And so we descended from Gokyo Ri, our last mountain climb of the trek and spent our last night in Gokyo. The next day just before dawn we set out to climb up the Renjo La Pass and complete the three high passes.
Not many have completed the entire trek in one stretch, said my Sherpas. Some of them had to call it off when clients got sick with AMS half-way through. We were terrific until then and our Sherpas had our backs every time when things had gone south.
The view of Gokyo on the way up Renjo La Pass
We bid goodbye to one of the most tranquil places we’ve seen under the sun. It was a long arduous trek ahead of us and we under-estimated it. Gokyo sits at approximately 4750m. First we had a back-breaking 700m climb up to Renjo La Pass and then a descent to the next village. On paper it looked quite easy but things were much different on that day.
As we tramped on, we found it really difficult to continue even before reaching the pass. Other trekkers who started later than us moved on faster than we did. And it was very demotivating to watch them go past us with such ease. But we pressed on.
What we went on to do that day was nothing short of awe-inspiring, even for our standards. We would cross the pass, do our celebratory flag raising, descend onto the other side and not stop at the next village Marulung or even Lungden but all the way down the valley to Thame at 3750m. Reaching Thame at around 6-7pm. That is a total distance of 2100m or 2 kms in altitude terms and 20kms in distance, all this in about 12-13 hours. It shred us to bits.
The way ahead after Renjo La
We were out of gas when we reached Thame and settled to find a lodge there. Our feet got heavily blistered and bruised. There was barely any energy left in our tanks to even sit straight for dinner that night. The Sherpas served us some local Chhang to ease us with the body pain. The nail-biting cold had stopped and it was warm again after a long time.
Gokyo
Altitude: 4750m/15580ft
Renjo La
Altitude: 5340m/17519ft
Thame
Altitude: 3750m/12303ft
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