Got up after the Swiss girls. I was thus still in bed when they came back! It seems that Kathrin had slipped in the mud and fallen down one of the many trenches in the town. I guess I kind of failed in my responsibility here; I know what I should have done - that was to look after her, take care of her, make sure she was alright etc etc, be seen to be a loving, caring friend. But for whatever reason, I didn't. I just let her be, I allowed her Swiss comrades to take over. I sat back. I failed her.
She was reasonably OK though; she wasn't up to any hiking but a trip to Leisha's for breakfast wasn't beyond her. I had a reasonably good sliced and mixed egg/potato/onion combo (as recommended by Dette, again!), quite filling and heavy, good for breakfast I think.
I wasn't sure what to do for the rest of the day, but spending it doing nothing but eating and drinking in Leisha's didn't appeal. I took along my bag and had a vague intention to clamber up a mountain, sit at the top, write a bit, and come down a few hours later. Thus I still had my bag in tow as I left the café, and I wandered straight into Radka and Vivian. It was 10:30am.
I spent the next seven and a half hours hiking through the wilds of the local Tibetan mountains, doing things that at times I thought were reasonably impossible. It was quite odd, our journey. We started off going through the monastery we'd visited yesterday, then bearing right towards the hills, rather than going straight on towards a cave and a canyon (Jane and several others were due to go that way in the afternoon). We attempted to follow a couple of trail paths up the mountains but they mostly petered out into the grass.
After an hour or so, we realised we needed to climb up the side of a hill. There was no path up, but we climbed it anyway! We knew people must go up to the top of the hill because we could see a prayer flag fluttering in the wind at the top. However, probably not by using plantlife as steps though! At the top, we met a local cowherd; he guided us across the ridge to a few hilltops beyond. After thanking him with a chocolate chip breadcake, we made our way onwards. We had seen a sort of hut a few mountains away and we decided to head towards it.
We stopped for lunch about 2pm in the shelter of a large rock. From all these mountains we'd gained a lovely, if hazy, view of the town of Langmusi - it's quite a spread out town, sort of but not quite a five-pointed star, and the two monasteries probably account for half the space of the town!
We spotted an old riverbed to our right going down to town level and the actual river below; we figured if time was pressing then we should come back and take that escape route.
We never did reach the hut, lying just above the snowline; after lunch we climbed the ridge and, er, lost sight of it! No matter. We figured it was now time to drop down. We could either take the "escape route" or we could go down what appeared to be another river bed that dropped into the canyon below, making a nice circular route. We chose to follow the canyon.
It was quite steep in places but we seemed to be going rather well. We couldn't actually see that far down the canyon because it curved away down and there were rocks in the way but all seemed fine. Then we hit a waterfall.
The thing was, there was a trail to here, and it seemed hard to believe that it would just stop! But we couldn't walk any further, it was a sheer drop. We clambered up one side of the valley, without a path; it was very steep and quite slippery in places but after a lot of effort we made it to the top. From here we could see the other side of the hill; we could also see a trail alongside the hills on the far side. We clambered down the valley (again with only recourse to plantlife to keep us upright), walked along the ridge beside the canyon, and we knew this canyon joined the main canyon back to the monastery. However, there was no trail going down to this canyon, so once again we had to clamber down a steep gorge very carefully which took us just over 45 minutes. Once we hit the bottom it was easy!
We passed a small nomadic camp (complete with fierce, loud, and fortunately tethered dogs) where we just checked our directions, then wandered down the canyons, eventually arriving at a small pool by the cave in the monastery grounds. We arrived back at the hotel at 6.15pm.
Evening in Leisha's; I struggled through a Yak burger before going to bed somewhat early. The Swiss girls had a similar idea and everyone in our room was lying in bed by 8.30pm!!