Trek The Unknown

hey,
After not traveling for more than 6 monthes I decided to have a short vacation in Turkey in a place called Kusadasi (pronounced: Kushadasi).

Kusadasi is a a touristy town full of hotels and resorts. It’s located in western turkey on the Aegaen sea shore, 45 minutes driving south of Izmir. The town is set on a beautiful bay and it’s well known site is the pigeon island. Kusadasi is also very close to the Greek Island, Samos and it’s a nice excrusion to do for a day, although we preferred staying on Turkish land.

We arrived there last Sunday at noon. We spent our 1st afternoon there walking around the place and got to know it. Since my girlfriend and I are not really big fans of staying at the beach or the hotels swimming pool all day long, we decided we want to visit some more exciting places.
So we had great plans for the next 3-4 coming days.

Various touring agencies sell tours to places around Kusadasi, But we decided we want to do the things by ourselves, which is much more cheaper and fun. The whole area has great public transportation using Dolmushes. Dolmush is a kind of an 10-12 seat car which goes around like a bus line. they stop everywhere you like on the road and pick you up wherever you are, although some of the line have set stops as well.

We decided to leave early as we were worried there will be no accommodations available in high camp. High camp is the highest and closest camping place to Throng La pass. If you want the hardest day of the trek the be as easy as possible, try spend the night before crossing the pass at High camp.

High Camp has a accommodations for 110 persons, whoever reaches too late gets to sleep in the dining room. nobody get to be thrown out, don’t worry

Eventually instead of leaving at 7AM we left at 8:30AM. We knew we have something like 2.5-3 hour of walking till Throng Phedi (That’s the place to stay for the night before High Camp). Throng Phedi means, under the mountain or hill, which is of course under Throng La pass area, the highest place around.

We reached Throng Phedi at 9:50AM. This was a good start for the day…Walking there includes some uphill walking but a lot of it is also straight surface.

Throng Phedi was discovered to be a VERY nice place. We stopped there to get used to the height of 4450 meters.

At 10:30 we decided to go on. We understood that the hardest climb of the trek is just beyond us. The Climb is one hour long it’s slow hard to breath walk. Some people that want to acclimatize thmeselves get to Throng Phedi climb to high camp and then walk back down to Throng Phedi. Then next day they climb this again. we acclematized ourselves enough in Mananag and along the way, we stayed extra nights at some places and climbed a little every day.

Entering into high camp we found there are 2 camp sites. The 1st buildings you’ll see on your left are the old buildings. don’t waste your energy that you don’t have anyway to walk around there. Keep walking up a little more to the buildings on the left. This is the new camp.

At High Camp we took 2 rooms. it really didn’t seem the acoomodation there were too crowded.
After resting and settling out breath we decided to go for a walk around. there is a mountain right beside the camp which is 100-150 meters higher than the camp itself. There is a great view for there and it’s highly recommended.

At the Time of year we were there (end of October) the whole mountain side was covered with snow. It’s was great sliding on it using the plastic coats we had! Try not to slide accidentally to unknown places where only a helicopter can help getting you out of.

Since high camp is a almost the highest place around, if the sun is out there aren’t any mountains disturbing it’s way into the greenhouse like dinins room. It’s VERY plesent and warm (as long as the sun is shining), with big glass windows watching the whole area around.

pricing:
room for a night: 320 NR
Spaghetti: 190 NR
potato curry (recommended): 130 NR
Veg fried rice (recommended): 190 NR

Since high camp is an isolated place there is no meat in the menu, only veggie stuff.
also, There is light at the rooms (on some other guest houses on previous days there wasn’t) and an early dinner is served at 4:30 PM.

We went to sleep very early at around 6:00 PM , because our plans were to wake up at 4AM in order to cross Throng La Pass.

We Left Manang, it was Thursday morning. I had mixed feelings…after the unsuccessful previous day, I was a little disappointed from it, but on the other hand was anticipating to reach Throng La.

