My travel diaries
Sunday 9 September, 2007 - Doksa, Ladakh, India
We're woken up with bed tea at 7am and the sound of sleet pattering on the roof of the tent. This is a blow, for we'd hoped we'd descended far enough to be out of the bad weather system.
We have a short walk up the Thanglasgo valley, a name which means "valley of grassy flowery meadows". Grassy it is (and rocky), but presumably we're here the wrong time of year for all the flowers.
The weather is on and off all day, frequently sunny and frequently cloudy with a bit of a cold breeze, but when it snows it is only very light snow. We reach our campsite at Doksa at about 11.30, in a
grassy meadow with a cold river running through it, a short distance from some shepherds' cottages. Here we're greeted by yet another friendly sheepdog who fusses over us while we wait for the porters to arrive. During this time the sun comes out and the clouds clear a little, and John suggests we walk about half a mile back down the valley if we want a good view of Sahib Chasa. Ulla and I take his advice and we're not disappointed. Through a gap in the rock we see an impressive snow pinnacle rising above the rocky mountains around it. It's hard to believe we'll be climbing it in a couple of days' time, but as with many mountains, its appearance is deceptive, and there's an easier route round the back.
After lunch John rigs up some ropes on some boulders on a mound just above the campsite and gives Ulla and I a chance to practise our fixed rope technique using our prussics. There is a particular type of knot which can slide up the rope easily, but locks on the rope if jerked quickly in the opposite direction. The trick is to remember to face up the slope when you're tying on with it, whether your coming up the rope or going down it, or you might get a nasty shock if you fall when it's been tied on the wrong way.
During afternoon tea we talk about Snow Lake and the Biafo-Hispar glacier crossing in the Karakoram, one of John's favourite regions of the world. Meanwhile across the tent from us, one of the kitchen assistants, Ang Dorje, is busily sharpening a large knife. I think he's just doing it to pass the time, but unbeknown to any of us Gokul has bought a goat for dinner and is making preparations to dispatch it the other side of the canvas in a few moments' time while we innocently chat away. It has obviously been practising Buddhist equanimity of life and death, however, and crosses the threshold without so much as bleating goodbye, because I don't hear a thing.
For dinner we're served goat's liver and noodles. Normally I find liver totally disgusting, but this is so fresh that it tastes extremely mild,
is actually quite edible
and goes down very easily. I wait patiently to see if John is going to offer us another nightcap tonight, but he doesn't, and we read a chapter of our respective books before turning in early.
This time it's my turn to sleep in the middle of the tent and it's a slightly frustrating experience. I try to sleep right down the middle, but within minutes of switching off my head torch I hear John's voice say, "it's a little bit tight in here, Mark. I'm right up against the wall of the tent." He's wider than Ulla, so I roll over, but then spend an uncomfortable night rolling into each of them in turn without finding a space of my own. The following morning John complains that Ulla didn't seem to roll into him quite as much as I did when it was her turn in the middle.
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