Day 4 - Ascent of Kyanjin Ri and Return to Langtang

The Dodo Made Me Do It
I gave her an out, told her we didn't have to do it if she didn't want to.  Even after the worst, shallowest excuse for a night of sleep we'd had so far, she stood firm.  "Try lah.  See how" she said, slipping into Singlish.  I have to hand it to her, my girlfriend is tough.  I gained a new level of respect for her.

We told MB that we would start up and see how we felt.  There was no gentle intro to Kyanjin Ri - just a healthy serving of sharp mountainside.  The trail was a hairpin staircase of broken grey teeth, each rock two feet above the previous, so that your knees were near your chin as you stepped up.  I stripped off two layers in the first ten minutes and choked down the thin air, waiting to catch my breath.

We paused at each switchback, about every 15 steps.  I pretended to be admiring the view while Dodo, mouth shut tightly, peered out into the abyss.  She had a look of determination.

 

After an hour she said to MB "Half" and he shot me a look that I interpreted to mean 'hey, we are already past half way.'  We paused for a while and took in the view.  The village had shrunk to miniature below us and the moon was bright.  We'd trekked up through the valley in the distance.  We turned and continued higher.  MB was using his favorite word "slowly, slowly."

Here we are at the highest point.  Not at the top, but close.  It's an inexact science but MB estimated we'd gotten to 14,700 feet.  We sat and admired the view from all angles.

From up here you can see Langtang Lirung in all his glory.

A strange mechanical noise echoed up from the valley and we could neither locate its source nor figure out what was causing it.  "Helicopter" said MB, "those Indian guys we saw yesterday, remember?  They are taking a helicopter back to Kathmandu."  I then saw it, hovering at the edge of town, about to set down.  Dodo started peppering MB about the price and how do you order one, etc.  I laughed "we are not taking a frigging helicopter back!!"  Just imagine - what had taken us a full day of driving and three days of hiking could be covered in a 20 minute helicopter ride.

We started back down, the first steps of a downhill day.  We would be packing up and backtracking to Langtang today.

The views on the way down are much better.  That is a dry lake bed in the distance.  In a matter of weeks, with the arrival of monsoon season, it would be brimming with ice cold water.

The arrow is a guesstimate of how far we got up Kyanjin Ri.

It's all relative because back down at 12,700 feet I felt like I could run a marathon.  I was all too happy to be going downhill to Langtang.  Yesterday it had taken us 6 hours to do what we now did in 3.  It's an eye opener to go down what you'd gone up - you cannot imagine how you did it.  Somehow, the steepness of it stands out more when you descend.

We arrived at our Langtang tea house just in time for lunch.  The lunch was memorable because we shared the dining room with seven monks.  This was the one day a year when they read aloud from holy texts, chanting in a rhythmic cadence.  I wanted to shoot a video but thought better of it.  

As we washed our clothes, we shared the yard with a mare and her one week old foal.

The owner didn't seem to mind them hanging around.