Trekking to Goecha La

And so I left on an 8-day trip with people I had met just the night before. Since I was supposed to be heading south, I had only summer clothes, and I didn’t nearly have enough cash to pay for it (there’s no ATM in the small village I was in); well prepared as always. Luckily, I could rent a good jacket, and my kind Danish friend was prepared to lend me a huge amount of money (especially by Indian standards).

The group was nice and international: I shared a guide with a Hungarian girl, a Frenchman, an Aussie, an Israeli and an Indian girl from Mumbai; a different group (but we would always walk and eat with them) was composed of an elderly German couple and a young German girl; and a third group consisted of two Czech couples, with whom we didn’t interact that much. Except for the couples, everybody was traveling on his own, which gave excellent conditions for good social interaction.

The first day, we had to climb to the village of Tsokha (3000m), at 19km from our starting point Yuksom (1800m). The first few hours of the hike were truly beautiful. The trail led us up and down, alongside the flanks of the green hills, offering superb views with waterfalls from high above between the trees and rivers deep down in the valleys. The last six kilometers were a steep ascent to Tsokha. When we paused in a village at 2700m, we noticed the nice view had completely disappeared. Dark clouds had gathered, and echoes of thunder reached us from the other side of the mountain. We left quickly to reach Tsokha in time, but after a few minutes, the first rain drops started to fall. The rain soon turned into a blistering hail, and the small paths into muddy streamlets. By the time we reached the hut, we were soaked to the bone and shivering from the cold. Bad news awaited us: the yaks, which carried our bags with dry clothes, hadn’t arrived yet and were delayed by the storm. To make it worse, it’s illegal to make a fire in Sikkim. Our only source of heat – as would be the case throughout the rest of the journey – was the cup of tea we gratefully accepted from our guide. For more than one hour, which seemed like an eternity, we waited for those damn yaks, unable to get warm in our wet clothes. On the bright side, it did greatly accelerate the social cohesion. Sitting close together, shivering by candlelight; handing each other warm clothes (I lent someone my jacket and borrowed someone else’s pants) and sharing the only available blanket; trying, with frozen hands, to play some tunes on the guitar we had brought; it was cold as hell, but, as the Germans call it, gemütlich. That night set the tone for the rest of the trek. The thunderstorm that had surprised us that day wasn’t just bad luck; the weather followed the same pattern every day. In the morning, the sky was clear, offering sunshine and stunning views. Then, invariably, around noon, clouds would appear on the horizon. Around 2pm, the fog would kick in, and in the late afternoon we would get rain, hail or even snow. Locals know these are just the symptoms of early monsoon; they just forgot two warn us, just as they didn’t really warn us for the cold (“don’t worry, it’s spring!”, dixit the travel agent). So there I was, absolutely unprepared, with my summer clothes and a sleeping bag with a comfort limit of 11°C, when the temperature on some occasions would drop well below zero at night. Every evening I had to fight to get a blanket, and even so I was cold every single night – and I wasn’t the only one. We slept in huts, always with at least one broken window and/or cracks in the walls, so that didn’t really help.

After our first cold night, we were to go from 3000m to 4000m, to a place called Dzongri. Since my travel advice pamphlet urged me not to ascend more than 500m a day above 3000m and my doctor/father had warned me numerous times about altitude sickness, I was a bit worried, which my companions seemed to find quite amusing. Fortunately, apart from a strange pressure in my head and a short moment of feverishness, I turned out to be fine; the guide did confirm that sometimes people get sick, though. The path, that second day, was pretty steep, but the setting was again superb, with lots of rhododendrons and magnolias in bloom. As always, the hike ended in the fog, so we didn’t get the rewarding view at the end. Dzongri is the place where we would acclimatize; we would spend two nights there, to let our bodies get used to the altitude. This acclimatization, though it might sound a bit boring, turned out to be one of the nicest parts of the whole trekking. An American guy and a German girl (both thirty something) were stranded there, waiting for some permit; with them and the others we spent hours chattering, playing games, sipping tea and eating biscuits. Sehr gemütlich indeed! It wasn’t all resting and playing, though; the second day, we woke up at five to climb up to a ridge and see the sunrise. At last we got a first clear view of the magnificent white peaks of the Himalayas. After that, three brave ones (which included, you’ve guessed it, your faithful narrator) ascended to the Dzongri La pass (4500m) for and even better view. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, the clouds had closed on the panorama like big white curtains.

