Leh

The bicycle trip over, Olik’s head fine, and my desire to concur mountains greater than ever, we decided to go ahead and put together a trek. Now, this was my first trek, and having no experience or knowledge whatsoever about the ins and outs of trekking, we decided to go ahead and do the hardest trek we could find. Actually, Olik climbs artificial rock walls in Israel and he wanted to do a trek that incorporated mountain climbing. This sounded good to me. After visits to a lot of different adventure travel agencies, we found out about the Stok-Kangri trek. Stok is a village 10 kilometers south of Leh nestled at the foot of the Stok Range. Kan is snow in Ladaky, and Gri is Mountain, and Kangri is Snow Mountain. Therefore we were going to climb to the peak of Stok-Kangri, or Stok Snow Mountain, at a height of 6100 meters! The trek was to start at Stok village (3700), ascend to 4700 on the first day, sleep at the first camp, then ascend another 400 meters the next day to 5100 and sleep at the first base camp. The second day at 1:30 am the climb to the peak was to start, a climb from 5100 to 6100 meters! Then the third day we rest and sleep at the same base camp and come back the whole way on the fourth day.

We organized our trip through Himalayan Adventure Outback Travels with a very pleasant and knowledgeable 27 yr old travel agent and former trekking guide named Tsewang. At first Olik and I had assured him that we would be getting a group together for the trek. We spent the next two days trying to find people but to no avail. It ended up being Olik and me, and one other 23 yr old Israel named Yoav, a recently released Maglan fighter (some kind of serious elite unit in the IDF) and a serious trekker, having completed a dozen treks in New Zealand, Australia, and South East Asia in the last year. His return flight to Israel was two weeks from the date and so this was to be his final trek.

The price was relatively high, at $42/day. Normally treks are not so pricey, but everything is more expensive in Leh due to the high elevation and higher cost of shipping food and materials. Also, a climbing trek is more expensive than a regular walking trek due to the safety and climbing equipment needed such as ice picks and spikes for the shoes to walk on glaciers, as well as highly trained climbing guide. The price also included a full time cook and food, a donkey man, five donkeys, all the tents, mattresses and sleeping bags. We got lucky with the best guide available, Nagmyal.

We met at six on the morning of the trek after placing most of our luggage in the Jewish House with Nachmun, the “warm and fuzzy” rabbinical student. I had bought some extra clothing for the trek, including a genuine Yak beanie that was just finished by an old lady sowing beanies in a small local market for 140 rupees. I also bought a double fleece sheep wool coat that would surely keep me warm in the sub freezing temperatures nighttime temperatures of Stok Range. This I was to wear over another fleece, thermal and long johns. I was also provided with a pair of serious mountaineering gloves by the agency and a pair of mountaineering sunglasses that one of the previous climbers had forgotten with the agency.

After loading the jeep with our equipment and bags (I took only my blue backpack) we headed to Stok Village. After 30 minutes and a stop for breakfast we made Stok, loaded the donkeys, said hey to the cook, and headed out on the trek. The first day was not so hard. Though we climbed nearly 1000 meters, we were relatively acclimatized to the altitude having been in Leh for nearly five days already. We walked on a path through a desert valley full of horses and donkeys. After stopping at a make-shift tea stall and chatting with other trekkers in the finishing stages of other treks, we continued towards our first destination. We arrived in the afternoon and were surprised to see that our tents were already set up, our donkeys already grazing, and our cook already cooking in the main kitchen tent setup. Nagmyal was sitting smoking a cigarette, something we noticed he did every time we either took a break or arrived somewhere.

The weather in Leh and Stok is hot during the day and shivering cold at night, and in the high altitude of Stok these differences are even more pronounced. As the weather turned cold we added layers of clothing, and by eight PM I was wearing 80% of the clothing I had brought with me. The service provided on the trek was something of a world I had never before experienced. Immediately upon arrival in camp the cook would serve us with hot mint or black tea and biscuits on an impromptu table with a bright red and black checkered tablecloth. We sat and ate the biscuits and drank the tea while marveling at the unbelievable valley in front of us. After about an hour of chatting and marveling at the level of service we were receiving and how every dollar we spent was really worth it, the cook served us dinner. That night we ate tuna momo, fried rice, baked potatoes with a dal sauce, and a cucumber salad. For dessert we were handed Kit Kats.

Most of the time we sat with Nagmyal, our Ladahky guide with big dark dreadlocks hanging together in blue-pink head scarf. Nagmyal is a 27 year old Ladaky trekking guide who has been leading treks for the past 8 years. Before that he learnt the ropes by being a porter or helping out other guides on similar treks. He grew up in a small Tibetan village on the outskirts of Leh with his parents and brother and sister. He never went to school but instead spent time working with his mother and father in the house milking cows and making cheese. His passable English he learnt from a friend, and his life experience led him the aura of a wise Tibetan scholar. Nagmyal also had an eight year old son produced from a fling with a girl when he was 18 years old. The mother had long since disappeared, and Nagmyal told me his life now was all for his son; to give his son the education and life that Nagmyal’s parents could not afford to give him.

He now drove a 500cc Honda that he had bought with savings, and was saving more to open a outdoor camping equipment store in Leh. Trekking guides, and especially climbing guides with knowledge of a foreign language could make good money in Leh. Though the season is only four to five months long, the guides work round the clock to save money because they are basically unemployable the rest of the year. Leading treks in other parts of the country or in Nepal is nearly impossible since most agencies give preference to local guides and much resentment is targeted towards non-local, especially Nepali, guides. I asked about the cook who was Nepalese and Nagmyal said that in a few years he would no longer be allowed to work in Leh, as the local community was developing strong protectionist measures against Nepalese workers in Leh.

We slept extremely well that first night and were woken at six in the morning by the cook with two cups of tea. Olik and I shared one tent, while Yoav was alone in another. After waking up and having a breakfast of omelettes, toast, jam and cereal, we packed our things and headed out towards the base camp. We left before the cook and donkey man had wrapped up all our things, and as usual they were to meet us at our destination.

The trek was short but difficult. At an altitutude of over 4700 meters we were beginning to feel the effects of high altitude trekking: difficulty breathing and constant lethargy. The path was rocky and steep, and with every step the walk became more difficult. Olik had particular trouble due to his cigarette smoking, while I coasted along pretty much until the end, where I started falling behind. Yoav, the star trekker walked with along with Naymyal far ahead and reached the base camp 20 minutes before Olik and I.

At base camp we setup the tent, drank more tea, and stared engagingly at the huge snow-capped Himalayan peaks that suddenly surrounded us from all directions. We were at 5100 meters now and the weather was cold even when we arrived at 12 noon. After eating a lot and drinking numerous cups of tea, we headed to our tents at 7pm to sleep until 1 am when we were to be awakened for the big climb to the Stok peak. I couldn’t sleep until 9 pm, and was seriously groggy when Tal the cook woke us at one. We had arranged all the climbing gear in our bags and were already half dressed when we were woken. We put on every item of clothing we brought, pissed, ate a gnarly soup of ginger and garlic that Nagmyal said was very helpful for breathing in high altitude climbing, and set out.