Kailash Yatra - Day 2

31 May – Thursday: A Day in Nyalam

Could not sleep during the night because I got a headache sometime during the night. I did take Tylenol during the night, but it did not help. (I found out later that headaches were because of low oxygen. I had thought they were because I was tired.) Got up with the headache. Except for the two German travelers, we were all having some sort of altitude issues.

Morning tea was brought to the room by the Nepali sherpas. That was probably one the best part of this journey – bed tea!! Went for breakfast after tea. As we stepped out, we ran into yaks!! Oooh yea! Now I know I am in the mountains. Of course there were these huge mountains around Nyalam too. Really picturesque. Again, just look up, not down at the dirty street.

Breakfast was downstairs this time and was better than dinner (vada-sambhar). They would always have cereal and milk also. Our Nepali guide, Ramgopal, arranged for a hike at 11:30 am. Perfect! We all came back to our rooms and slept till 11:30 and then met outside to for the hike. There were total seven of us and our guide was Dil. Nice guy, did not push us. The whole idea of staying in Nyalam for one day was to acclimatize to the high altitude, 13,300 ft.

We started off by walking on a highway and I in my complete optimism thought that we would be walking on that highway for one hour. Oh boy was I wrong. We were going to be climbing this little bit of a steep hill on the left. Okay! I don’t really like climbing mountains. I don’t do very well and this was harder because of the altitude. Luckily I was not always the last one to climb up. We had met a nice couple, Suresh and Ria, and Suresh was always kind enough to stay behind and give me company.

We stopped a lot and walked up slowly. I saw many small flowers on the way up. It’s amazing to see flowers at this altitude…and they are so pretty. We saw a yak and baby on the way. It took us about an hour and half to climb up. It was totally worth it. The view was amazing. The snow covered mountains with the clouds going by was just something I have always had in my mind. So beautiful. The group decided to walk a little further. This part was a gradual climb. I had a little hard time climbing here also. The lack of oxygen was really affecting me. It was a beautiful part of the mountain.

We started walking down as soon as we had all rested a bit. Going down was easier, except there were some places where there was loose gravel and therefore very slippery to walk down on. We would definitely need a walking stick during the Kailash parikrama. Ria was nice enough to lend me her walking stick for sometime.

Tip: I would highly recommend this kind of a hike to everyone as it gives a good idea what you might need for the parikrama.

We went straight for lunch and then we all crashed for about 2 hrs! It was a good sleep! In the evening around 6:30 pm the sherpas came with evening tea, another nice part of the journey. We were told to pack an overnight bag since we would not be getting our duffle bags the next day. Oh – more work!! Did not pack the medicines Dr. Sain gave.....bad move! (We were supposed to be travelling in Uncle’s group in which was one of his doctor friend, Dr. Sain, who had made this most awesome medicine kit for this journey.)

Tip: One of our group members recommended taking Advil for the headache instead of Tylenol. It worked for me.

Two of our groups members were really nice enough to bring me a walking stick from the Nyalam market. The sherpas brought hot soup around 8 pm. This is really nice that they serve so much in the room. Soup was great! Bhaiya came back from his walk and said that Uncle’s group had arrived. We went to find them but we could not find them. So we ended up having dinner first. Boring menu again!

Finally we did find where Uncle was and went to visit him. The gents and ladies were in different rooms. Apparently they were stuck at Nepal border for one night because some issue with their group in which the passport number did not match the permit number. Dr. Sain checked our oxygen level, mine was okay, Bhaiya’s was awesome. My heart rate was really high though.

Came back to the room and slept! I still have a little headache but it will probably go away tomorrow.

Overall day was okay, part trekking part resting. But after the trek I have some doubts about my ability to do the parikrama. I am sure God gives strength when it is needed.

Note: There were no plug points in our room for charging batteries but other rooms in the Nyalam hotel did.