14th – The Walk Begins

With an early start from the hotel we were picked up at 0730 with all our luggage and daypacks and were driven to Spituk just outside Leh. The girl who was sick yesterday felt much better this morning but to avoid overexertion she got a ride to today’s campsite together with our luggage.

The rest of us had a relatively short day ahead of us. We were to walk app. 5 hours along the road before reaching our destination which was Zinchen camp at 3200m. While it at the beginning didn’t feel as charming as one might have hoped to just walk along the paved road through the landscape we soon put villages and constructions sites behind us and found ourselves walking on the road with tall cliffs surrounding us, following the river Indus.

We had been picked up at the hotel early to avoid the high temperatures of the day, but when arriving at around 1300 at the camp we could still agree that it had been very hot already. Luckily most of the time breezes were able to decrease the temperatures to a tolerable level, but at soon as be made a turn or somehow came out of the wind it was obviously it suddenly got noticeable warmer.

The afternoon was spent relaxing. The camp site is an established one so a few groups arrived during the day. No problems whatsoever, but the amount of pack animals (horses and donkeys, and probably the occasional mule) was surprisingly high. But we are a group of 11, 12 (!) helpers (2 guides, cooks, kitchen staff, animal handlers etc.) and 23 animals, so if the other groups are similar the numbers of animals quickly increase. The interesting thing was that we saw a lot of animals but not near enough tourists to justify them, so it seems that the site is used for parking while tourists camp somewhere else.

Funny thing; before dinner we were all handed a brand new roll of toilet paper. I wonder if it is because they don’t have faith in their own cooking, but I hope it’s just to make sure we have the necessary remedies for when we have the need/urge. Always prepared!

The river Indus.

Freaky rock formations.