Today we all woke to better spirits and less sore limbs and bottoms. The Sun is shining we are in T shirts at lower altitude (3300???m approx)and the world looks good again. We took off this morning for Guge...Martin and Gabrielle will recall the old towns along the silk route made of mud..well it was like that only set in a canyon setting. The monastery was also build in 10th century and inside also like yesterday we could see the beauty of old marred by the destruction of these recent years here.
The whole area is sensitive and we have to be careful of what we say and think.
Tomorrow we brave the 6 or 7 hours of dirt, sand, rock road back over passes to Lake Manasovar, and we will spend the night back at Darchan hotel as it is marginally better than the one at the Lake.
Some extra random notes on the trek. The ascent to the top of the pass was 4 hours, even with the horses. So that day was almost a 12 hour day of trekking. When we got back to the Hotel after the trek I was so numb that I wanted to get clean but didn't know how to start. Nor did anyone else we walked around in circles and we were incoherent for a while. Then I decided to wash my hair, so the process began and eventually I was clean! It was a two bucket job in the front yard of the hotel.(The hair only..not the body!!)..(this term Hotel is used very loosely). We saw Yak herds on the mountain, and yesterday we saw Dyang (wild Donkey) and wild goats which are cute!
I have wondered how such a country so worried about face masks and SARS and swine flu give no thought to E-Coli from their own faeces.!!??? Like..follow that!!!!
My Porter Tic tock, or tac tic, or some such name was wonderful to me and looked after me..especially when I was on the horse. He held my arm over the scary bits and believe me screaming sorta proves I was scared!
He had two front teeth missing and smoked and looked a 'picture'. I hugged him on our return for looking after me so well.
This Kora is done by Hindus, Bonn, Jain, Buddhists, Muslims, to name a few of the religions that this mountain is sacred to....It is supposed to absolve all karma by doing the Kora..Our Tibetan guide has done it 19 times now. I have done it by car, horse and foot. I felt I cheated a bit by using the car, but would have had to walk an extra 3 hours on the last day to get back to where we started. So if I didn't absolve all my karma I sure musta earned some brownie points somewhere!
This year is the Tibetan year of the Horse a very auspicious year for doing the Kora..not that we knew that when we decided to do it. Most locals do it in one day all 53 k of it!
Well again..thanks to those who read this..and comment..much appreciated..and yes Martin pictures will get to flickr one of these days. Much love.
xxxx
