Day 7 & 8 Ice Lake (4,620 m)

In the mountains it's almost impossible to have a lie in as everyone else is up at the crack of dawn, battering about so at 7.30 having hardly slept at all I gave up on my lie in and threw all my plans from the night before of taking it easy out the window and decided to do the trip to Ice Lake! To be honest I blame Lucas a German guy staying in our guesthouse who had said his friend told him it was the most spectacular day of his trek- even more impressive than the pass, so my FOMO (fear of missing out) kicked in and I had to see what it was all about. Really and truly as it's such a long trip we should've set off by 8 am at the latest but by almost 10am we were still in the village trying to get snacks from the bakery as there are no tea houses along the way (in fact there is a sum total of nothing the entire way) but the bakery was closed- 1st strike. Then I realized my camera battery was dead - 2nd strike and a firm believer in 3 strikes and you're out when it began snowing just an hour into our ascent I decided this was just not meant to be so we headed back down the mountain defeated. We went to a teahouse in Bragha to warm up and watched more and more trekkers come back down disappointed as the snow storm got much worse- at least we hadn't gone too far. So I had my chilled day in Manang after all, which is quite a big village with real coffee, cakes, internet and even a place showing movies (all mountain related e.g. Into Thin Air etc.) which I avoided. I met Michael (Sweden) and Ben (UK) friends of the girls so we just hung out and caught another local festival in town- more drunken archery.

By this point I'd been having more issues with Tek (guide) as he made it fairly clear he did not like Israelis and said we should not travel with Tali. He was not alone on this as it seemed many Nepalis particularly in the Manang area felt the same and 3 lodges in Manang (including the first one we tried)even refused all Israelis guests, which I was a bit shocked at given Nepalis generally have this image of being very welcoming- apparently not to everyone! I'd also tried to give him the afternoon off so we could both have a bit of space from each other but he insisted on following me around everywhere I went and trying to separate me from the group. It was all getting a bit ridiculous at this point so I had a serious chat with him about how I wanted the trip to go, giving each other space to chat to other people and plans being flexible etc he was all very agreeable at the time but turns out I may as well have talked to the wall!

Anyway next day we woke up and it was a beautiful day so I decided to try Ice Lake again on my own as the guys were heading on what turned out to be a disastrous attempt of a shortcut to Tilicho Lake. I'm not going to lie the trip was pretty tough- it's a really steep ascent for almost 5 hours and I was completely underwhelmed by the lake at the top. The scenery was lovely but nothing we wouldn't see later in the trek anyway, and as we hadn't set off super early the afternoon winds had picked up by the time we reached the top so it was freezing so not exactly somewhere you'd want to stick around so I took a few pictures and began the descent :o(

And then the real drama began- about 1 hour from the foot of the mountain I lost Tek. I was taking pictures and told him to go ahead and I'd catch up as we were taking the same trail home, however he was waiting on one side of a ruined building and I walked passed on the other side and we somehow missed each other. When I hadn't seen him in 15 minutes I began to worry as I knew he wouldn't go that far without me, so the search was on I backtracked and shouted up and down the mountain, but I guess he did too and we missed each other. So after running around up and down different trails (at some serious altitude) I started to get really worried he'd fallen and hurt himself. I thought about going down to the closest village to get some help but realized by the time I would go down and get back up the mountain it'd be dark- it really makes you think how dangerous the mountains can be. Anyway I resorted to my rescue whistle and low and behold he heard me and came sauntering down, not a care in the world. At this point I wasn't sure if I should fling him off the mountain, but I was happy he was in one piece and we could eventually get off the mountain and back to Manang- definitely not the best day trip of the trek.