THURSDAY. Morning… and the sun is finally shining and the mist is completely gone. I got up at 7 and walked a couple of hundred metres upstream and took some photographs then went back to camp and got the fire going. By the time we had breakfasted on boiled eggs, tomatoes and bread it was warm and sunny so Kelly and I went for a walk up the river leaving Linda to mind the camp.
The sun was warm upon us as we followed the river upstream, it’s bed slowly gathering steepness and the cold, clear water gathering speed as it leapt over the boulders and swirled over the roots of overhanging trees. The sides of the valley rose steeply above us with the trees growing thickly upon them in a beautiful pattern of greens. above the treeline, wide alpine meadows covered the mountain tops, the green of the grass is mingled with the yellow and purple of wildflowers. Dotted about the high meadows were houses of dark stained wood giving the whole area a distinctly Swiss look.
Eventually we tired of walking and headed back down to camp where Linda had set out all our gear out to air. We sat around for a while then Linda and I headed off down the valley to explore. We stopped at the hotel for a Coke then carried on down past the lake, it’s waters now a beautiful turquoise blue colour. There was a road leading up through the cluster of wooden houses on the hill above the village so we followed it until we had a panoramic view of the lake with the twin minarets of the mosque in the foreground and the dark greens of the mountains beyond.
We sat for an hour amongst the profusion of wildflowers growing beside the track and soaked up the warmth of the sun while below us people toiled in their fields, children laughed and chatted and the eerie call of the musseins echoed up from the mosque. On our way back up the valley we sat beside the lake eating hot bread, a chocolate bar each and locum which we had bought in the village. We also stopped again at the hotel for a Coke and to pinch [steal] some salt.
When we got back to camp I rigged up a fishing rod with a stick, some catgut and a hook that I’d bought in the village and went off to try my luck at fishing. I pissed around for an hour so without getting a bite so we had to have boiled eggs and homemade tomato soup, eaten out of an empty can for supper! We sat around the campfire yarning for a while then crawled into the tent as the mist it once again rolled in. During the night it rained and there was thunder and lightning.
CurseOfTheTraveller 