Ladakh
Markha valley and ascent of Stok Kangri - August 2006
Day 14 - Walking up from the village of Stok towards Stok Kangri base camp
We leave Leh early in the morning and drive to the village of Stok. Following more or less the river it takes a good 4 hours to reach camp. It is obvious that the river was much higher and it has damaged the path in places forcing us at times to make some tricky detours into the crumbling cliffs.
The weather is mainly grey with a few bits of blue sky. The landscape is desertic but with some very steep grassy slopes on which a few yaks are grazing.
Some of these rock spires are reminiscent of cathedrals such as Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
Camp is near a summer yak pasture (with a yak herds hut), a little above
the river bed and really gives one a sense of being in the mountains.
As
soon as we arrive it starts raining quite heavily. It might make crossing
and recrossing the stream a difficult affair tomorrow.
We are already
quite a bit higher than Leh, maybe 4300m and it is the first time since
we are in Ladakh that I need to put on some warm clothes.
Day 15 - To Stok Kangri base camp
It's a damp grey morning with occasional rain.
The walk is easy and climbing steadily up the valley but you can start feeling the altitude (the camp is at 4900m). We see lots of marmots as well as a few blue sheep (also called bharal, it is a goat).
The camp is quite crowded with maybe 20 tents.
I walk up towards the high camp in the afternoon. It's definitely hard to pace myself and I notice that all these changes in our itinerary did not help a good acclimatisation.
