Fields – Trekking from Camp to Shadey

27. September 2024

 

3.900 m -> 4.250 m / 6 hiking hours / 11 km

 

 

I am always amazed at how well such a limp body can regenerate during the night – and so I set off a little earlier this time, cheerful and exhilarated. It was a pleasure to walk along the gorge and admire the countless rock formations. I photographed a few plants:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I continued along a pretty path at the top of the river. Then I turned around a corner – and met a man! I was so shocked that I forgot to ask him for a picture. He was from Shadey and was hurrying to Phuktal. That’s all I know about him.

 

 

After the curve the valley became broader.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A blanket of cloud had already formed in front of the sun and stayed there. The pictures just look a little different. It was clear that the river had to be crossed. But how? Ah, a bridge! Oh, but what a bridge….

 

 

I preferred not to think about it for long, but just went up. She seemed surprisingly stable after all. Immediately afterwards, another surprise: another man! He was sitting together with Lobzang, they were enjoying salty tea (I didn’t like it) and chatting:

 

 

 

 

When I looked up, I saw a few houses. However, I didn’t realise whether the man or someone else or rather no one lived there.

 

 

It then simply continued up this valley and then it became different, it narrowed into a gorge again and there were seats for deities along the way.

 

 

 

 

Then we turned another sharp corner and walked up a narrow gorge.

 

 

And then it widened out and there were lots of fields and vegetation to see. A man was shouldering a huge bundle of cattle feed for the winter. We had arrived in the foothills of Shadey.

 

 

 

 

We went up together with him and through the Tschörten around the corner, and there was the cluster of houses in Shadey.

 

 

 

 

It was quite far away from the other villages and initially seemed unattractive and lonely to me. The houses were probably inhabited – but I only saw light in about 5 of them in the evening (solar power). The barley harvest had already been harvested and now people were carrying the winter fodder home and onto the roofs. There were mostly elderly to old people to be seen, no children at all. Probably in schools somewhere else. But I was wondering if/how you can find someone to marry who also wants to live here. Of course, the grey weather made it look even less attractive.

 

People came round for a chat and we were invited into a room for chang and barley flour.

 

 

The people didn’t speak much English, but looked very happy and welcoming. But it’s kind of stupid when I spurn all their things like that. But I can’t get down chang, salt tea or butter tea. I actually preferred then to walk around outside for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the last picture, the woman was picking potatoes out of the ground and the man was watching. They only have yaks, dzos and cows in this village, no sheep or goats. They can’t manage that too.

 

Just as it is a mystery to me how large families can live close together, it is an even greater mystery to me how a small village community can live in such isolation. What do people talk about? What happens there? Sometimes the distance between my life and that of the local people seems huge to me. What flows into my head as too much input every day seems to be too little here. I didn’t find the pretty landscape really compensating either, as it didn’t seem so pretty in all the grey.

 

Shadey is a detour that I didn’t necessarily have to make on my route. The next one was a long way back. But I was curious about the village. You don’t have that many remote villages anymore. Do they want a road?