Trekking in Singalila National Park (Day 2)

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On day two we were awoken at an ungodly hour to see the sunrise over the Himalayas. It was really quite worth it, and then we went back inside for a lovely breakfast. We had loads of porridge, doughnuty bread with jam, and milk tea. It was a great start to the day.

After we got walking we descended about 400 m to the low point of the ridge hike. After reaching the minimum, we began to climb, and the rest of the day was entirely spent going uphill. All in all, we did 18 km in length, 400 m down and then 900 m up if I remember correctly. The ascent was exhausting. There were a couple of points on the hike up to Sandakphu where I was thinking about just giving up, but I was thinking about how would I have gotten back down the mountain, so I soldiered on.

We were appropriately tired when we arrived in Sandakphu at an elevation of 3636 meters above sea level, my personal highest elevation to date.

My clearest memory of Sandakphu is of being cold. Usually back home you are cold while you are outside, but then you go inside and you get warm. We looked all over Sandakphu to try to find somewhere warm, and the closest we came was a place that had a lot of people in it, and a kitchen in close proximity, but that was still an all-clothes-on situation. We did have some nice lemon tea in the place though. The dinner was quite spare as well, since it is rather hard to get up to Sandakphu to resupply, though there is a jeepable road that goes all the way up.

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