High Himalayan Heavens :Part three

Day 5 and 6 -

Shabu got us a room at a guest house for the morning, we pulled out sleeping bags and slept like logs. Later we were given a total of three rooms, all of us settled in. The guest house was neat and cozy and had a charm to it. Apart from us,the remaining rooms were occupied by foreigners,Velu snatched the opportunity to flirt with some pretty Iranian girls in the morning. The guest house had the owners living in two small rooms in the ground floor and a small garden in the backside where there grew their vegetables and many flowering plants. We had our first view of Stok Kangari,the peak we were set to climb the next day. It looked sinister :)! We climbed to Shanthi Stupa that morning, a quite and peaceful place atop a small hill in Leh town. It was pleasantly sunny ,with cold wind blowing. In one of the prayer halls, I read the story of Buddha and was confounded to learn that Lord Buddha was born from the right side of Queen Maya's chest. We spend the rest of the day ambling around Leh in the warm sunshine. A huge percentage of tourists here were foreigners,huge! Needless to say, the boys had a great time ogling at the foreign chicks. Only Airtel and BSNL postpaid phones work in Leh ,so we “judiciously” used Vidya's cellphone :).

The next morning,after a cloying meal of pancakes with honey and porridge ,we set out in a vehicle to Stok village. A short drive of 45 minutes got us to Stok village,the starting point for the trek . Our guide was Bhasker (didn't catch his Leh name ,some tongue twisting name starting from ”T”). a young boy of 19,with immense energy! It was lovely weather to trek in,not sunny nor cold. As it was the first for me in this terrain of barren hills and flat stones by the stream side, I was enamored. The water was cold and immaculately clear . Amazing . Our milestone for the day was to reach Manokorma,our first camping spot at 14,000ft . We encountered a lot of foreign trekkers on the way, fully clothed , dark glasses and walking sticks, we also saw many mules carrying a lot of luggage hauling its way . We took approximately five hours to reach Manokorma, a sad performance as compared to the estimated time of 3 hours. We were all fatigued . We set up up 4 tents, three for us and one for the staff . Manokorma was slightly crowded with many others camped there, all of course,were foreigners. Vidya and I slept in one tent, cozy but slightly chilly since it didn't zip up completely and none of the boys seemed to be interested to help us with it. Some of us got a slight headache because of the comparatively thinner air. In campsites like these and further ahead,there is always present, a mess tent,or rather a white canvas tent wherein all the guides and local men stay and cook for everyone camping at that altitude. We had hot Maggi for the fourth time in two days.