The sun is slowly coming up, but it does not help us much! Climbing Kang Yatze II in white-out.

There was that time I went to Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas to participate in a mountaineering expedition to two 6000+ metre peaks. From the outset this expedition was special to me for two reasons: 1) It was my first time trying to cross the 6000 m line, and 2) it was my first time attempting two major mountains in one go. By the end of the expedition, it had become special to me for a third reason: it was the first time I failed completely at any major goal I had set for myself.

In many ways the trip was amazing; I was in the process of writing my Master thesis at the time, and was using this trip to take a much needed break from writing. There were days when we were camping out in the middle of the mountains and spent most of the day tossing pebbles at a set of neatly positioned salt and peber cans, or making artictis drawings on big flat rock with...well, a smaller rock. Back to basis, really - and it was exactly what I needed at the time!

We had the most amazing team. I was the only foreigner on the team, but I still fitted in well with the rest of the team. We had so much fun in the mountains and I made great friends. We didn't really have much luck with the acclimatization process though. Due to some of our team members suffering from altitude sickness from early on, we were forced to spend extra days at a lower altitude in the beginning if the expedition, thereby running short of extra days to spend acclimatizing at higher altitude, should we come to need it - which I did!

By the time we were ready to attempt the summit of our first mountain, Kang Yatze II, at roughly 6200 m, one of our climbers had already been forced to abandon the expedition due to severe altitude sickness. She did not rejoin the team for the attempt of the second mountain either, because she - as I learned upon returning to Leh after the expedition - had been rushed to the hospital with stage 2 HACE, "High Altitude Cerebral Edema". Now, here's a fun fact for you: HACE is a brain swelling condition caused by the contineous lack of sufficient oxygen, and it is, in fact, a fatal condition if left untreated for too long. The lack of oxygen that causes the brain to swell generally leaves the climber confused, disoriented, with a poor sense of judgement, and unable to walk in a straight line (if at all!). In this case, the condition exposed itself when my team member was unable to even stand upright on her own, let alone judge the severity of her own condition. More specifically, she was not at all interested in abandoning the expedition, even though she had been barely strong enough to walk and was experiencing near constant nausea and the occasional vomiting for days at the time (gotta give her props for toughness, at least!). In the end, the expedition leader had no choice but to put her on a donkey, very much againt her will, and send her down the mountain along with part of our crew. As I had been informed, the descision was made because consistant measuring of the amount of oxygen in her blood had come out at around 39%, and despite being given supplemental oxygen, her condition had not improved. For info it should be mentioned that when at sea level, the oxygen level in your blood should be very close to 100%. At altitudes as high as we were, it is not unusual for it to go down to the 80's or even high 70's in percentage. However, an oxygen level below 60% is considered critical at this altitude, so when her's kept coming out at around 39%, it doesn't really matter how loudly you insist that "I'm feeling fine! You are just sending me down because of a silly number!" - you are goind down the mountain on that donkey!

Yeah, so there was that...

Shortly hereafter the rest of us were ready to attempt the summit of Kang Yatze II. We had not been hopeful about the weather forecast though, as the entire region had been cursed with terrible weather the entire season. As you might have guessed by now, our team had no luck in this regard either. We started our summit attempt at 11 o'clock at night, climbing all throughout the night. By the time the sun rose, two more people had abandoned the expedition: one of my fellow climbers, who had succumbed to fatique, and one of our crew members, who had been struck by altitude sickness, causing contineous vomitting, and thus was forced to abandon the summit attempt.

Once we reached the steaper slopes of the mountain, covered in deep snow, the remaining three climbers and three crew members roped up and put on crampons (rows of metal spikes that are tied to the bottom of your climbing boots for snow climbing). Up until this point I had been doing well, and kept a steady pace (our expedition leader even noted that "this was clearly my day!"). Unfortunately, the rough conditiones were about to take their toll on the rest of us as well; I could not manage to move at the pace I wanted in the deep, soft snow, and the altitude too was really beginning to slow me down. In addition, the weather was working against us. Although the sun might have come up, our eyes were of little more help to us than when we were climbing in the dark night; storms and complete white-out blinded us from our parth - we could not tell the white shy apart from the white mountain floor of snow that was swallowing our legs up to our knees with each step. It was like climbing blind! We felt that any moment we could walk right off the edge of the mountain and disappear. We sat down to rest several times, waiting and hoping for the sky to clear and reveal to us what was solid ground and what was open air, so we could continue the ascent. During these breaks, I started to feel very cold and sleepy. While I shivered, I struggled to stay awake, and for this reason I objected to keeping the breaks too long. As soon as we were moving again, I felt no struggle staying awake.

We debated abandoning the summit attempt several times. The descision was finally made when were avbout to enter an area of the mountain prone to crevasses. The sky had not cleared, the storms kept coming and going, and we were moving too slowly. For the safety of everyone involved, we abandoned the climb, just 350 m below the summit. It was not the success we had been hoping for.

