Today, we climbed to Thukla. It was not a tough day. It started with a medium climb, but I handled it well today. Then we had a long traverse with a glacial valley as our views for about an hour. Looking back to Pheriche and forward to a beautiful lake while standing in an immense valley! It was windy and cold.
We stopped at a yak herder's hut about halfway. We talked about it being a great retirement spot. It feels very remote up here and the valley is just stunning. This is the first really awesome sense of the scale of the mountains here. We are so small. The Himalayas are incredible.
After a rest, it was onwards and upwards to the river outside Thukla. As we were going down towards the crossing, we heard shouts and saw arms raised across the river. Our guides, Amrit and Chandra conversed about this and we saw that there was a person laying down on the rocks near the river. The 2 of them ran down a 75 degree slope in massive bounds. Clearly, they've done this before. They were down the 100m and across the river to help so fast it was incredible. The news that came back later, as we headed to camp was that the guy was trekking alone and had fallen and broken his leg. This was a sobering reminder of the Nepali phrase, "walk when you walk, look when you look".
Thukla is a most basic excuse for a village I've ever seen. There are literally just a handful of buildings on the edge of a hill surrounded by the trademark stone walls of herders. My stomach is finally right again today. After a short rest, there was an afternoon hike to see the lake from a different vantage point. I decided to skip that walk as it looked nearly vertical and I was tired. The altitude is getting serious now.