Kailash Yatra - Day 6

4 June – Monday: Mansarovar

Did not sleep well at all. Woke up with a headache, cold and cough. The cold weather is also affecting me. The cold weather was the reason I moved to Florida! Well, I know this is temporary, but still it has taken a little bit of a toll on my health. I think it is also because of not doing anything all day. If we were on parikrama I would be active. All this sitting around in the cold weather is a total waste of time. I just feel like going home now. Using the restroom today was the hardest part of my day…..ugghh!!!

Everyday has been a big question mark, “Where will we be today?” Hopeless situation. The touring company should do a better job of planning all this. So the word is that we are all going to Horshu after breakfast. Whatever!!I don’t give a damn! Well….I should have.

Horshu, not far from where we were and on the banks of lovely Mansarovar, is not a town. It is a camping site of a few mud huts and plenty of space to set up tents! Yay!! That’s what I needed – more time out in the cold! This is getting worse and worse. All the money spent on a vacation is going in sleeping in dormitory living and no toilets. This is some sort of a resilience test.

Two of our foreign group members have stomach issues. This trip has taken a toll on everyone one way or another.

The lady guide, Doga, was there again. She seemed so relaxed (because in her mind she knows she will not be doing the parikrama, but we idiots were still rooting for Darchen to open for us). She said that Darchen is not open. We cannot leave for Kathmandu because Saga is all booked for tonight. So we will leave tomorrow for Saga and the next day to Nyalam and after one overnight there we will be off to Kathmandu.

Bhaiya talked to her separately about the Darchen issue and she told him that there was an opportunity to go to parikrama yesterday if we had left by 7 am, but some of the members of our group wanted to do puja on Poornmasi so she all by herself decided to cancel the parikrama. (Now she tells us!! This in itself is a cause to sue the travel company. They make the decision without asking the entire group.) And now it was too late (even that was a lie).

So many changes in the program, so many lies, such poor living arrangement, such poor transportation….we paid a good sum of money to be treated like this.

The next two hours were spent all complaining with Phinsu, Doga and amongst ourselves. But really no one cares. That is the worst part also – NO ONE CARES. It is starting to seem that the trip was not be fruitful right from the beginning but we did not know about it.

We got our two beds in one of the dorms of 12 beds, so Bhaiya and I kept our bags and went out for a walk. By the time we came back our bags had been moved and someone was sleeping in my bed. Oh Lord!! So Bhaiya asked Ramgopal to set up a tent for us. Good. I don’t like sleeping in tents but it is definitely better than a room full of coughing and sneezing people.

My walk to Mansarovar was pleasant but I was slightly turned off by all the poop (yak and goat – I think) everywhere. So bad that in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of beautiful mountains the air did not seem fresh, and I had to watch my step. I could not even think of picking up any stone, not that there was any good one, because I did not know what had been on that stone.

The view was beautiful though, Panchkanya mountains on one side and Kailash (not visible today because of clouds) on the other.

I really needed to use the bathroom, but the boys/sherpas, had not set up the tent for it. They kept telling me go to the “open” toilet. What the heck!!! Yes, as I said, our conditions are getting better. The sherpas would dig a hole in the ground and put a tent on it for privacy. That was going to be our grand toilet! Uff!! It took them some time because someone told them not to dig the hole close to another tent, but I made them put up the tent – no matter what! The only good thing about it was that none of the Indians knew what it was for, so it was really like a private toilet for just us foreigners. Don’t want to know where the Indians went!!!

Lunch was boring – daal-bhaat…again! Once our tent was set up, I slept for a while. There was no place to sit outside. The ground was pooped on all over and there were not many chairs to sit on, so better to stay in the tent. Besides it was so windy outside. As the evening came by, the sherpas got in a party mood and were singing songs and dancing. It was a nice little break from the monotonous day.

Some of us went for a walk in the evening again. Since there was not much to see or photograph we took pictures of the Buddist flags by the lake. I think this is where I got my major sore throat. My voice was gone for the next four days. That could be peaceful for some people :-)

Sat with our new friends, Suresh and Ria, all evening. The sherpas brought great soup, then popcorn. We went out to first see the sunset and then the moon rise. These sights were amazing but parikrama and Kailash close up would have been more amazing.

Dinner was simple – fried rice. It was so cold outside that we all got into some vans to eat. Bhaiya managed to get us one comfortor. We had sleeping bags over a rubber mat. For the first time I slept in my jeans and three layers of clothes with my cap on and the cap of the parka. But I was still cold. I got up in the middle of the night to wear another warm shirt, but the cold was coming from the ground. There was no getting warm tonight.

I had lost my voice by dinner time now this cold. Really miserable night.