On day four, being fully acclimatized, we walked to Thangsing (3840m), the place from which we would ascend to the pass of Goecha La (4940m), the main objective of the trip, the next day. After walking for some time, we got to a ridge, and my heart leapt up with joy: the white mountains seemed so big and close by! We could finally really see what we were walking to. We arrived in Thangsing in time to admire the extraordinary beauty of the place. It lies at the end of a gigantic plain, formed by a melted glacier. There are hills at both sides of the plain, making it kind of a huge canyon. At the end of this canyon, almost like a fata morgana, emerges a massive mountain with snowy peaks. At the left side of the valley, a turbulent river makes its way through a small gorge of its own. It’s great to sit at the side of the river, shielded from the wind, when the sun shines and the view is splendid…a paradise. But paradise can turn into a kind of hell quickly. After a couple of hours, the nice view and the sun had made room for a dense fog. We were sitting in the hut, trying to ignore the cold by challenging each other with riddles, when all of a sudden we noticed that there was a true blizzard going on outside. Snow poured down from the sky and heavy winds were blowing away the tents, causing their owners to struggle with ropes and rocks. The cold was worse then ever, and we were craving for a source of heat so much that we were even considering making an illegal fire. It wouldn’t have been the first time; some people had plundered the roof of one of the huts for wood. The snow was bad news for us. We were supposed to wake up at 2 that night to ascend to Goecha La, the highlight of the trip. The guide said it might be too dangerous with the snow. It kept snowing and snowing, which further diminished our hope. We decided we would wake up at 2 (we had to leave so early to reach Goecha La before sunrise) and evaluate the situation at that moment, so we went to bed early.
When around midnight nature’s call woke me up (that’s what you get with all that tea) and I somehow found the courage to go out in the cold, it was still snowing and the ground was covered with a white layer of 5cm. Having lost all hope of going to Goecha La that night, I went back to bed, expecting the guide wouldn’t even bother to wake us up. So I wasn’t really mentally prepared when, a bit after 2, the American dashed into our hut: “Wake up, the sky is clear, let’s go!”. Although the snow hadn’t disappeared, the guide considered it worth trying, not promising we would actually reach the pass. So off we went, after a tea and two cookies, in the dark, cold, snowy night with our flashlights. The first part of the hike, we walked in the valley, towards the big mountain at the end. The scenery was beautiful and surreal. With the starry sky and the white, mountainous landscape, I felt like we were walking on the moon. The snow we had cursed so much the night before turned out to be a blessing. There’s a lesson in that… I tried to enjoy the view, although I had to concentrate on the path and the many small rivers we had to cross. After some time, as the stars started slowly disappearing, the typical blue glow of the snow allowed us to turn off our flashlights. Unfortunately, we had only one guide (one was ill), so we couldn’t move faster than the slowest person; we were going to miss the sunrise. As we slowly started climbing, we reached Samti Lake (4200m). This small lake was, to me, the most wonderful place of the whole trek. With its sharp outline and perfectly still surface, it forms a big natural mirror, reflecting the surrounding mountains. The lake is the starting point of a steep ascent to Goecha La. With the sun about to rise, we left the guide with the slower ones and started climbing at an excruciating pace. The air was getting really thin now, and more than once I had to stop to catch my breath. Meanwhile, the sun was already caressing the tops of the highest peaks. Not much later, we reached the pass. We had (kind of) made it! Mount Kangchenjunga (8586m), third highest in the world, The Mountain where it’s all about, was already partially covered by clouds, but it didn’t matter; the view was still amazing. After the first moments of euphoria, we slowly got our senses back: cold! Sweaty from the effort, in the freezing wind, we were cooling down rapidly. We waited for the others to arrive, which took almost one hour. In the meantime, between two pictures, we kept warm by singing and dancing. “Incredible”, I thought, ”I was supposed to be in South India by now, and here I am instead, dancing the Macarena in the snow at 5000m altitude!”. Great moments. New feelings of euphoria arose when the others one by one reached the top - we hadn’t thought they were going to make it. After a quick group picture, we started the descent. Having reached our goal, we could finally take it easy and enjoy the view. By the time we got back to the lake, the sun had risen above the mountain tops. We took a beautiful break there, before heading back to Thangsing. The rest of the day, we got some well-deserved rest. When I saw a group of Indian crew (cooks, porters, etc.) playing football on the plain, I joined them. I had to catch my breath after every action, but it was doable. Football at 4000m altitude, check!

The next 3 days, we slowly headed back to Yuksom. I felt like I was returning from a successful mission, satisfied and enjoying the rest of the time. We visited a couple of nice lakes along the way, but the weather had turned even worse. When we got back to Tsokha (where we had spent the first and the last night), Yuskom was visible far away in the valley: civilization! It’s funny how fast one gets estranged. We were glad to get back to bearable temperatures and relative comfort after our short, but intense trek.

And then it was time to say goodbye again; I had to leave to Kolkata the next morning to catch a plane to Chennai. From North to South, from snow to 40ºC, from the mountains to the coast, everything was going to change again!

Right now I have spent three weeks in Tamil Nadu, living with a local family and working for their organization. I have been teaching English to children in a village for two weeks, which was quite challenging; I’ll write about it soon. I was planning to stay a bit longer, but since it’s summer holidays here, there’s not much work to do. So it’s best for me to travel around in South India for two weeks, and return in June, when the projects will start again. It’s a bit of a pity, because I was just starting to feel a bit at home there, but now I’m in backpacker mode again!

Thanks for reading this and for all the positive comments, it’s nice to hear and encourages me to fulfill my resolution of trying to write a good blog. Feedback is always appreciated! As is news from you, of course:-)