This was the shortest day on the trek. After a long walk yesterday we decided to to take it easy and start an hour late. As always the break fast was deleicious and filling. Manikarmo is really a two tent village and I am not sure if there will be any one here in the winters. After the regular morning rituals, we assembled in the dining tent for a superb breakfast.

From manikarmo the trail follows the stream upwards, its a gradual climb of around 2 -3 hours. You feel the altitude but its not steep at all, so nothing to worry about, the going is slow, but thats what you need a slow steady climb. On the way up we met people who were returning from the climb, it was great to listen to their climbing stories. All of them encouraged us and wished us luck and good weather. The star attraction of the trail is marmots lots of them. This half rat half rabbit is not shy, you can see them often nibbling whatever grass is left around. We also came across some eagle like birds, I am not sure about there classification, but to look them fly by is really majestic.

The base camp is not really a base camp, simply because its very far away [2hr walk] from the base of the mountain. Its just that there is no place to pitch camp at the base of the mountain due to the glacier that runs down from the shoulder of stok kangri. The base camp is preety big and when we were there we had around 5-6 may be more expeditions already camped there. There is no grass for the mules to chew upon and hence they just drop our bags and head downwards to manikarmo. They show up typically after 2 days when the expeditions return.

The climbing schedule is preety fixed, for all the groups, you spend a night at the camp and the following night you give a shot at the summit. Some ultra fit/acclimatized guys give a shot at the summit the same night. Many succeed in the summiting this way as well. We were sticking to traditional schedule,when we reached the basecamp we almost did nothing, just roamed around, called up people, poker...food.

We planned to go to adv. base camp the following morning and plan our route for the big climb. Moreover one cannot see the peak from the base camp. Out of the 10 trekkers only 4 of us were willing to go to the advanced base camp. Me, Deepak,Hiten,Jayant planned to start at around 9 am and touch the glacier and return. We thought this will give us a feel of the task ahead. After a relaxing day, I hit bed at round 930. Physical condition still fine, no headache.

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