We Left at 8:55 in the morning and reached Yak Karka at 12:15 PM. walking from Manang to Yak Karka is easy. A little bit of an uphill trail but really not too bad. Towards Yak Karka there is an half an hour to an hour of almost straight walk, with no uphills or downhills. These are the times when we had our chance of really enjoy to views, without worrying about our next physical challenge.

We decided we will spend the night at Yak Karka. It was the beginning of November which is high season. We were afraid there won’t be any rooms left for all of us ( we were a group of 4 people). Eventually we found a guest house. It wasn’t even too hard.

Since we arrived early, it was only noon time I sat in the dinning room and learned some Chinese. I started talking to a 60 years old man from Canada. His name was wain. He said that it’s the toughest physical challenge he ever had. At some point he showed me his camera and said it’s not working, he thought he needs a new charger…I needed a few minutes to figure out that a remarkable button named “RESET” would solve the problem. He was very greatful!

I think this is the greatest magic in traveling. I love these encounters with people from all around the world. learning about their culture, home, work. It’s fascinating!

here’s some common pricing at Yak Karka:
2 Boiled eggs - 80 NR
Chapati (2 pieces) - 80 NR
Vegetable soup - 95 NR
double room - 150 NR

The next day we headed to Letdar. Letdar is just a few guest houses on the mountains. It’s not really a village. villagers from Manang built these Guest houses ( there are 4 of them, I think) for travelers. Letdar is very close to Yak Karka, 35 minutes walk…We took it easy and spent Friday and sauterday resting there.

Letdar is more expensive than Yak Karka since as you go higher all services are more expensive. just think that the food you are eating made the same way you did on the back of one of the many porters working in the area.

costs at Letdar:
2 Boiled eggs - 100 NR
chapati (2 pieces) - 100 NR
Veg spring roll - 180 NR
Spagetti with tomato souce - 190 NR
double room - 200 NR

I Think that it’s time to talk about something in my own country.
I haven’t been traveling for a while now so I decided I should take a day off all the work I have and go to do something for my spirit.

I’ll start from the beginning…
after Rabin, the left winged prime minister that was assacened by a jew in Israel, the Israeli society began to by very divided like. left and right, secular and religious jews…they were all in a great conflict.

After that a few movements in Israel were developed in order to bridge the problems in the Israeli society. One of these movements is Tzav Pius (meaning “directive appeasement”). It Aims to have a true dialog between different groups in Israeli society. By creating a dialog between very divided society the aim was to get us more unite.

I joint today one of thier projects for one day. This project was not generated by them but is supported by them. Thier aim is to walk large parts of the Israel trail together in order to get different people from different groups in Israel get to know each other.

The Israel Trail (Shvil Israel) goes all along the state of Israel. It’s not only a physical trail, but also a human trail. on each spot on that trail we have as Israeli and jewish people some kind of historical or significant event happened to us, which all of israelis are united around it.

Today was an amazing day for me meeting various people when walking on the trail. some people walk it from the begining to the end which takes around 2 months. some people just join a day or 2, like I did.

This project is also for the memorial of Avi. Avi was one of the soldiers that was killed almost 11 years ago when to Israeli helicopter crashed together at the north part of Israel. His parents are the initiators of this project. This is the 3rd year that this project is running.

they don’t have a website in English though….but if you still want to have a look:
http://www.avi-beshvil-israel.org.il/misgeret.php.
it’s in Hebrew

Source: WikipediaAnnapurna Circuit – day 9 – trying to reach Tilicho Lake.

I read about Tilicho Lake a lot before deciding I want to go there. Most guide books claim it to be a little dangerous. Also it’s off the beaten track of most travelers which is the reason I go trekking - feeling adventurous! But even going to those places one should be smart enough and not do stupid things. I’m a very responsible traveler.

The Tilicho Lake is a side trip at the Annapurna Circuit trek. It leaves from Manang, and takes 3-4 days to complete and coming back to Manang. This was my plan….

