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 yartsa gunbu (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. Thorthormi Lake, 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.