Eastern Nepal's Highest Mountains!! - Kanchenjunga Trek Part 4

Available oxygen is about 50% less. Morning from Cambuchin. Yeah it was a rough night for me. I think it was a little dehydrated. Started getting a little bit of a headache so as a precaution took one Diamox just in case it was a altitude thing but feeling much better this morning. Getting ready to have some breakfast. Some Tibetan bread which is basically like a fried dough kind of like a doughnut and we've been pretty much eating that for breakfast every morning. I was eating chapatis but these were heartier and filled me up more. Felt like they gave me more energy. So today we have another acclimatization day in Cambuchin and I think we're gonna be doing... it's called the Janu base camp. It's like a four-hour round-trip. Going somewhere up there. Somewhere over there. Two hours up, two hours down. Gain like 600 maybe 600 feet or something like that. Maybe a thousand. I don't know. Well we made it to Janu base camp. It took us three hours. We're going pretty slow though. Tremendous views here. It's just amazing. On the way up we saw a disappearing glacier. I mean it's pretty much almost gone on the right as we're headed up and then on the left slopes saw a ton of ton of blue sheep and then just epic views of Janu here and then peaks across the way. So this is a place where they they do a ceremony for the Rai and Limbu people. Come up here last weekend in October or last week in October, first week in November. 300 people will come up here and that's why you see all the prayer flags. It's like a big big ceremony here. They worship Janu I guess as some like a deity or something like that. They're not Hindu and they're not Buddhist so they have their own kind of tribal religions. It's pretty amazing. Not bad for a quick day hike. This is a monument here of all the Rai and Limbu people who donated and the name of the people and the amount they donated to make this base camp, this house lodge here and then there's a temple on the other side. Took a lot of donations. They have a little helicopter landing pad over there so they must have flown a lot of supplies up I would imagine. Probably cheaper to fly it than or at least less time than putting it on a donkey. Well today's the big day. Headed up to Lonak which is the highest point that we'll be sleeping at. I believe it's like 4,700 meters, 4,800 meters, something like that. And after that tomorrow we will be doing a day trip to Pangpema which is the north Kanchanjunga base camp. So today's going to be probably the hardest day. The highest elevation I'll be going with my big bag. Tomorrow I'll be taking a small bag for the day trip but just fueled up on some Tibetan bread with peanut butter by the way which is the first place that we've seen on the trek that's had peanut butter and man I appreciate that. I appreciate the journey that that peanut butter has had to go on probably from all the way out in Kathmandu all the way out here having undergone that journey myself. Man I really appreciate that peanut butter. We're looking at four to five hours hopefully to Lonak and then get a good night's sleep, take off early tomorrow and it's gonna be like an eight or nine hour day up to Pangpema, Kanchanjunga base camp. Hopefully we have good weather, nice views of the mountain, the third highest mountain in the world and the second highest in Nepal. I really enjoyed the Kambuchan. I really dig this vibe here. It's a lot like Gunsa except the mountains that surround this little valley here are are bigger. The moon's still out above those peaks over there. Something interesting about this upper region that I learned if you look around you're not gonna see too many big trees where you can get you know wood for making fires for cooking and staying warm and stuff and so occasionally you'll see these these rocks with these big brown mounds kind of laying out on them drying out and what that is is actually yak dung and they dry the yak dung out for one to three months depending on you know how powerful the Sun is and they use that to make fires with and so when you get up this high you will see some timber, some wood use but also saw probably about 50% of the time they're using the yak dung as well so meals cooked with with yak dung I think it probably helps give a little flavor you know like when you're barbecuing with cedar, oak, wood chips you know give a little extra tang extra smoky flavor that yak dung smoky flavor no but anyway that's you know it's just out of necessity survival no big trees I mean it's kind of like a pretty much high desert this kind of plateau this valley area high desert you got to make do with what you have and there's a lot more yak dung available than there is big timber and I imagine whatever wood they do have is they have to bring up from from lower elevations back through all those those big trees we passed through a couple towns back but