Watch No 6 – Nothing again. After breakfast we
hiked 4 kilometres down the Rumbak Valley and up into the Husing Valley where
we stayed at the watch point from 10.30am – 2pm. It was a steep slope up to the
watch point but what a view we had from the top and this is one of the main
Leopard watching areas in Hemis. But I think it’s primarily a winter viewing
area as its much lower down than the one we have been using in the Rumbak
Valley, although saying that a Leopard was seen here last week. Anyway, the
four of us were left here for quite some time and the silence was totally pure.
If you’ve ever experienced the utter silence one gets when in some isolated
mountain then you know what I mean. Its kind of beautiful. But then the
coughing and spitting from ‘you know who’ began after a few hours and the
silence was broken! It was very refreshing to be able to scan some different
areas and to view some different scenery.
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| Walking up to the Husing Valley view point |
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| The view from the watch point |
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| Getting bored..... |
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| Nice viewing in the Husing Valley |
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| Husing Valley |
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| Husing Valley |
Anyway, we were all feeling rather dirty today and in
need of a proper wash – there’s only so much you can do with baby wipes! I’m
also having some trouble catching my breath today at this altitude and am
struggling a bit today despite only walking around 11kms this morning. The bird
highlight this morning was a pair of Red-fronted Serins perched up nicely in
the morning sunshine.
Lunch was brought to us at the watch point by our
ever attentive ground crew – amazing service. Then we began walking back to
camp in the hot early afternoon sunshine, which made it quite a tough walk.
Sometimes we’d get some cloud cover and the temperature would drop
dramatically, so out would come our fleeces from our day packs. And that’s
another issue as you do need to carry a day pack with your bits n pieces, and I’m
also carry a scope & tripod and a big Nikon camera and lense as well. All
this seemed to weigh a lot more than usual as it’s so hot.
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| Getting back to camp |
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| Our camp |
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| Time to start scanning again |
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| The view |
Anyway, we returned to camp at 3.50pm, had a cup of
tea and chilled for a while as we were all knackered. Then it was up to the
meadow above camp for Watch No 7 – and again we drew a blank. But it’s been a
good day and nice to see a new area.
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