Seven Lakes Trek- Anini- Day 3

 This series of posts is taking forever to pen down- thanks to more wandering adventures! But to go back to Anini, this was the day I thought I was done for. I switched my mantra from, 'Do not get injured' to 'Do not Die'- and I very nearly did too!

Pine Trees in the Mishmi Hill Alpine Forest

The Trail

Day 3 of the Seven Lake Trek starts out amongst the beautiful pine forests of Mishmi Hills and post ascending, the Alpine Forest opens up into beautiful fields of Rhododendron bushes & trees. While the trees primarily have bright red flowers, this was the first time I saw pink, peach, yellow, orange and red rhododendron flowers. Anyways, back to the trail- once we reached these open fields (sides of the mountains) the trek would alternate between ascends taking us to14,000 ft and descends bringing us back to 12,000 ft throughout the day. 

While the initial trail was planned to end in Camp 3, due to the low bioavailability of oxygen to support fire at this camp, we'd walk straight onto Camp 4 which would see us trekking for about 8 hours straight, at optimal speed. The mission brief itself hinted at a challenging day but there were more through this day, which post a certain point felt like an expedition. 

1. Acute Motion Sickness: the day began with us ascending from Camp 2 through a steep ascent and just before the pine forests opened up to the mountain tops, I could say, one could feel that the air got thinner. And it got thin fast. 

This is when I had my very first bout with AMS, while I've had some symptoms before, on an earlier trek in the form of dizziness and reduced awareness- this time I couldn't breathe. I can't say I've ever had to struggle for breath, and as I gasped each breath out loudly, flagging G to let him know that I don't know what to do, I thought I was going to die. 

Thankfully, we were in the presence of Reena, who just cleared her Basic Mountaineering Course & Alan, a trekker with almost fifty years of trekking experience in his belt who both helped me calm down and control my breathing. G happily handed over that bottle of Axe oil to bring my awareness back to that moment and we very slowly continued to make our way up through the ridges. 

2. Rhododendron & Rain: There are people in life that one cannot live with or without; and while that has seen mixed results in my life, these bushes are the best example of the word Frenemies. The trail that Emudu have created takes you through the Rhododendron bushes, which means that you will step on their jutting roots to make your way through the trail. 

Light rain started falling at some point, and we found that these roots got slimy and very slippery. While they could certainly trip you up, they could also keep you from falling down the mountain, if you held onto them. Never the brown branches ofcourse, only the green ones. 

Pink Rhododendron fields 

3. Mist: After rain, must come mist. And mist we had, so thick we couldn't see our own palms stretched out in front of us. This broke a bit, while we sat and waited for the rest of our team, at the old Indo-Tibet (China) border when the sun broke out to help us thaw our hands and limbs. 

Snow, mist, flowers in the Mishmi Hills

4. Snow: The other reason we were waiting for the rest of the group to reconvene was specifically so that we did the next part of this trek together. While snow is not unheard off in these parts in June, the amount of snow was very unusual and given that this was thin melting snow, we were all on high alert.

The Trail- Mishmi Hills

Snow covering boulders in the Mishmi Hills. This was melting, we couldn't see this while walking. 

 Thankfully the Emudu team is experienced enough to know how to help us navigate this, but even so, I found myself falling knee deep into melting snow and at one point sliding down the mountain after having slipped on the snow. 

And in both instances, there were helping hands propping me up, but it was only when we returned that we found that all this snow was covering the top of boulders. Should any of us have had the misfortune of stepping on melting snow between the boulders, we'd have found ourselves either dead or injured. Miles of difficult terrain between us, with no walkies, no network and the army camp being our closest option for potential rescue. 

It took us all of ten hours to reach the base camp, with the snow significantly having altered our ability to be speedy. We arrived at Base Camp 4 broken in spirit (it had been a long and treacherous day) and extremely tired. Even in this, we could see we were in an absolutely gorgeous landscape and while excited, we found ourselves retiring to bed at 5pm and opted to skip dinner in favor of some well needed rest.

Signs of life all around us