12.10.2014 Tilicho Lake 5004m (13km)

There was no rush in the morning. Today we should only be doing a quick visit to the highest lake in the world and come back to the Base Camp.

Since we were coming back to the same place we repacked our bags so that we only had one large backpack for our jackets and water bottles and left the rest in the guest house. Along the way up to the lake we were going to swap the bag around.

But first we had a different problem. There was no running water in the base camp as over night the pipes froze (just a quick reminder at this point that there also was no heating in the room and the gaps of the home made doors and windows were at least 1 or 2 centimetres.

So our bathroom activities were moved to the creek a couple of meters down the road. This is also where we filled up our water bottles for the trek up to the lake. We were advised that from Manang upwards we should be using two water purification tablets and wait an hour (as oppose to the normal one tablet and 30 minutes).

As you can imagine it was a pretty steep climb for most of the time as we had to gain a good 900 meters over about 6 km of distance, but sharing the backpack really made things easier and we reached the lake around 3 hours later.

The lake quite nice but we all were wondering if it was worth a three day detour. My initial idea to go for a quick dip in the lake was diminished when I saw the 80 meter cliff down to the water from where reached the lake. Also there were a couple of ice floats on the lake.

However, there was a little tea house with quite expensive tea. Luckily I had my can of Everest beer that I brought all the way up from Kathmandu that we shared.

The only thing that bothered me a little was that my app (MapsWithMe) said we were at 4986 meters. I wanted the full 5000! So after I downed the rest of my beer I told the guys. "Well I'm off to 5000!" and walked a little bit back the path we came from and walked off the trek in order to gain some altitude up a ridge. I kept looking at the GPS but it only increased very slowly... finally I got to 5004m. 5km above sea level. More than half way up to the peak of Maount Everest. It was pretty cool.

The way back was pretty quick and easy and the rest of the afternoon was spent with eating, playing cards and reading my book.

Again another early night was upon us.