Day 19

Tuesday 16 Oct 2018

At 6am the tents were all frosted and an alpine glow surrounded our camp, the vast expanse of ‘Table Mountain dominated the head of the valley to the East while Jeje Kangphu towers above the village to the North. By 7am the valley was shrouded in a low mist so back to bed with tea on our rest day!

By the time we had breakfast the sun was burning back to blue sky and a team of yaks were being loaded for the remaining New Zealand Group.

They were heading due South on a shorter alternative taking another day off their trip but a hard 7 hour climb over 5200m (Sintia La). We started getting reports of a bad storm in Nepal that had resulted in the death of 9 Koreans and their team while at a base camp to climb a 7000m peak (Mt Gorja). The Thimphu office also informed us that bad weather was on it’s way for us the day after tomorrow when we are going over a 5000m pass. This may be our last day of comfort! Chozo villagers sauntered through our camp while we cleaned and aired our clothing, we were warned they would just stop and stare and that was what they did.

Taller in stature than other Bhutanese, the people of Chozo clearly not only had a tradition of trading with the North, but also carried some Tibetan in their genes. We whiled away the day reading, interrupted only by the grunt of yaks and schoolchildren peering into our tent eager to practice their English. Three helicopters passed up the valley and then a young woman together with a few army personnel came through our camp, we chatted briefly and leaned that she was a teacher from the school in Lhedi and was on her way to Thanza where she will be an official in the polling station for the forthcoming General Election. The helicopters were bringing out electronic voting boxes and Tshering later explained that the election on Thursday is to be contested by two remaining parties. Interestingly, the only concern amongst the electorate is, not who will win, but who will loose as all the candidates are admired for their policies. Like so many other aspects of Bhutanese culture, they seem to have turned modern world attitudes up side down.
We finished the evening with another Birthday celebration for Michael and a fabulous cake made on a single burner by our cook, Tseten.

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