We returned to base camp tired and - for my part, at least, really hungry. Unfortunately, as I found, our base camp crew had not prepared any food for us, since they did not know when to expect us back. Being really tired, I decided to just go to sleep - a discision I really regret still! My body had been drained for energy, and since I had not managed to restock before going to sleep, I struggled to regain my strenght, and I did not even make it out of the tent for dinner.

The next morning when I woke up, my body was shaking from the lack of fuel, but I had also, unfortunatelty, completely lost my appetite (which is fairly coming at high altitude). For this reason, I only mananged to eat a little at breakfast, and I still felt very weak. This was the point where I really could have done with a rest day, to recover from yesterday's exhausting summit attempt. Unfortunately, since we had had to spend extra days at lower altitude, when my fellow climbers had to recover from altitude sickness, we did not have time to spare. Instead we were forced to pack up the camp and start the climb up to the base camp for our next mountain, Dzo Jongo, of 3600 m. This base camp was at roughly 5600 m, only about 250 m higher that the first base camp. But in my state, I was really in no condition to pack up and move along. I followed the group though, and made a very slow ascend to the base camp off Dzo Jongo.

I had only been at the new base camp for a few hours when I could tell that something was wrong. I could not tell what it was, but something in my body was definetely very wrong. I had this strange feeling like I was walking on the Moon; everything somwhow felt wrong and looked wrong. Knowing that one of the other climbers had already been sent down due to altitude sickness, I really wasn't keen to mention my current state. Having just failed the first summit attempt, I was very determined to at least make the second one! But I decided against staying silent, knowing that doing so would be unsafe and unfair to both me and my team members. I consulted our expedition leader who quickly took to measurring my oxygen level. It came out at 45%. Yicks, not that feeling of walking on the Moon suddenly made an awful lot of sense!

Having just ascended to the base camp of Dzo Jongo, we decided that I would just stay in my tent for the rest of the day and rest, hoping that I might acclimatize and my oxygen level rise. It did not go as I was hoping for. I had completely lost my appetite, and didn't dring much and was barely able to eat. Fun fact: recovering does not get easier, when you are unable to get fuel in your damn system! Unfortunately the team could not offer me supplemental oxygen, as my fellow team member who had already been sent down had used it all up. In the end, I ended up staying in my tent for nearly two days, during which I struggled to stay awake at any time, before I was sent down the mountain - without as much as having attempted the summit of Dzo Jongo! My three remianing team mates attempted the summit in the following days. None of them made the summit of Dzo Jongo, although one made a lower summit, just above 6000 m, on a different part of the mountain.

"Dzo Jongo"...the name's got a ring of unfinished business to it! At least to me.

Pictures From The Trek Before the Climb

Going up the mountain was a whole lot more peaceful than going down!

There was that time when I had to escape an imaginary mountain lion on a small mountain on a dark night in Udaipur, Rajasthan. On my trip through Rajasthan, I had come to the beautiful little city of Udaipur, where local voices would proudly inform me that the movie "Octopussy" had been shot (why was that so significant again?).

I was travelling solo and in Udaipur I met an Italian guy whom I teamed up with for a day of sightseeing. By dusk we decided to visit a small mountain at the egde of the city. Apparantly there was some monestary at the top which was supposed to be mesmerizing. We approched a rickshaw driver and as always tried to settle on a price for him to take us to the top of the mountain and back. I remember making a big effort to make sure we were on the same page about the price, pointing to the top of the mountain and waving my hands around in a manner I an convinced made me look less than sane to communicate effectively. Once we had reached an agreement, we got in and set off toward the mountain.

We were therefore surprised when we came to a gate less than halfway up the mountain and our rickshaw driver got out and told us that from here we had to take a taxi (which was of course ridiculously expensive) to drive us op there and back. He would then wait for us at the gate to take us back to the city. Now, this we weren't too pleased with, as you can imagine, since we specifically had made an agreement with the driver to take us all the way to the monestary and back and also made sure, that this was in fact possible. We therefore decided that, what the heck, we would just walk up the mountain and back because there was no way we were going to be tricked into paying for an expensive taxi. Of course this did not sit well with our driver, who insisted that it would get dark soon and the mountain was roaming with mountain lions lurking in the shadows only waiting for easy prey. Seeing as he had already scammed us about the price and how far he could take us, we decided not to take his word for it about the mountain lions either, believing it was just something he said to convince us to pay for an expensive taxi.

So we walked up the mountain to the monestary, only to realise that by the time we were about to go down it was indeed getting dark. Nevermind, we thought, we don't bite into the whole mountain lion thing anyway, so we started walking back. The trip down was longer than remembered, and sure enough, by the time it was pitch black dark, my friend got uneasy by the sounds in the mountains and started to wonder if there was something to that mountain lion story. A few drivers we had met on our way down has mentioned something similar, although we wrote it off as an attempt to make money by getting us into their car.

