I have a blister the size of Texas on the sole of my right foot; in trying to avoid walking on it I have created another blister (the size of California) on the side of the same foot.  I am limping up the side of an orange mountain in the midday sun, two kilometers behind Yogi, and asking myself "Is it still worth it?"

...

pant pant pant...

PANT.  "Still worth it."

I am improbably incapable in the mountains: slow to ascend, slower to descend, remarkably unsurefooted and incredibly clumsy.  It is an amusing and pathetic sight.  It has nothing to do with fitness, either; I'm just not mountain goat material.  Lichen grow faster than I hike. [1]

So imagine what it is like to be backpacking with Yogi.  We just trekked the Markhal Valley Trail, between the Zanskar and Stok Ranges, and are preparing to do another.  The boy does not get tired, does not get hungry, never needs to rest, and walks about as fast as I run.

The second day of our hike, ascending Gongmaru La, I stumbled and crawled up the last 500 meters in the time it took Yogi to go up and down three times.  First with his own bag; then, waiting an hour and deciding to come down to get my bag; finally, to help a Spanish lady who was suffering from altitude sickness.  That last stretch is sick - gorgeous and cold and up and up and UP, at 5200 meters.  But then the rest of the trail is valley, and quite easy, if hard on the feet.

Markhal Valley is accessible only by foot and horses.  It's not heavily settled: there are a few tiny villages here and there, and a few more empty winter settlements.  These latter places are composed of low stone buildings with briars on top of the walls - here villagers come with their sheep to huddle through the winter, and the briars, I hope, discourage snow leopards.  The trail is also dotted with stupas and mani walls, and the occasional gompa.  If you get lost, just follow the horseshoe prints and dung piles.  Sometimes you discover that they are on the other side of a river you must ford.

I don't really know why I go backpacking.  I don't enjoy walking with my house on my back, and I am often too weary or short of breath to look up and around and see where I am.  The most terrible songs get stuck in my head, and I have a difficult time just being, and just being aware.  But when I'm feeling awful, with hours more of trudging yet, I ask myself if it's still worth it, and inexplicably, it always is.

Maybe these things are apart of it: stumbling into a parachute tent, in the middle of nowhere, for juice, and staying for the most delicious chutagi I've had in Ladakh, made from scratch by the most adorable Ladakhi women, which effectively convinces me that Ladakhi food is not, in fact, boring, but stupendous.  Sitting on a silty bank with my sore feet and my brown hands in the gray, rushing water, the sun on my face and dipping gently between two mountains, after a long day of walking.  Greeting Ladakhi boys on the trail - boys I am convinced are the most beautiful in the world - and eliciting smiles from them, either because I am obviously a fool, or possibly because they think I'm sweet.  Discovering that without my backpack, I can actually run up slopes.  Seeing pink river water and pink mountains and pastel rocks, and listening to the fairy bells that hang around the small pack horses and donkeys' necks.

Pant pant pant pant PANT.  Is it still worth it?

Most definitely.

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[1] "It may take a lichen more than half a century to attain the dimensions of a shirt button."  -Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

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Positive comments are most welcome but constructive criticism (of the writing) even more so.  Boring?  Too self centered?  Not tight enough?  Let me know.  :)