Lunana Part 1: Mud and Snow

Kuzuzampola! is the first word I learned in Dzongka, the Bhutanese language, and it took me about two weeks to fully learn. For some reason, it seemed so simple to me when I first heard the greeting, hello, but the more I tried to say it to locals, the more my vowels got all mixed up and a word that was definitely not pronounced, ku-zu-zampo-la, came out of my mouth. It reminds me of Sudoku for some reason...every time I say that word, I have to focus on what I'm saying or it will come out sodaku or sadako or some other variation of the word. I think that without sharing any more of the language with you, you will understand that Dzongka is unlike any language I have ever experienced before. It is actually extremely related to the Tibetan language with hints of similarities with Japanese. By the end of my stay in Bhutan I had mastered about ten words...which I am incredibly proud of. 

We began our hike in Jakar in the Bumthang province of Bhutan. I tried to find a good map to link, but I couldn't find one that was what I wanted, so you'll have to just search for the places if you are interested. As a side note: Jakar, actually, had a massive fire just a few days ago and much of the town burnt to the ground. Two people died and many more are now homeless. The plan for our trek was to go north from Jakar, then west over the high mountain peaks of Lunana, and then south through the province and town of Gaza back to the road in Punakha...but read on to find out what actually happened!

To begin describing the trekking in Bhutan, you must first develop an understanding for the word mud, which of course, happened to be one of the ten words I know how to say. It is pronounced, "horse". The photos below are my attempt to show you all how much mud there really was on our trail, but pictures hardly do it justice. Let's just say, it was a mud bath! I'm so glad that I brought my gaters!!!! At one point I sunk down to my knees in the mud and needed on of the tall and strong Germans to literally pull me out of it. But it wasn't all horror stories. It was also really fun, (well for me in any case) grabbing on to the strong bamboo along the sides of the trail above the mud and swinging from one to the other to avoid the massive pit of mud below. At times it seemed like the "hot lava" games that I used to play as a kid, trying to avoid the hot lava below and save myself from total destruction. :)

 

 Take especial note of how high the mud comes on the horse. Its belly is covered in it, as well as the bags that it is carrying. Its face is also pretty much covered...oh my!

Ok, so here are my categories of different types of mud that we encountered...

Ice Rink Mud- firm but slippery

Twist your Ankle Mud- hidden rocks are below

Quicksand mud- fall to your knees in it

Slofph mud- the really vocal kind

Wet mud- mud with a layer or two of water above it

Dirty mud- cakes of soft rolling hills of mud

Rocky mud- you have to jump like a frog to get out of this mud

 

Ok, so you get the point. There was mud. There was about three days of an uphill/upmountain climb through the mud before we reached about 4,000 meters. At this point the mossy trees and forest landscape, which for me was strangely reminiscent to hiking in the Olympic Peninsula, turned to rhododendrons and there became forests upon forests of rhododendrons!! All of the green along the far mountains is rhododendron. It would be a true wonder to see in the spring when they are in bloom, if one would be brave enough to make it through the mud in monsoon season.

 

Then, as we climbed and got higher and higher, our pack horses would not continue into the snow. So, we then switched to yaks as our pack animal.Yaks are very stubborn and not very easily controlled or trained. They are much harder to herd and they also go slower.They yak herders had a beautiful Tibetan Mastiff dog that supposedly was supposed to help herd the animals, but it spent all of its time playing with us instead. I also discovered how much larger Yaks are in real life than in the pictures. Although they are scared of people, I was much more scared of them. One night, I left my tent to have a bit of "tea out" time as we called it on our trek and became a little disorientated (the British way of saying disoriented). With my headlamp on, I was trying to get back to my tent when I heard an extremely loud snort behind me. As I turned, I jumped about three feet in the air, completely frightened by the glowing eyes of the now awake yak staring back at me with concentration. Whew, well, I have a very healthy respect for yaks and I continued to try my best to stay out of their way throughout the trip.

We eventually made it to a camp at about 14,000ft and no one had altitude sickness at all! We all felt great, the sun had just peaked out behind the clouds for a few minutes, (at this point, about 4 days in, we have had only a few minutes of cumulative sunshine) and we had just made a fire in a nearby hut to warm ourselves and tell stories as we waited for the yaks to make it to our camp. We ended up staying by the fire for three hours...the yaks as well as our cook were coming much later than expected. We were later to find out why...

 

We wake up in the morning to the scene you see above. Beautiful but cold snow covers our campsite. We go for breakfast in the morning and Ugen, our guide, announces to us that the reason why the yaks were late the day before was because two yaks are missing. And these yaks are carrying food supplies and all of the pots used to cook with, which explains the dinner the night before. This is a big problem and the yak herders have been searching all night long for the yaks, but because of the conditions and the fact that yaks look exactly like rocks when sitting down or not moving, we would have to take a rest day to wait for them. 

The next day, the yaks were found! One of them was injured and that is why they had fallen behind. However, in the time we had been waiting, more and more snow had fallen...a decision was made by our leaders, after calling for a weather update on their satellite phone, that continuing up and over the next pass would put us in extreme danger of not being able to get out on the other side. Apparently, there had been bad weather, maybe even a typhoon in the Philippines that had carried the rain/snow to the Himalayas. In either case, we couldn't continue on our planned trek and needed to turn back and go back down the way we had come. Everyone was disappointed. Everyone was sad. Everyone was dreading the mud.