Day 8

Friday 5 Oct 218

From Chebisa, the path steeply climbed slopes high above the river to the Gobu La at 4450 metres. We saw bharal (blue sheep), lammergeier, eagles and some griffon vultures.
The cloud lifted, parted but never quite gave us the distant views of the big mountains, We walked down through a native rhododendron forest that, unlike in British plantations, still allowed other species of trees to grow and the autumn leaves gave a beautiful patchwork of green and red. Descending to the main river (Shagipasa) for lunch and a rest in the sun, we were soon climbing again through juniper forests before contouring high around a hill side and into a hanging valley to our camp near Somothang (4150m). As we looked down we were alarmed to see our horses trampling through what appeared to be a freshly prepared terrace for planting vegetables but as we got closer Tshering, our guide and his team were carving our camp site from the hillside.

That evening we tried to stop Tshering apologise for the primitive camp and we asked how the horses were. “they are all tied up so no problem” but no sooner had he said this, one horse broke loose and started demolishing the dining tent. The horse problem had been brewing ever since Jhomolhari base camp, the New Zealand group had lost some horses and our team lent them some food until they finally turned up at 11pm. We subsequently loaned horses to this team on another occasion and so it seemed the last straw as we descended into our valley to camp that the Kiwis had taken the only available camping spot resulting in our improvised camp.

Distance 12km 7hrs

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