Safely home

Nate and I returned safely home last night from our backpacking trip. We're still waiting for our children to return from their adventure with our friends who took them for the past 4 days, so in this peace and quiet that I've been given, I'll try to write a bit about our hike and I'll post some pictures later.
We went with another couple after school got out on Wednesday afternoon, drove for about 6 hours through the mountains until we reached Hanumanchatti, a small village situated at the confluence of the Yamuna and Hanuman Ganga rivers at an altitude of about 1800 m. Even though we arrived at about 8 pm, the town was bustling with potato sack haulers, piles of potatoes, and trucks loading up sacks and sacks of potatoes. We ate an expensive meal of mediocre rice and dal (that left me reeling in the middle of the night), and put up our tents on the small flat area in front of the GMVN after I argued for about 20 minutes that we should only have to pay 50 rs per tent instead of the 100 rs the man claimed was the government fee... I won! Even though I slept poorly and was very sick in the night, morning arrived and we packed up our tents and things, hoisted our bags on our shoulders and headed up along the Hanuman Ganga river toward Seema, a high-altitude meadow which was our final destination. We followed donkeys with empty sacks on their backs heading up to the mountain villages on rocky, muddy trails, and were met by on-coming donkeys loaded with potatoes coming down into town. By the time we reached the tiny village of Kondola at around 1, we stared up at the cliffs high above us, the rain clouds approaching, and decided to call it a day. Kondola is at an altitude of 3050 m, so we had already hiked more than 1000 metres height that morning. We had lunch, set up our tents, and the rain came down. We all stayed dry and just rested for the afternoon, reading or napping in our tents. When it cleared up a bit, we hung out a little bit together, but the rain came again just as we were getting ready to cook dinner, so we settled for snacking in our tents and going to sleep early while the rain splashed around us. We got up early and headed further up the mountain- trying to find a round-about way up. We lost that trail and eventually stumbled across the other trail that went straight up the side of the cliff. It was like climbing stairs up another 400 m, and finally we reached Seema, which is at an altitude of 3450m (that's about 10,350 ft). A friend of ours pointed out to me that the altitude difference between where we began our hike and where we climbed to is about 4950 ft (a mile is 5280 ft), which we did in 2 days.

We were rewarded at Seema with an excellent up-close view of Bandarpunch (a mountain with a peak at 6316 m, which we can see sometimes from the mountain we live on). We enjoyed relaxing that afternoon together: collecting water to drink, playing cards, reading a bit, building a fire and fixing supper. The clouds gathered above us and dropped some rain, but Nate managed to make a roaring fire that kept us cozy until 9 or so, when the clouds cleared and he tried to get some night pictures of the Bandarpunch peaks... we have yet to see if any of them turned out. The next morning, Beth and I got up early to hike up another several hundred metres to see if we could get a better view of all the surrounding mountains. After about half an hour, we got up to where we thought we'd be able to see, but instead there was still another ridge in our way, so we climbed that one, and were faced with yet another one and then another. Finally we scrambled up one more ridge and there below us, spread out dozens of mountain ranges layering into the morning mist as far as our eyes could see. It was truly spectacular to stand on that tiny ridge and look far below us all around at the himalayas in all their beauty. I have never seen so many mountains all at once nor felt so on top of the world. We figure we were at an altitude of about 11,000 ft. We soaked it all up for a few minutes before heading back down to our campsite. The guys had started packing things up and we ate oatmeal together before bidding those high mountains goodbye. Down, down, down we went all day long, back along the steep paths we had come up the day before. We sat down for lunch where we had camped and decided to carry on to Hanumanchatti, in hopes that our taxi driver would be ready to drive us back home that night, even though it was a day earlier than we had told him we would leave. We had all just enjoyed our time out there but were ready to get home and have a day of real rest in the short break. Thankfully, when we arrived in Hanumanchatti, the driver was napping in his van and was ready to go immediately, so we made it home last night at about 9:30 and have enjoyed the precious gift of having an undisturbed night of rest and wonderful quiet around our house. The kids will be arriving soon to liven this place up, and I feel refreshed to spend all my time with them again. It's been a lovely long weekend and we're looking forward to hearing what our kids have been up to soon.