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Published: April 5th 2018
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Day 5 Chumling – Chhokang Paro
The day sort of started at about 4.00am when the village dogs decided to bark. Between them and some locals talking loudly that was pretty much the night done.
The estimates of how long today would take varied from 3.5hrs to 6hrs so a bit of a mystery what lay ahead.
Same old breakfast then left for Chhokang Paro. The track started off downhill to the river which gave us the chance to look back up to where the village is. It all sit pretty precariously alongside a sheer (in fact undercut) bluff 150m high. We’d walked along the top of this yesterday but seeing it from below gave you a real perspective of how high and sheer this really was.
Relatively little of interest in the first part of the day, more Nepalese flat then after a swing bridge over the river it changed dramatically!
The trail started to climb, the uphill seemed interminable and was probably the toughest climb we encountered on the trek to date. Passed straight through a little village, Gho, because Himal said we could get lemon tea further up the hill. Turns out the
tea vendor there is seasonal and wasn’t there but none of us was inclined to go back down so on we went, Himal losing some ‘brownie points’ for this.
We then had to cross a rock slide which had a sheer drop to the river about 300m below. All a bit hairy as one false step or rock giving way under you and you’d be on your way to the bottom. The only good thing was that the drop was long enough that you might die of old age before hitting the bottom!
Not far after the rockslide we could see Chhokang Paro on the hillside above. The only issue being it was probably a Haka (300m) above us. This entailed a hard slog up switchbacks for a bit over half an hour to the top.
Chhokang Para apparently has more chortens than people, just coming from the top of the bluff into the village we past more then twenty and they are also liberally dispersed throughout the village.
Starting to see some of the Tibetan culture far more prevalent up here. The dining room in the tea house we’re staying in looks a bit like
a monastery complete with a seat that is for the monk only, there’s a sign asking for you not to sit there.
During the afternoon we went for a wander up the hill behind the village and looked over the bluff the village sits beside. It drops away a couple of hundred metres sheer, actually undercut in places , to the river below . Quite spectacular!
Really appreciating the home made USB charger stuff that I brought along. At the tea house there was only 12V power and all the other trekers were lining up to use some plugs they had running off an inverter. Meanwhile after I’d pulled the light fitting in the room apart we had our own little charging station albeit without a light in the room.
One really intersting innovation were a couple of German ladies who ordered cans of coke the proceeded to wash the entire tops of the cans with hand sanitiser before opening. It did occur to me that perhaps they could give a squirt of sanitizer into the coke and create the trekkers equivalent of vodka and coke.
There was also a hot shower here, the first we’d
Passes for treking
In order to trek here you need a number of passes and permits, here are a couple of them. Excuse the horrible old photo, I used old photos to get them. encountered and much appreciated by all.
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