After almost 5-6 hours of trekking through steep slopes, we reached a beautiful point where glacier was all horizontal, like a play field. It is a good place for camping if there is no glacier in normal situations when there is less snow and you find any green area. also you get too tired due to continuous steep sections on slippery glaciers plus the altitude sickness factor. getting high altitude sickness was the last thing we wanted for us now. Due to glaciers encircling us from all sides, and rainy weather temperature dropped below zero. it was cold. Our porters told us that they aren't going any further from here because it was impossible even for them to move even higher in this weather. conditions were not favoring it.
Usman and Khurram had started to feel sickness. Both of them were afraid and worried to see the tough situation we were in. They told the rest of the team that they want to go back home. It was simply not possible for them to cross the pass this season. with a bit consultation, rest of the team decided that we will camp on the glacier for the rest of the day and wait for weather window. and so, we camped. our porters helped us in fixing our camps at a point that was pretty safe place and there were little sections of grass here. we camped. our porters and two of our team members left us and moved down to upper domail. Now four of us were in the camp.
Now is when we faced the worst of our minds. The camps were not even horizontally fixed. we were kind of lingering there. One camp could accommodate two person. Four of us moved in one camp in our sleeping bags. we thought four people together will keep the camp warm.
I, myself, hadn't been so afraid my whole life. i had to confess it. Those feeling were uncontrollable. I have a certain type of fear for animals. in lahore, i am even allergic to dogs and cats. I feared that we might be attacked by some bear or leopard. or our tent might be torn apart due to fast wind speed. or we'll freeze to death if any water started to flow in our tents from any side.
Nothing of it happened.
Arslan bhai, comforted all of us and told us nothing bad will happen. we are going to face it together. and we will reach astore.
Those few hours were the most deadly hours of my life so far. One look out of our camp and weather was too bad that visibility outside our camp was a few meters only.
It rained for almost 6 hours. constant.
Anyways after first couple of fearful hours, all team seemed normal again. We felt kind of familiar and habitual to the situation. we felt a bit less worried now. we had our dinner of Chiken Karahi that we had packed from kel and Roti. The night fell upon. two guys moved to one camp and two stayed in another. We spent the whole night staying awake due to cold and fear of being swept away by the weather. Rain used to stop for an hour but clouds never went away.
