Day 16 Melamchigaon to Tarkygang
As has often been the case on this trip we began the day in a village at 2,600m and finished it in a village at the same altitude having dipped down to cross a river at 1,700m along the way.
The morning was spent descending through terraces and lush forests and the afternoon was spent reversing the process in the hot afternoon sun.
What was exceptional about day 16 was that we managed to lose two or three members along the way. In truth Mark wasn’t really lost but had given a slideshow along the way and accepted an invitation for a Tibetan Tea or two. Geraldine and Andy though were seriously lost having been so engrossed in conversation they shot off to a different bridge and a whole series of mystical adventures of their own. The stories of these adventures grew with the telling and within a day or so they were trying to convince us with ambivalent photographs that they had been abducted by monks and locked in a cave under a huge boulder. Personally I think Andy might have found something different to burn in his pipe!
Meanwhile, at our planned lunch stop our Sherpa team swung into action in an attempt to find their 2 or 3 missing wards. Sherpas were sent off in all directions; lodges and restaurants were phoned; and ‘missing trekker alerts’ were sent via jungle telegraph up and down the valley.
Mark was still wearing his red panda decoy clothes and it didn’t take more than 90 minutes to bring him to heel. Not so though Geraldine and Andy who remained missing persons.
After 3 hours we abandoned our lunch time vigil and charged off on a Furba led yomp with Babu bringing up the rear and carrying an extra rucksack as some sort of penance for losing Geraldine and Andy.
We all consoled ourselves that Andy was festooned with every electronic positioning device known to man and could surely find a small village in the Himalayas.
Upwards we rushed in the hot afternoon sun until we came upon a lovely reconstructed village gazing out over where we had been that morning. On the sun terrace, sipping San Miguel, we came upon Geraldine and Andy and their unlikely tales of alien adventures.