Day 8: Road To The Thorung

Day 8 was another gap day. After the late night show at the Snow Land and a rather short sleep, the three of us felt quite tired even before starting walking. No pain, no gain! we had to reach Thorung Phedi (4450 m) as soon as possible to get ready for the last section of the climb.

During the walk to Phedi (in Nepali 'foot') I received two moderate warnings about the AMS. In one of the first climbs of the morning I could feel how I needed to inhale and exhale at a much higher rate than normally. Besides, my heart beat inside my chest as though it was going to explode (the lack of butterflies in my stomach ruled out the possibility of being suffering from a sudden crush in one of my trekking mates, lol). The second warning was much more serious. During a break for drinking we saw an Asian-looking trekker being transported down the hill on a mule. The mid-aged man was completely knocked out. He behaved as a zombie when the porter asked to get off the mule. That really was a reminder that things were serious up there!

Once we had overcome the spooky apparition we continued our way to Phedi. We reached our destination by 2 pm. In Phedi we joined some of the trekkers that we had met before plus a bunch of crazy Canadians who were spending their third day in town. They were waiting for a helicopter that was supposed to take one of their friends -not feeling very well- back to Manang. They didn't seem to care much, actually we noticed them smoking some joints while the rest of us had difficulties to even take a d*mp! We went bed even earlier that evening (7 pm) since next morning we were to face the hardest stage of the trek.

---

El octavo dia fue otro de esos dias confusos e ininterminalbles. Fue durante esta jornada que recibi los primeros y unicos avisos sobre el mal de montaña. Por una parte, en una de las primeras subidas de la mañana me di cuenta de que tanto a mi como a mis compañeros nos faltaba el aliento para subir cuestas que otros dias nos merendabamos con patatas. Mas tarde, durante un descanso nos vimos confrontados con un hombre asiatico de mediana edad que estaba siendo acarreado montaña abajo sobre una mula. El hombre estaba completamente grogi, era incapaz de andar ni articular palabra. Superada la primera impresion, decidimos continuar nuestra marcha hasta el pie de la cima, Thorung Phedi (4450 m). Alli nos reunimos con el resto de senderistas que habiamos conocidos y algunos nuevos, como unos canadienses que llevaban ya tres dias alli y que se permitian el lujo de fumar porros mientras a otros nos costaba tremendo esfuerzo ¡hasta plantar un pino!