Up and Over

---

Awoke at 3.45 am, forced some hot muesli down my throat and bundled up in most of my clothes we set off for the high pass. Thorung La. The sky was inky black but spattered with stars and the twinkling in the clear night sky and the slowly moving thread of head torches inching its way up the ountain was all we could see.

As we climbed, the sun began to rise and the top of the mountains became flushed with an ever deepening pink blush that glowed orange and pink against the dawn sky. It was utterly beautiful. I found the climb quite easy, my legs were strong and it was wonderful. The day became clear, with a strong sun at around 10am we came in sight of wildly fluttering prayer flags framed by the Tibetan plateau behind. We had reached the top.

Passing on the kind offer of a spliff from an Israeli trekker(got to get down yet!) , I took out my prayer shawl that Brian had given me and a yellow ribbon given to me by Collette. The yellow ribbon was to symbolise all the sadness and pain of recent times and my sorrow and regret. I tied it to the top of Thorung La. There I would leave it. The prayer shawl I tied next to symbolise my achievement , my thankfulness for having made it so far and my hopes for the future. We hung around quite a while at the top. It was a beautiful day, hot, sunny and deep snow around.

I decided to leave and embark on the way down. After all the top is only halfway there. And amazingly it was surprisingly easy. The thick snow meant that there was tons of purchase and slowed your descent. There was only one scary bit - I picked my way across an icy ribbon of path, as I did so I heard a whossh and turned to see Jim cannoning down the slope towards me. If our guide Chhatra had not been there to stop him, I might not be writing this now...but....thnakfully....

Although not the nightmare I had envisaged is took a long long time to get down and it wasn't until 6pm that I staggered into Muktinath. Nose fearfully red and burnt (yes Mother I did have suncream and a hat on!) from the sun reflected off the snow. We all had a real sense of achievememt even though we were shattered. We sat around the finner table in Muktinath, under the table braziers were alight to warm our legs. (Did think at one point my jeans would catch fire!) Everyone virtually fell asleep, I was wired though and could have talked all night. An amazing day. Lucky with the weather, lucky that Caradhras did not do his worst (LOTR ref for those in the know) and looking forward to all there is to come. The future (and my nose) very bright.

---