5 Milam Glacier

Day-4 [23-Oct 2016] Trek to Milam Glacier and back to Milam Teahouse

Next morning was sunny, clear and cloudless and I took some pictures from the courtyard of the teahouse. After breakfast, we set off for the Glacier at 8:45AM with no backpacks, but with trek-poles and water bottles. It was a nice easy walk, in cool & sunny weather, gradually ascending towards Zero point of Glacier.

We reached the signpost of Zero Pt in an hour at 9:40AM. The snow peaks of Hardeol and Trisuli were seen with good sunlight ... but the glacier hardly seen as it has receded considerably further in the last 10 years, since my last visit. We took some pictures from there including several of our group with snow peaks background.

We then continued on towards the glacier snout ... which was still some KMs ahead. Though the walk continued to be easy we soon reached glacier terrain with lots of boulders and rocky ground interspersed with flowing side streams.

Around 10:35AM we were pretty close to the Snout and decide to stop there and not actually climb over the Glacier. Got some great pictures in bright sunshine from that spot of the Glacier and the snow peaks.

After a while started our walk back to our Milam teahouse, lingering a bit in the old deserted village of Milam with broken houses in ruins. The many tall and green Poplar trees in the village area speak of times when this Village was a flourishing Indo-Tibetan trade supporting over 500 families.

We reached our Teahouse at 12:55PM. Bhuvan said the ITBP people had come looking for us; as they saw our Permit only mentioned 3 Trekkers and not the Porter-Guide. After Lunch the rest of the day was spent relaxing. In the afternoon my trek mates went up to the ND Temple on a ridge rise above the GREF camp. I decide to stay put.

Later, in the evening, we went to meet the ITBP Check-post official to explain to him that we had got the Permit on a previous day, but later decided we needed a porter to carry my bag and had not known that he too needed to be in the permit. Gopal showed his Aadhar-Card-Id and the matter got resolved.

Day-wise story in sub-pages below: