 11am we found ourselves back in the big city.

It took a little work to find a good hotel room, since our organizer Ngima was away on a trek and he hadn’t booked a room in the guesthouses that are always booked full in this busy season. But his wife met us and was very helpful in helping us move to another hotel in a quieter location. The room was large enough for us to lay out our stuff and it had a bathtub, Marcia’s primary requirement, though we learned later that its hot-water heater was only large enough to fill a quarter of the tub.

Kathmandu is overwhelming even when arriving from another place in the twenty-first century. But for us who had not seen a car in almost a month, it was like coming to a different planet. The smells, the sounds, the crush of people were all a shock. But it was comfortable and it had good food.

Marcia and I are spending a few days relaxing and letting our muscles heal before posting everything and making new plans. Come back soon for more!

========== End of detailed Dolpo postings ==========

Marcia and I flew back from Jomsom to Kathmandu today and we are back online.

Thanks, Russell, for posting updates while we were away. As the last post said, we had an amazing trip to a very wild region. It was also very strenuous, crossing 7 passes over 5000 meters high. Marcia and I managed to stay healthy except for some aches and pains. We are now enjoying some much needed rest and maybe a bath or two.

I do have a month’s worth of postings drafted on my PDA, and I will upload them and pictures as soon as I figure out how to move them over. Please check back in a day or two.

This morning I got a call from Tom's parents in Pennsylvania, who had talked with Tom a few minutes before. There is also a text message on my cellphone, which I quote:

“Made it to Dolpo. Trek starts tomorrow. No Internet until ~Nov 6. Please post this on blog because we can't.”

So, it seems that Tom and Marcia's 100% chance did indeed come through, and they are now finally in Dolpo. The weather, reportedly, is beautiful.

If I get any more text messages or other communication, I'll post them here. Have a great trek, T&M.