Markha Valley Trip Day 7 Nimaling to Shang Sumdo

Nimaling 1 August 2010 6:15am 4750m
The last day of trekking. Tonight we camp at the road head at Shang Sumdo and tomorrow drive to Leh. It is cold this morning. I have kept on a merino top and long johns while I have breakfast. The nausea seems to have gone and I hope it doesn't return when I have breakfast. I used both sleeping bags and wore long johns and a merino top to bed - rather than just tee shirt and knickers that I wear at lower levels. After lying awake between 1 & 3 am with stomach ache I slept in - till 5:30am a whole half hour than I slept other nights in the tent.

6:30am
The nausea did return as soon as I tried to eat and I turned own most of Pema's cooking.

7:30am Part way up Gongmaru La
The group of 6-10 of us going up early are being followed by a dog. It keeps fairly close and stops if we stop. There is a huge group of 20 or 30 that started out at the same time but they have quickly fallen behind. I have already climbed the ridge from Nimaling and about half the easier meadow - not that much is easy at this height. Ahead lies a really steep climb of about 200m.

8:20am Gongmaru La 5200m
There is cloud covering the mountains so the view is not very good. It says in the guidebook that on a clear day you can see the Karkoram Mountains from here. The sun is out however and I am out of the wind so it is very pleasant. It took just over 1.5hours to get here (the guide book suggests 1.5 to 2hr) so with luck I can reach Shang Sumdo before 4:30pm. I think it is going to be a hot day.

11am Chu Skurmo 4200m
The guide book says there is a tea tent at Lartse - about 2.5km from Gongmaru La. I was starting to get tired shortly before reaching here and worried that I was tired before making Lartse and would never make it to Shang Sumdo. But either the tent wasn't there or I'm blind. It took 4hrs 15min well under suggested time. I last saw the dog that followed me from Nimaling about an hour ago. I know it is ahead of me somewhere as the valley is too narrow for it to have gone back up the valley without me seeing.

Some horsemen at the tea tent shared their Nepalese bread with me.

There was a group of men and women "working on the road" as Pema put it. What they were doing is repairing the track. We were all asked to make a donation to the workers - greatly encouraged by the guides. Out of the group of 8 that was around me I think they got about Rs1000 - should be enough to keep them going for another week.

Chu Skurmo means Bitter Stream. As the name suggests the river water is very poor quality.

3pm Shang Sumdo 3810m
I arrive here just over an hour ago. The mandatory walking is over but I will shortly go for an explore of the village. My ankle stood up really well only giving pain when placed on uneven ground.

I met the dog at Chogdo (or Chokdoo) going with a French party heading towards Nimaling but uncertain they would make it today. And realistically I think since it is about 7 hours from Chu Skurmo to Nimaling going up hill. The French party didn't seem to want the ogs company. It should have waited for me near the tea tent. I would have share my lunch with it.

The horseman whose name I will never get to know now, set off just after 2pm for Choklamsar which is just a kew km from Leh. I can't imagine he will make it by nightfall - I did notice he had packed some food.

5:30pm Shang Sumdo
While still a squat toilet the one here is a vast improvement. It is clean - it even comes with a supply of fresh dried horse dung for spreading on anything that misses the hole. I could relax using it - something I couldn't do at Nimaling. The only difficulty is a stone wall that has to be climbed so if I need my usual midnight trip that could be a challenge.

I went for a walk along the road towards Shang. The road is being upgraded but I cannot make sense of why they are putting in huge effort to build squared off heaps of stones after breaking them, My assumption is that at some stage a road roller will come, the stones spread across the road and rolled. How they expect to get a decent road out of these huge stones baffles me. I can't imagine the current technique of local rock being broken up by hand by men using hammers will make the fine chip required for a top coat on the road.

7:40pm
The guide book says you have to walk to Karu to catch a bus to Leh so I was surprised when a bus arrived here this afternoon at 5pm very full - all the seats plus 3 on the roof but none standing inside. The bus is a Tata 407 (a Mercedes Benz copy) and a 4x4 version. It left at 5pm and came back half an hour later - no idea where it went but that isn't long enough to get far. This bus would never pass a CoF in NZ. A rock is placed behind the wheel whenever the bus is parked so clearly the handbrake doesn't work.

Dinner tonight was superb - potato cakes, pizza, salad and apple pie all share with marc from France. Pema and Marc's cook shared the cooking but I think it was Marc's cook who did most of the work.

It is so quiet here the horses have all left the camp so there are no horse bells and the stream is small an fairly quite so no roaring water either. I just noticed this when some horses went past bells ringing.