The Journey
It’s the kind of thing I wanted to do before I needed a walking stick 24/7. Climb to Tilicho. Climb up to see the world’s highest lake – the “Great Ice Lake” as 1950s adventurer Maurice Herzog put it. Sure, we didn’t see any ice on the lake during this summer trek. What we did see was a 85-metre deep, 4 km-wide bowl containing 155 million litres of freshwater, propped up at 5000m above sea level.
At the top of Mesokanto-La
Frankly, Tilicho does look like any other lake. In fact, many others are probably more impressive. The Caspian Sea is so huge it was mistaken for a “sea”. And Lake Baikal is so voluminous it contains 20 percent of the Earth’s fresh water.
But Tilicho isn’t just about a lake. Tilicho was a journey, which had started out looking like impossible, on the tourist map we bought from Thamel. It had seemed impossible on those days when our tired feet were forced to carry our weary bodies for another three hours . It had seemed impossible when AMS starting knocking us out at sub-5000m.
But, to the Tilicho we went, and survived.
After reaching Tilicho, we tried to cover the same route that Herzog took – Mesokanto Pass (5099m), then descending 2200m across the great wilderness to Thini and Jomsom. We wouldn’t dare to compare our trek to Herzog’s great adventure, but in its own special way, Tilicho was our own great journey. - Ed
>> Start the journey here.
(Click “Read more” to see route map)
Map of Annapurna Region
