Annapurna Circuit Trek: Part 4 - Tengki to Thorung Phedi

After the snowstorm of the day before and a very chilly night, we woke up early in the morning to a breath-taking view of the mountains. 

We rushed out to take some pictures of the day's first light hitting the snowy peaks, high above our guesthouse in Tengki.

This is the view we had of the path up the Manang valley that we had just come along.

As the morning progressed Frank soon realized that overnight he had begun to have a sore throat and a bad cough, making it painful to breathe in the cold dry air. We decided to press on very slowly towards Yak Kharka.

We had beautiful clear views all day.

After we passed the town of Gusang (3900m) the path branched into the Thorung 'Khola' (aka 'Valley'). 

This mass of glacier covered peaks consists of (from left to right) Annapurna III, Gangapurna and Glacier Dome.

As we proceeded towards Yak Kharka (meaning Yak pasture in Nepali) we came across this cute baby yak and its mother.

Chelsea posing in front of a wall of carved prayer stones, with the Chulu mountains looming in the distance.

We spent another very cold night in the Gangapurna View Lodge in Yak Kharka (4050m). This is the view we had from our window, with Gangapurna on the left and Glacier Dome on the right.

Frank's sore throat continued to get worse and so we decided to continue only a short way up the valley to Letdar (4200m), about an hours walk.

There were many more spectacular views to be had.

We were hoping that after a restful day and night in Letdar Frank's illness would improve, but after another night of acclimatizing in the bitterly cold weather, his condition had not improved and Chelsea began to feel the onset of similar symptoms. But we decided to press slowly on to Thorung Phedi anyway.

It took us about four and a half hours of very slow walking to reach Thorung Phedi (4500m). Breathing was becoming more difficult as the amount of the oxygen decreased and the pain in our lungs increased. In the last leg of our journey we had a near miss with a rockslide, which involved us running along the path as rocks and debris hurtled both in front and behind us.

Some of the only plant species present at these altitudes, stout spiky shrubs...

...and Juniper bushes.

The morning view from Thorung Phedi, after another snow storm during the night. The temperature was well below freezing, reaching as low as -15C during the night, and our room was neither heated nor insulated.

We awoke in the morning to mild food poisoning, moderate acute mountain sickness (headache and nausea), and severe coughing and chest pain, made worse from breathing the frigid mountain air all night. Over breakfast we discussed our options. Neither of us felt well enough to climb the 1000m to the pass, let alone down the 1600m to the next village afterwards. After reading our handy medical guidebook we found that the coughing and chest pain could be early symptoms of High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, which made us even more nervous. In addition we didn't feel that it was possible for our bodies to heal in these cold, low oxygen, unsanitary conditions, so with a heavy heart we decided the best option was to descend to Manang, where the weather was warmer, the air was richer, and a good doctor was available.