Tonight I sleep in a bed after 23 nights in a tent.

The trek was long and a bit difficult. We walked on rocky trails the entire way, either near river beds or moraine, and it was oh so beautiful.

We crossed 11 passes, and the highest was my favorite.  At 17,360 feet, we had snow on the ground and a brilliant blue sky. The view was stunning: glaciers, turquoise lakes, frozen lakes, prayer flags, and silence.

The silence was my very favorite part of the trek. I mostly walked alone to experience the solitude and complete stillness, and I loved it.

Overall, we had exceptional weather. There were a few days of rain at the beginning, and then sun, cold, a little snow, and lots of sunshine.

I need to let it all sink in. It was quite an experience in a very special, very remote part of the world: Bhutan.

Here we are, four days from Laya. We descended to the nearest road, where supplies are loaded onto donkeys and horses and dispersed through the region. Many people spend four-plus days each way getting their supplies, and that includes a couple of 15,000′ passes.

We’ve had snow and very little rain, whew. It has only really reached freezing one night so far. We’ve been lucky.

The nomadic people here are harvesting a fungus that grows out of a caterpillar buried in the soil and selling it for a fortune. It’s called corticept (sometimes “caterpillar fungus”), and it’s said to cure absolutely everything. The Asian countries are crazy for it.

Today I saw a helicopter, and one of our staff said it was a taxi. Wow.

We are now in the Lunana region of Bhutan. We’ll spend the next two nights below “Table Mountain,” which is 7.5 miles wide at the base. Raptseng  tsho/Zongophu tsho an enormous glacial lake above us, is threatening to release and destroy everything downstream for miles. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen anytime soon. 🥶

We’re down to 7 nights in a tent and three passes to scale, the highest yet to come.

I’ve been offline for a few days, and today (Day 10 of the trek) we are in the town of Laya 12,600 feet. We have a rest day here. It’s beautiful. 

A few nights ago we had a dinner lecture about Bhutan’s four pillars of Gross National Happiness:

• Good governance
• Environmental protection
• Social and economic development
• Cultural preservation

As for being the happiest place on earth, Bhutan ranks about 95th out of 179 countries. It’s a goal.

We are trekking!  The trail keeps going up and down, up and down, bouncing between 12,500 and 16,500 feet. We cover about 9 miles a day, which takes around 7 hours including a lunch stop. It’s doable for everyone on the trip. We do have one sick member… I’m hoping no one else gets what she has.

The views are mind-blowing. All the mountains we see are in Bhutan, and last night (Sept. 28) we were only about a 12-hour walk from Tibet.

There are two other teams on the same schedule as us. We don’t mix much, but I did meet one woman from Seattle named Mindy. 

The weather has been perfect! Sunny days, warm but not too warm. We’re lucky to have broken out of the rain!

From here, the passes get higher and the route more remote. I doubt there will be service for the next many days. 

I’ll report from the other side.