When the climb is over 2200m (about the height of Mt Kosiosko – the highest mountain in Australia), it takes some time. Gastroniza sleeps, bee stings, icy river swims, watching milk being separated. And the ever uphill crawl. Still not at the summit yet.
Honey
Still hot for the most part (until I reached high enough), the day was punctuated by stops at some of the many many restaurants, usually followed by a sleep. I’m still never hungry, but I know I must eat. I force things down, and hope the lack of appetite is due to the heat.
When I wasn’t passing a restaurant, I was passing people selling honey. And where there’s honey, there are bees. One stung me – my first ever bee sting. For a few minutes I was worrying – what if I am allergic. It turns out I am spectacularly not allergic to bee stings.
Bee sting
As I got higher, the number of yurts increased. As the sun was getting lower, I was looking for a nice spot to set up my tent – all the nice spots are taken up by yurts.. ☺ So I asked if I could camp near a yurt on the river. Of course. I even got shown how to separate milk into cream and the rest. And some kymys – fermented mare’s milk.
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