“When you’re up there, just take a picture. Or more, no problem! It’s for the certificate you know…”. We’re sitting in the Uttmost Adventure Trekking offices in Kathmandu and sipping their ginger tea. A pile of hundred-dollar bills is exchanged for the paper with the expedition permit. Good! Now we only have to climb that thing. But no problem there, Manaslu is an easy eight-thousander…
Three helicopters carried the rest of our compatriots back to civilization, which means it’s just the two of us now. What’s worse, even though there are some eighty people in the basecamp, nobody wants to go up yet. Fortunately the six Estonians skipped Korzhenevskaya and can’t wait any longer. Ok, eight people should be enough for tackling that three-headed monster up there. Off we go!
What a beginning that was! I only received the formal invitation necessary for visa application one day before the departure, no money left again, they treat us like dirt here in Tajikistan and when we finally reached the basecamp after three days of delays, Michal suffered a serious case of food poisoning… And when he got out of it and we went up to Pik Chetyrek to acclimatize, we got half buried in a sudden snow storm and had to fight for our lives to get down in one piece…
I drag myself up through something that looks like a riverbed. Just the river is kind of missing. Last drops of water disappeared earlier this morning and i’ll hardly reach the next mountain pass today. There’s a snowfield, you know… Well, at least there should be one. One should’ve been in “Aguas Vicuñas” as well. Are you kidding me? Agua (water) is nowhere in sight and all the vicuñas around were long time dead. Their white skeletons are still visible deep bellow…
