NEPAL--The Dhaulagiri Trek Continues

The Dhaulagiri Ordeal -- Day Twelve
We woke early, skipped the tea and wash water, and I ate a quick bowl of noodles and then we started down. Laura's lack of appetite meant she did not need breakfast, and so we started back to Italy Base Camp. The clouds were gone, and the mountains, bare and alien things, loomed over us. We saw where the ice had come down over the night, and though it had seemed only meters from us, it was quite distant. Now we could see the icy
waterfalls around us, the water black against the rock. Now we could see the miles upon miles of glacier that stretched down the valley. Now we could see how steep the trail had been the other day and why I was so exhausted. As for my health, the night had been dreadful, was not well slept, but I felt fit enough. And as Laura descended, her health returned, so that at the base of the glacier, we had a brunch of cashews and raisins, and then pushed on, down the barren, landslide valley, so eerily beautiful with its cold, inhospitable cliffs. It took hours for the sun to finally reach the floor of the valley, but when we could feel its warm rays upon us, we stripped, layer by layer.

Our path took us again by the Germans, Thomas and David, and we helloed them. David, it seemed, was progressing no better with his health, and so they thought they too would be going back to Beni. Secretly, I hoped that we would need the helicopter we had seen two days earlier, though Laura later intimated that was the very thing she did want at the time. Back over the landslide trail, and I said that I thought though we would not be making the pass to French Camp because we did not have to do the dreadful trail once,
but twice! It was slow, but we finally made it to Italy Base Camp where we rested in clouds that brought moisture if not rain. Rain falls down on one, with the clouds at Italy Base Camp, one seems to just walk through water. Nepal, so serviceable, if the rain does not come to you, you can go to it! Such a long way we walked down that day! To think, we had walked up it the day before. Exhausted, still sick, we fell into our tent. That night Laura got sick again in the middle of the night, so we knew for sure we needed to decend the next day.

Clear view in the morning from Glacier Base Camp, before we decended. It looks like we're on the moon! That's the closest we got to Dhaulagiri, its the path we would have followed had we continued.

We made it off the glacier alive!

The monkey trail back down the mountain towards Italy Base Camp. Wongdee held Laura's hand the whole way, what a saint!

The Dhaulagiri Ordeal -- Day Thirteen
Now we climbed down the way we had come, past the Forest Camp, past where Ram Krishna's wound had been discovered, but the way was easy, and with each step down, Laura felt better. And when the path went up, as it was wont to do, we tackled it far easier then, because, as the Chinese Propaganda Radio preaches, the more you walk the stronger you become, but with one great caveat: one must mix in resting with walking, or though you may get stronger, you will definitely become sicker! We walked through the jungle camp where Laura had slept the afternoon after her feverish night, and soon we were back at Doban, in our tent. It was a long day, but we went the distance of two days in one, a great improvement. I must say I was anxious to get back to Beni and then to Khatmandu. I longed for the gardens of the Khatmandu Guest House, and I had already chosen the books that I would buy from the used bookshop we liked so much in the Thamel District. Laura shook her head at me, but I was through, and wanted the creature comforts that we had lived without for so many days. Wongdee, it seemed, had mapped a
course for us, and that he would be able to pick up his next group in time. For that, we were very happy.

And guess who we met in Doban? None other than Thomas and David. They had given up going 'Round Dhaulagiri as well, and we shared our food with them. They told us of how their guide had gotten them lost (he was not a Sherpa, but some other caste, and a rather silly fellow on top of that!). They had spent a week on buffalo trails, going up mountains and then back down, circling and circling, and they swore that while they might not have reached great altitude, their aggregate altitude that they had climbed going up and down matched those that scaled Everest! And they had been eating what the locals eat, Dal Baht for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and at tea. In a word, they worshipped Dawa for his art and threw such sums of money at him, that they were invited in for dinner! And like stray kittens, once we fed them, we couldn't be rid of them, which was all right with us for we adored Thomas and his taciturn brother, even before their invitation to stay with them in Germany during the Europe leg of our odyssey.

Laura & Aaron say goodbye to Dhaulagiri as they're leaving Italy Base Camp

Thomas & David, our German friends

More, more, more, onto Day 14