We started the our walk after a belly full breakfast of eggs,porridge,butter/jam toasts [unlimited :)] at around 730AM. We followed the same ritual of morning prayers before the start of the day. Today Deepak introduced us with the prayer that Pune Mountaineers say. The main advantage of walking through a gorge, I felt, was the shade. We were beaten by the sun yesterday but today atleast till 10AM we were in the gorge and in the shade. Also the track was preety green. Daily, we would typically start early and the support team would follow. They had to pack up all our tents and load them on the horses. They also carried hot lunch along with them so that we can eat on the way. On this day I think we were a bit fast and so after a 2 hour trek we decided to stop a bit and see if the horses followed. The maze of gorges were super and after sometime I didn't have any clue of the direction we came from. At many places the flash floods had washed away section of the trail and so we had to climb on to the newer trails some 20-50 ft above on the mountain slope. All mountains in these gorges are made of slate like very loose rock. They are stacked in layers with each layer as thin as a bark of the tree. You can actually break the slice of the rock with your fingers. In short all these mountains are a like a landslide time bomb waiting for some trigger. While we were walking the slide was actually happening and as there is no vegetation there is nothing stopping it. A small 2-3 hour rain shower and you have all together different terrain.

After a small village the gorge opens into the rumbuk valley and suddenly the barren mountain give way to preety green mountains. There is small, parachute tent, tea stall run by a ladakhi lady named Jojo on the fork of routes. One of them heads into Rumbuk and on to stok-la and one towards kanda-la into Markha. In the tea stall you get tea and scotch and rum and what not..Since we were faster than our horses and support guys we decided to take a long break atleast an hour. I remember reaching here at 1040AM. A french team of 7-8 ppl all above the age 55 had descended kanda-la and were going to stok kangri. We exchnged climbing plans with them, they were climbing on the same night as us. All these guys looked super fit may be due to a week long acclimitazation trek in Markha and the Alps.

Rumbuk is just 30 mins from here but our camp-site was way ahead. It almost took all our energy to reach there and i guess around 90 min. I reached the camp site at around 130PM. This was our second day on the trek where we had missed the correct time of lunch, and now that was hurting. I was dead hungry when I reached the camp site also it had started raining to add to the difficulty. I hogged on pasta,beans and macronni. Also on the side plate was cabbage salad and aloo jeera. Tea/cooffe follwed shortly. This was one of my best treks in terms of food. I was not altitude sick till now just a bit tired due to lack of food. But I was sure to regain all my energy in the next 2-3 hours. We spend the rest of the time chatting and playing cards. Rain had stopped as the sun set on a near by mountain.

Clouds had vanished and stok-la could be easily seen and one could easily spot the prayer flags with a binoc.
I saw our task for tomorrow I thought its a 3 hour grilling effort to the top of stok-la. All this in mind I hit bed anround 9PM, it was a freezing night, but to my comfort the wind had died down.

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