Dobato – Yangle

After a freezing cold night in the tents we all quickly threw on our trekking clothes and clambered out of the frozen tents and our eyes were filled again with a scene from a fantasy book – 6000m+ snow capped peaks and an icy landscape. We ate breakfast al fresco wearing our full warmers kit and then quickly set off descending down the valley and into the rhododendron forest where the temperature was a balmy 0^oC. At one point we were actually walking in the river bed but thankfully it was not surging unlike when we return during monsoon season. At the bottom of the river valley we turned into what is commonly known as ‘rock fall valley’. This area is particularly prone to landslides and many people and animals have succumbed to this fate. A group of porters began to sing local Nepali songs while in the valley and they were almost caught in a moderate landslide but fortunately they were fleet-footed enough to get out of danger. Maybe that was a divine intervention to stop the singing? Paul and Matt were amusing themselves by playing the mouth organ after they had left the danger area and suddenly they were surrounded by a huge group of porters and Dawa our head Sherpa. An impromptu dance-off ensued in which Dawa was the star of the show. Although Paul was shown up by one of the female porters as she was able to get the crowd going with her tunes.

We arrived at our next camp site after only 4 hours so this was one of our shorter days trekking. Again our morale was elevated massively by piping hot noodle-soup on arrival. This was quickly deflated as we tried again to send a blog update and the BGAN and laptop were both out of power. This was due to being out of direct sunlight for most of the day when we were trying to charge the batteries with a solar panel. Dinner was welcome when it arrived and we feasted on dhal baat (Nepali rice and lentils) and tinned fruit. As it was pitch black at 1830 we all slowly crept back to our tents to read, compose diary entries and then sleep by 2000.