Nepal - Kangchenjunga trek
Day 3 - Shinchewa to Ponphe (1880m)
Nice warm morning but still no mountain views because of clouds to the East.
In the pictures on the right are some of our porters.
The one on the left is a 'kitchen porter' or kitchen assistant. Their role is to carry the kitchen equipment as well as assist the cook in preparing the food. They carry less than normal porters (in this picture it looks like a lot but it is more volume than weight) but have to walk faster because they are generally last to leave in the morning and want to be first to arrive (in order to start preparing food). This is often a job for young men.
In the right hand side picture the man at the front carries a gamow bag (actually if you want to be very exact this one was a PAC bag) which is a sort of portable hyperbaric chamber used for altitude sickness (if you cannot descend with the sufferer). Fortunately we didn't have to use it anywhere.
He was the oldest of our porters (50 years old) and became known as "Gamow man".
More houses with tree trunk beehives
This bamboo bridge crossing a stream at the foot of a waterfall was not Swiss-made and had to be crossed with care (damp bamboo is slippery). Luckily it wasn't high above the stream
This was a millet growing area and it was just being harvested.
At lunch time we got our first views of the mountains. Far in the distance, this is what we were heading for. Kangchenjunga South base camp was right at the foot of the mountains we could see. Still a long way to walk.
Getting a little closer with a telephoto lens, on the left picture you can see the peaks of Kabru, Ratong and Koktang (from left to right). Then a break in the cloud and we saw our first view of the amazing Jannu (7740m) a little to the west of the range.