Leaving Manang in the morning walking through kangsar to Tilicho Base camp. On the next day climbing up to the lake at dawn and sleeping again at the Tilicho base camp an additional night. The last day would be walking back the same way we walked the 1st day.

We left Manang at 7:45 towards kangsar. Our , Sonam, said it would take 3 to 3.5 hours reaching the village. We were very glad to discover after one hour and 20 minutes that we have reached our 1st destination – kangsar village.

We wanted to continue walking to the Base camp. On the way Sonam fell twice and twisted his leg. We saw he started to limp and it hurts for him. We kept walking anyway….

My friend Eli, which joined this side trip, and I were for fear of the trail going there. There are 2 ways reaching the base camp. One is long and hard & takes 4 hours. It goes up a mountain and then all the way down. The 2nd trail is the lower trail it’s an easier relatively straight trail which takes around 2-2.5 hours to complete. The problem is that the latter one is a very narrow trail, with a land slide to the side of it at some part, defiantly not a great experience…

In addition at the afternoon the wind start to blow there and Blue Sheep start to walk on the mountains which causes rocks to fall down on the trail. It was pretty early but we had to make a decision on which trail to walk.

We asked each person passing us on the opposite way if the lower trail is appropriate for waking. Everyone said its fine and we shouldn’t worry. My main fear was the landslide. It’s a narrow trail for one foot while the other foot must be put on the landslide, this causes the sand to go down a bit….fortunately it stops and you don’t find yourself falling down the mountain…but still very scary in my opinion.

After Sonam asked a few people we met a bunch of tourists which came down from the lake. They said the road down is fine and no need to be afraid of that landslide. The Problem is, they told us, was falling rocks (!!!) when climbing up from the base camp to the lake. They said there were strong winds therefore a big rock almost hit them when rolling down!

I didn’t want to take ANY risks I don’t have to take. I agreed to walk a few more hours on the longer and more difficult trail (Although everybody said the lower one is just fine). I was managing my risks…..

In addition I decided that there would be strong wind we won’t going to climb up to the lake from the base camp…another risk is solved. One risk I couldn’t solve was Sonams’ leg. He claimed to be fine…

I was afraid to walk on the lower trail and too lazy to walk the upper harder one. I solved this by saying to myself that because of Sonams leg we should just return and walk back to Manang.

That’s what we did eventually….

I was very disappointed on the way back for not coping with my fear of the way (which everybody said it’s just fine and walkable). On the other hand I choose the more human option and took care of my porter. What would have happened if something happened to him on the mountain?! Then would have been to deeper trouble. We then had needed to rescue him somehow and would have got stuck without a porter for the next few days.

If someone of my readers who walked this lower trail from Kangsar to Tilicho Base Camp can comment on this trail situation? Is there a way to do this way without risking yourself?

I’m thinking when will be my next chance of visiting there. That place is amazing from the pictures I saw!

I have a plan of taking a flight to Jomson on my next trip to that area then walk through Tilicho Lake and Tilicho pass, going again through Kangsahar, Manang and finally Homde. Homde, as I mentioned on previous post has an airport. So flying back to Pokhara is certainly an option.

This trip suppose to take 5-6 days and requires camping gear, since at the 1st 3-4 days of the trek, there are no guest houses to stay in,.

What do you suggest? How do you cope with these kinds of fears? When I came back I was angry at myself that I’m a just cowered.

After arriving back at Manang, I knew we made the right decision. I went with Sonam to the HRA (Himalayan rescue association) clinic. The doctor gave him some pills and put a bandage on his leg. He told him to rest as much a he can. On the other hand he said: “I know it’s your job and you don’t have any other choice, so if you are back to work then just don’t push it too much or else it will get worse.

On the next few days we took short and easy walks. Sonam’s leg was just fine afterwards…

“There are some things in life that are frightening and you just have to try them, but sometimes it’s hard to find some courage for that deep down inside you….”