Day 6

Starting with a late breakfast we began our rest day in Olangchung Gola by visiting a house for salt butter tea then made our way through the village up the hill to the Gompa.


Olangchung Gola is the last civilisation we will see until we reach the Arun Valley. It lies little more than a day's walk from the border with Tibet and it’s proximity has caused the area to be off limits to tourists until a few years ago.



There are around 45 wooden houses in the village and it is an important trading post for goods coming across the passes from Tibet and up from the plains of India.

The 465 year old gompa above the village has 3-storey and is freshly painted in ochre, it is claimed to be one of the oldest in Nepal. Over the next couple of days the gompa is hosting a festival which we unfortunately just missed but were able to witness the dress rehearsal.





Returning to our camp for lunch, we were treated to sushi before getting our one and only bucket wash of the trip.
In the evening a German couple (Inga and Dieter) came to join us for a cup of tea. They were out for six weeks and were planning to re-visit a particular village called Hatiya where they had brought their family some years ago, but Inga had suffered some altitude sickness and they were just staying for the festival before returning to Kathmandu. We agreed to help them by delivering some pictures to the village as we were due to pass through it in about a week. The images were from a book that Dieter has just completed about the Nepali people and landscape of the Greater Himalayan Trail, including his personal account of travels in Nepal since 1969. I look forward to reading it when a translation to English is published.

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