This woman waited on us when we stopped for chia in one of the small hamlets along the trail. We had to wait for some time while she rekindled the fire and boiled the milk. Surya talked to some people that he knew and I sat and watched the ambered afternoon light flicker on the tree leaves and the adobe walls of the small buildings. While we sat there the clouds came down again and it got dark as if it was going to rain.

Then suddenly the clouds broke up a bit and it cleared towards the east very quickly and there in front of me was the precious rock and snow I had been dying to see. It was a mountain wall, a spectacular, dizzying precipice rising thousands of feet above us. My eyes followed it up to where it disappeared in clouds again. It was Ghanapurna, a mountain more than 24,000 feet above sea level and if seemed close enough for me to touch. I began to cry. Everyone looked surprised and Surya laughed. “He happy,” he told them. As quickly as it appeared the mountain vanished again.

I was energized by seeing the mountain so close at hand and wanted to see more but the monsoon clouds came in as thick as pea soup again and we finished our chia and started climbing again. Just above the village I looked up the trail and saw this yogi coming towards us.

He knew Surya (Surya knew everyone we met) and the exchanged greetings which included a fair bit of news and we went with him off the trail to this spring where the yogi drank some water and blessed the water. I was totally fascinated by this guy who had come down out of the clouds looking a little like a cloud himself.

He told us he had come down from his retreat high on the ridge to get fresh "curd", or fresh yoghurt made from buffalo milk (which is magical stuff) to take back up the mountain. He said that is pretty much all he lives on. We said goodby and he continued down while we continued up.

Climbing higher and closer to Surya's we got muffled by the clouds again and they made the landscape a bit eerier and mysterious looking as the trail, now practically a stair case, hugged the side of the mountain. With the clouds it was impossible to see how far down and how steep the drop was below us down the side of the mountain.