What! A! Day! One of the coolest (and hardest) yet for sure. We’ve taken an extra acclimatization day here in Samdo to make sure we’re totally ready to head over the pass in a couple of days, but also to do a side trip up to the Tibet border which we knew would take all day. 

The day started with a “good morning” and “are you getting out of bed?” from Mayla! No matter what time we ask for breakfast it seems to be ready early or late, and today it was early!! We quickly got ready, ate and were out the door at our planned 6:30 AM to begin the walk to the Tibet border. We knew it was going to be a big day, with a 1200m climb and 20km of trail in front of us.

We weren’t the only ones out and about on the trails - turns out it’s a very special harvesting season here in the region. All the locals were spending their days scouring  the mountains for a particular type of caterpillar. As I understand, instead of turning into a cocoon and then a butterfly, it burrows into the ground and then a plant grows from it. I’m not sure how much of this was lost in translation, but I’ll google it once I get WiFi again! (Hi from future Alice! I googled it, basically it’s a parasite that attacks a moth larvae, kills the host, and then grows a fungus from the corpse. It’s the fungus that’s actually used medicinally, known as Himalayan Viagra…). Apparently the locals can earn really good money from these, especially selling to China for medicinal purposes. Mayla was on the look out all day and we tried to help, but we didn’t find anything, and I’m not entirely sure we really knew what we were looking for!! 

We were both pleasantly surprised about our fitness and how easy the altitude felt (the best feeling)! The first half of the track was gradual and sidled above the river. We started in major yak territory, and these ones were huge!! As we began climbing we saw so many of the Himalayan Marmots I had spotted yesterday, they are very cute, reminding me of a cross between a fat cat and an otter. It definitely felt like we were getting higher and higher, with less plants around and much more of a desert, alpine feel. We crossed the (now very small) Budhi Gandaki River very close to its source glacier, which was super cool after following it for basically a week now! We also saw some mountain goat/deer/thar like creatures, I need to look them up once we are back in WiFi. (Hi again - these are called Bharal or Blue Sheep, they are native to the high Himalayas and the main prey of the Snow Leopord). They were in pack of about 15 including one really small baby, and let us get pretty close!! 

After about three hours we crossed the river we were following and the climb began. From here it was a pretty steep 600m climb, taking us all the way up to nearly 5,000m. We both approached it with strength, resilience and tenacity, and by putting one foot in front of the other got up in about two hours. At altitude walking up hills is even more of a mind game than at home, you have to slow your pace right down to keep your breathing and heart rate under control. It’s definitely a test of the saying “slow and steady”. The final push up to the border was across a soft scree slope, and before we knew it we could see the border complete with a fence, Chinese flag and a chortun on the Nepali side. We didn’t even have a headache and had both really enjoyed the walk, and were stoked to be up this high! There was a bit of cloud around so we didn’t get the best views ever, but it was still an amazing experience. 

We got the fright of our life when a truck pulled up on the other side, but it was just a group of Chinese tourists enjoying a tour through Tibet. Weirdly, they covered their number plates, so I couldn’t help think that something wasn’t quite right with them being up there!! We spent some time taking photos on both sides (the fence was down so there didn’t seem to be any immediate issue with crossing, we’ll see if they detain us at the Tibet border lol), and having a well earned snack tucked behind a rock to avoid the wind. Mayla was especially excited, this was his first time out of Nepal! 

The walk down felt long as walks down tend to do. It was like our brains were catching on to the Marmots though and we were suddenly seeing them everywhere!! The weather was packing in and once we got back it started to rain, which was actually a good sign for clearing up the skies for the coming days. We had a well earned pizza for dinner (it’s on the menu everywhere here so we thought we should try it at least once) and after a quick stretch crawled into bed with our books. Tomorrow is a short day so we were treating ourselves to a sleep in - bliss.