The night before, we had spoken with our guide, Pemba, who had promised to wake us up for sunrise in the morning if things were clear (the sunrise at Sandakphu was rumored to be spectacular). That morning we were like two kids on Christmas Day waiting for our parents to come and say we could get up and see what Santa had brought us. I think JB woke up around 4:30am, saw that there were stars outside indicating clear skies and couldn't go back to sleep. We lay in bed in the darkness, impatiently waiting for the first sliver of light and the rap on the window telling us to get up (we didn't want to get up any earlier for fear of waking the lodge family sleeping nearby). When we heard the rap, we bounded out of bed and threw on our clothes. We were greeted with an astounding sight. Arriving in the fog and darkness the night before, we had no clue as to what was surrounding us. Looming in front of us, right outside our door, was Mt Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world - crazy!

 

We climbed to a nearby look out point where we were above the clouds and watched the sunrise for at least an hour.

 

 

 

This is a view of our lodge, perched on the side of the mountain.

 

 

The view of Kanchenjunga never got old and as the sun rose it kept changing. In the end, our guides had to coax us down to the lodge with the promise of breakfast and the warning of the long day ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

We could also see Mt Everest from where we were (as pointed out to us by our guides!). Everest is to the left of the highest peak in the picture.

 

 

When we came back down to the lodge, we found that Beth was still not feeling well and they had decided that they would not continue with us but stay another day at Sandakphu and hope that she'd be better the next day. It was disappointing because we'd been really looking forward to doing it with them. Here's a picture of the gang before JB, Pemba and I set off.

 

 

We said goodbye to John and Beth til we would meet up again in Darjeeling and then set off for a long days hike. We had our work cut out for us. Our destination was Phalut, the very last hill that you can see off in the distance in the picture below, 22kilometers away.

 

 

The hike itself proved to be gorgeous yet challenging. We were not climbing straight up a mountain but there was a lot of up and down and the ups were really steep. Yet the scenery itself was motivation enough to keep moving.

 

 

 

 

However, by midday the fog begin to roll in and the mountains once again faded back into oblivion.

 

 

 

We reached Phalut in the late afternoon and not a moment too soon for us! The last part of the hike was a neverending climb and the air was seeming pretty thin. Phalut was even smaller than Sandakphu. Five men of varying ages lived there full time running the lodge and a surrounding farm. After our guide brought us a cuppa, we climbed into bed with our sleeping bag piled with quilts and had a good rest before dinner. Pictured below is our room, not bad for the middle of nowhere but the "en suite" was frozen so we had to go au naturale. Oh well, it beat camping.