Day 1 To Lake Beaskund (Base Camp)
With big heavy backpacks and three porters and ready for an adventure we started in the morning by car to Dundhi to get from here with a five-hour trek to Lake Beaskund.
I was quite tense, because I was on the road with four strong men, three of them trained mountaineers from Manali and one customer. We carried our complete equipment ourselves and I had to keep up!
From a purely sporting point of view, I was fit, but the weight on my back was unfamiliar and the terrain was very different from that in Ladakh! Due to my long treks in Ladakh I was well acclimatized, but these treks had not prepared me for the expedition. We jumped from stone to stone, rivers and streams had to be crossed and especially the moraine caused me difficulties on which I even had to use my hands.
Nevertheless, I was able to keep up with the pace and enjoyed the wild nature of my beloved Kullu Valley. Oh yes, the green flower meadows, bubbling streams, small and large rocks make this area something very special!
We reached our camp around 3 am, just in time for the rain to come. Lake Beaskund was a little further away and I was asked to visit the lake only after the expedition, because women were forbidden to go there for religious reasons.
Breakfast at Base Camp
Well, I was too lazy anyway and had no desire to take up the eternal woman-man theme at that moment.
So I enjoyed being in the kitchen tent, which we would only use for two days anyway, before we would go up high.
Together we cooked chicken and got to know each other.
Day 2 “Load Ferry”
On day 2 we did something that is called “Load Ferry”. This means transporting our luggage to the next camp and then going back to The Base Camp to sleep down in the Base Camp. This makes sense for several reasons: on the one hand, it serves acclimatization, go high and sleep low. On the other hand, we have already made extra cargo up and do not have to carry everything at once. In addition, we wore our climbing shoes on this day to get used to these stiffer shoes. At first I had trouble finding my balance, but later it went relatively well. The path was very steep and went over strong debris. We passed a hanging glacier, from which ice and stone crashed down again and again with loud noises. What a soundscape! I almost missed Camp 1. It consisted only of 4 flat fields on which only a few tents had space. On three sides it went steeply downhill. To the third side steeply uphill.
Tired of the heavy load and cold from the damp air, we quickly stowed away the luggage we brought with us and then quickly had our lunch: a chocolate bar! We should get used to the slightly different diet.
In general, the topic of “eating” on an expedition is a very special topic in itself. Although I was prepared for the food, after all I had chosen and bought it, but already for the first breakfast I missed ketchup on my omelette. Even an egg was a luxury, which we only indulged on the first days, on which we still had the porters along. But if you suddenly have to carry everything yourself, even an extra spoon becomes heavy and so we really only had the most necessary with us!
Hey, when can you eat chocolate bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner without feeling guilty? 🙂
Of course, we also had muesli and oatmeal for breakfast and for dinner there were often noodles or couscous (the latter to the chagrin of the Indians :)).
Then for lunch chocolate, nuts, cheese, so everything that has a lot of energy!
From Camp 1 we went down again today and we enjoyed the last night in The Base Camp!