Feeling confident that we would be fine and that most animals would be scared off by noicy tourists anyway, I suggested we simply make an effort to be loud while walking down. My friend suggested we run down as fast as we could. We went with the latter suggestion. Or technically we went with both suggestions, coming down the mountain at full speed chatting loudly (me about how hilariously ridiculess this was, him about whether I was really certain our noices would scare off the mountain lions he was by now convinced were overpopulating the mountain).

By the time we got down we were actually surprised our driver was still waiting for us. Less surprised when he demanded extra money because we had made him wait, which we denied him due to the fact that he had lied to us and in reality only taken us half the way he had promised.

Our retreat from the mountain ended well, although our trials were not quite over for the day. On the way home from dinner that same night we stopped at a small candy store (really small - we are talking about a square hole in a concrete wall with a shelf with small pieces of candy).

Did I mention that the streets of India are roaming with cows and bulls because these are sacred animals in India? Guess I didn't. It wasn't exactly what was on my mind while I was buying treats from a lady through a hole in a concrete wall on that night either. My friend was standing next to me looking through the hole in the wall, when the otherwise friendly voice of the Indian lady in front of me suddently changed into a rapid flow of words and screams in a language I couldn't comprehend. I didn't even have time to turn around before I felt myself being lifted up into the air and then smashed against the wall, my right eyebrow colliding with the edge of the hole in the wall before I fell down to the ground and felt whatever had liftet me move away. My friend and the lady in the store were quite shocked. I turned around and saw a horned bull standing opposite me. Then it took off quickly (seriously, where had that ninja bull come from?!).

Having sustained only a cut in the eyebrow and a sore forehead (how fortunate can you be?!) we wandered home and decided to call it a night. We had had enough adventure for one day (although we did ultimately wander daringly back out into the streets to get me a back of ice for my eyebrow - didn't want to get a big bruise across my face and have to wander around the next day looking like some craze animal had charged at me - oh wait...)

There was that time in Rajastahn, India, I decided to take a day trip out of Ajmir to visit the nearby town of Pushkar - and found the most amazing setting for a colourful photo shoot. Pushkar was this little town where vehicles were prohibited an everyone got around on foot, which made for a much cleaner air and more peacefull atmosphere than I found in most of my destinations in India!

The night train to Khajeraho

There was that time I went to the city of Khajeraho in the state of Uttar Pradesh and was invited into the home of a local family. I came to Khajeraho on the night train (a rather special experience in itself!), and when I got of the train in the early morning, I had no idea where I was going (because, y'know, backpacking, that's pretty much how it works). Arriving anywhere in India without a hostel booking in hand usually means taking a deep breath, then courageously plunging head first into the group of taxi- and motorcycle drivers desperately fighting each other for a chance to take you to a hostel, attraction, or anywhere you want to go. This means you keep your focus and negociate, and not let anyone scoop you off to somewhere without a clear agreement on destination and price already sorted (you'll probabpy have many of them try to get more money out of you anyway, but at least with a clear agreement, it's easier to stand your ground afterwards).

At the trainstation I made an agreement with a guy to be my motorcycle ride for the day, and thos turned out surprisingly well. First we went off to get me a hostel and with his help I got a fair price. Then we were off to lunch, some temples adorned with hundreds of little three dimentional figures in all sorts of kamasutra positions (Khajeraho is famous for these temples), and eventually a cool lassi at a street kitchen (which I didn't dare drink in fear of getting the Delhi Belly - it really didn't look clean!). In the evening, my driver invited me home to have dinner with his family. I was a little hesitant, seeing as I really didn't know the guy very well, but I felt safe and decided to accept the invitation. This turned out to be a great discision. I was invited inside the house (hint: it looked nothing like a western style house!). His entire family lived there and I got to meet his mother and all of his sisters that evening. His mother cooked dinner, which consisted of some basic naan bread, vegetables, and some sauce (no idea what it was, but it tasted great!). After dinner, one of his sisters gave me beautiful henna decoration on my arms, while the others watched and played with my camera. Looking at the results of her work I felt adorned like ever before! At one point she asked me curiously, if I had any perfume she could try on (apparently not common goods for poor people in the region), so I gave her my travel deodorant as a gift which she was really excited about.  Eventually we said good night, and I went back to my hostel. The next day my new friend came by and took my to the trainstation on his motorcycle to catch my next train. And in the end, he didn't even want any money for his work at all! (so now I feel kinda bad for starting this story by saying that drivers would probably try to get more money out of you than what you agreed on). I guess the lesson is that sometimes you just get lucky and meet some really amazing people when you travel!