Dingboche morning was very cold, I was out to shoot the rising sun, and my fingers were numb. The sun rises behind the Island peak side and the view is bright, Lohtse shines up so does Ama Dablam and so does Kangtega. Its like the sun shakes and wakes all these mighty mountains. The dingboche valley then receives the sun and its like the heater turned 'ON', the valley comes to life. I watched all this superb display sitting shivering on the stairs of the hotel. Sun rise has never felt so soothing in April. In my home town Pune the day time temperatures had touched 40* C. The hotel owner played a cold mean prank on me by giving me icy cold water to brush my teeth. It was freezing, he told me that it was almost below 0*C that night.
After the grand morning show I came in for a hot milk tea where Milind and Dr.Patwardhan were already in. We had this day to us, we had decided to hike up to the small gompa at around 4850m but I wanted to do some foto shoot and had decided to take it easy and walk probably half the way, to the height of Dughla (4620m). Dughla was the first stop on the way to Lobuche the next day. After the quick breakfast we started our hike up to the first line of chortens, from here the Pheriche valley opens up and you can actually see as far as Lobuche peaks. We could locate cho-la pass, cholatse and the trail to cho-la pass from Dughla depression. The trail to Dughla seemed very leveled and manageable after the climb that we just did.
I took many pictures from here and just sat there staring at the vast void of the Himalayas. I have always liked to this even in the Shayadris, stare into the deep valley and look as far as you can. May be you try to find the end of something but instead of finding it you want to get lost in the void.
