back to a different atmosphere, a different light quality...

After our brief respite drinking in the powerful ambience of the spectacular Bhara Pokhari, a last look at some of the highest mountains in the world (that may be Manaslu in the picture) from our camp in the clouds... and we're off again.
Looking back, that was an enormous downside to the trip, the constant pressure to keep moving, rack up the miles... And when we stopped, the social bit took over.
Admittedly, the temperature on the high plateau was hardly conducive to lounging about with my notebook - but it seems such a shame to make the effort to get to the roof of the world and not take more time to appreciate it.
It felt like being an American tourist - 'we took a week last year and did Europe' sort of whistlestop tour...
99.9% of my journal was written retrospectively - and when you're travelling, that's just not the same as unpressured 'here and now' freeflow writing to process the experience. Scribbling notes by torchlight in the tent gives a very different slant on what you write about...
Having the option of taking photos (after years of being camera-less!) was a blessing, though with an interesting impact - I seldom attempted to describe the landscape, but let the images speak for themselves. If I'm honest, trying to encapsulate such an awesome landscape in words is probably beyond my writing ability anyway...
The gaps in my visual narrative tell their own story... No record at all of the bits which were toughest - fully occupied with concentrating on the terrain, or recovering from exertion at altitude, to manage the camera...

Writing about the most tricky part of our descent from the plateau will have to wait for another day...