Anxious and nervous, my wife and I landed in Leh in mid June to attempt Stok Kangri summit. It was the sort of feeling that creeps in when a big exam date starts getting closer. Despite of all the preparations, the thoughts of everything crashing and burning spectacularly dominate more than anything else. Well, at least for me, that’s always been the case. Of all the things that could ruin the trek for us, the worst would’ve been acute mountain sickness.
Since the first post about our trip to Tawang exceeded my usual post size limit, I decided to split the narrative into two parts, this being the second one. I’ll attempt to add more pictures instead of wordy details. Zemithang Our friend in Tawang highly recommended Zemithang, a small village situated in a valley north of Tawang, almost at the Indo-Chinese border. Of the two ways to get there, we were supposed to take the longer route, all because of the views it had to offer.
First half of this year was all about work with a couple of obligatory trips home. The only blocked slot in my travel calendar was a week long trek to Stok Kangri in mid-June. More on that here. By end of March, my travel itch had peaked and I started contemplating taking longer time off. Couple of weeks later, my wife and I were planning a month long break for the month of June.
The second half of the last year flew by faster than I expected. The last couple of months were packed with travel plans. Started off with annual friends trip to Taipei in early November, Ezhimala later that month and finally a couple of weeks in Philippines till mid December. It was going to be a great end to the year. Didn’t mean it couldn’t get even better. Getting last week off from work ensured I could squeeze in one last thing that was on my mind since I moved back to India six months ago: a long road trip.
It was a bit early to start venturing out into the mountains considering the long winters PNW was going through, but we were sick of staying indoors. Who wasn’t. Mt Pugh was on my list for a while so we headed out to the mountains with the first sunny weekend we got. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be able to get to the top of the summit this time of the year but who cares, we’ll go again.
We decided to conclude our trip in Medellin to get a taste of one of most cosmopolitan cities in Colombia. Due to lack of time, we didn’t plan a stop in Cali this time, but that’s something we’ll definitely be back for. Especially after we witnessed the people from respective cities trying to one-up each other to prove which one is better. We noticed this divide across all our conversations with Colombians.
Being a bit late on publishing this, I’m going to make it a picture blog with some trip notes interspersed. The main reason for us heading to Santa Marta was to get some hiking experience in the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges. We later figured out that the weather and other conditions weren’t right at the time for venturing out into the ranges. Luckily, we had a plan B, and Tyrona National Park offered similar getaway opportunities.