Chomolari dawn

Then another pass and another night under the stars. At 15400feet, it had been cold enough to coat my camp with hoar frost and chill me to my bones. I crawl back into the warmth of my down jacket and eat breakfast as the sun lightens the darkness in the east.

The darkness becomes a dull grey dome of steel arched over the roof of the world. Forty miles away, the faintest outline of the mountains can just be seen. The sky warms and begins to shift though shades of silver, yellow, straw, orange and finally to the blue of tempered steel. The sun rises majestically from behind the Masang Kyungdu range and the earth waits in silence as light floods out between the peaks. A jagged line of rock appears and a river gleams like quicksilver on the valley floor far below. I watch in silence with the breath of the mountains brushing my lips. I feel alive and watch as the clouds to the east glow with the promise of a new day. Plumes of smoke from yak dung fires in the villages and army posts on the valley floor rise into the air, filling me with thoughts of families eating their breakfast of butter tea with tsampa in warm, dark rooms. I feel very much alone and as happens so often when I feel alone, my thoughts drift back to times spent with the people I have loved. What a pleasure it would be to be able to sit for a moment with each of them and share this view. I smile at their memories and dream of what has been and of what could have been and what will be, as the sun spreads its Midas touch to the white peaks to the east between Tibet and Bhutan.

I shiver to the glory of a perfect dawn. Below me, the villages are awaking, with villagers and soldiers alike rising from of the death of sleep into the life of the new day. Aged monks in darkened corners of temples tend lighted wicks floating in pools of yak butter. Packs of wild dogs lie asleep in piles, exhausted after a night of fighting and coupling. Fat marmots emerge from their burrows on the hillsides to sniff the passing wind.