just a bit wanted to pass on also they burn this they call it like an incense it's almost like a some type of conifer tree they burn every morning and it's got a distinct smoky smell part of like a morning prayer ritual or something like that kind of like a puja so we reached the Kanduchin waterfall which is said to be holy because the story goes that at one time eight Indian Saints bathed in this waterfall and those Indian Saints were are revered or were revered in Tibet and ever since then the waters of the waterfall are considered to be holy so we're about two hours outside of Kanduchin we've come to this waterfall just came across this massive boulder field and now we got some some icy snowy river crossing to get through so we made it to Ramtang which they don't have a lodge but you can camp here so we're just stopping to get some quick tea stop and got maybe another hour and a half to Lonak and it's good good day so far good day oh here comes the tea thank you Mongol so Lonak is in view almost there maybe 15 more minutes should be about five hours even feel like yesterday's a climatization day extra climatization day definitely helped because didn't feel as tough as making it to Kanduchin the one that makes steep climbs so it was a good day nice lodge we got here at Lonak looks brand new a little bit of insulation actually which is that's pretty cool look at this crazy view out the window but tomorrow we're gonna be probably heading out in the dark or right as the sun's coming up get an early start in case there's some bad weather and big day heading to Pangpama Kenchenjunga base camp today I'm was not too bad I'm surprised feeling pretty good feeling pretty good actually looking forward to chowing down on some lunch though that's for sure enjoying this Sun well last because when it goes down tonight is gonna be freezing ma'am do you have any comments for the people at home I'm happy I think that goes for both of us definitely happy it was a good day again surrounded by tremendous mountains like how could you not be happy well today's the big day headed up to Pangpama otherwise known as Kenchenjunga north base camp looking at possibly three hours up hanging out a couple hours and three hours back down right now 630 in the morning we got clear skies no wind so it's looking like it's gonna be a beautiful day it's approximately minus 10 Celsius if our thermometer is accurate and first thing we encountered because of the temperature is the water and the Camelback tube froze but luckily it was just the tube right in the mouthpiece so I was able to crunch on the tube bust up the ice suck it through that was good technique to know I guess because your Camelback tube freezes up don't know what we'll do if the whole Camelback freezes up though as we're moving towards base camp on the right here is the part of the Kenchenjunga glacier you can see pockets of the that blue glacial ice poking out and a lot of it is covered with this rockfall but as you can see it's receding as well you can see the high glacier mark and this ravine here where it used to have ice flowing through it is yet another glacier disappearing climb high up above this rock slide I don't know how much higher we're gonna go but this is pretty brutal well we made it Kenchenjunga base camp third highest mountain in the world right now we're sitting at about 5,200 meters and available oxygen is about 50% less than what it would be at sea level today was a tough day although we did stop for half hour 45 minutes to check out these blue sheep there was a herd of blue sheep that we saw on the way that was beautiful so we made it about four hours and 20 minutes and plenty of rest stops and we stopped it might even been an hour we stopped to look at those blue sheep top of the world second highest peak in Nepal or I should say mountain in Nepal second highest mountain in Nepal they have different definitions for peaks it's between 6 and 7,000 meters above 7,000 meters is a mountain and here we are pretty clear day actually it's impossible to perceive the actual depth to take in the immense nature of these mountains I mean that is so far away I mean that's across the glacier over there Patibara and then Kenchenjunga is even further beyond that so like it plays an optical illusion on you they kind of look similar heights but because that's way far away you don't realize how much higher that is than Patibara right here we left Kathmandu 12 days ago and started walking nine days ago so we've been walking for nine days finally got here the north base camp also known as Pangpema the north base camp of Kenchenjunga we're gonna be going back down to Gunsa one of these days and crossing the Selele Pass and two other passes and and headed to the south side to south base camp of Kenchenjunga so there's plenty more adventure to come on this we probably got at least another 10 days left before we're back in Kathmandu infamous