Kauri Pass Trek
After an evening in the Oasis restaurant on High Bank, we managed only a few hours sleep before departing on the trek.
It was a hard drive on very bumpy roads. Most of the way was incredibly hot, until we arrived at the final part of the track when it started to rain. Stuck in a town out of “DEliverance”, the suspension on our van had broken, so we had to get a local jeep to take us on the final bumpy track. The track was slippy and we came quite close to the edge at some points. The first night was camping by the river.
Each day we left around 8am, and trekked for 4-5 hours. This was a vbery civilised way to trek: with cooks, horsemen, and a pack of horses to carry all the gear. The scenery ranged from bamboo jungle, to cedar and pine forests; grassy meadows to snow fields. All of it was very impressive. It was hard going at times, partly due to the alititude and often due to the heat. The total trek took 7 days and was around 70km in length. The highlight was teh view as we traversed the Kauri pass on the 5th day. We were lucky to have 3 days of good views of the peaks separating India from China and Nepal.
We spent two nights camping with this view, and took a short hike to a viewpoint of Nanda Devi (about 7800m high and harder to climb than Everest).
The weather followed a predictable pattern: warm and clear all day and then clouding over late afternoon, with some chilly wind, before a clear evening perfect for star gazing. Some days you saw no-one, others just the odd shepherd and his goats. Whenever we passed through a village, we attracted a lot of attention from the village children. On our second day, we had attention for most of the daylight hours, playing games with them, and generally just being stared at!
All in all a very enjoyable way to spend 9 days- though I now really do need to move on…
Tags: Travel
Nick