Day 2 At Kolsay Lakes National Park

There were two lakes at the Kolsay Lakes National Park. The host drove us to the first one. The car first stopped at a passport control office. We needed to register. It was true that we were the first ones this year. But I didn’t understand why I met some Russian travellers inside the national park later on.

The passport control office / entrance of the Kolsay Lakes National Park. My name was the first one that appeared on the guestbook! 🙂

We then headed to the lake. It happened that the host met some friends at the entrance and so he asked us to follow them. But we were too busy taking pictures so we lost them on our way to the first lake.

At the first lake, we met a few travellers. One of them was a shy Russian guy who couldn’t speak English but could speak a bit of Deutsch. He told me he was staying in a guesthouse inside the national park (wow). I asked him how long it’d take to go to the second lake. He said 3 hours. My eyes popped out. I quickly ate a potato from the packed lunch the host gave me and started walking again.

The first lake at Kolsay Lakes National Park
The first lake at Kolsay Lakes National Park. You can still see the sheet of ice on the lake.
I like the trees around the lake.
I like the reflection of the mountains.
The reflection of the trees looks so nice. Can you see a bit of snow in the photo?
The broken branch looks like the hand gesture that you’d make when you do the lotus pose.
I love this photo. It looks like a tree when in fact it is just the ice.
The same angle but for this photo, I included the lake at the bottom of this photo. The tree shape on the ice looks a bit more prominent here.
You can see the sheet of ice on the lake more clearly in this photo.
One of the stray dogs in the woods. It just emerged out of nowhere. After my experience in South America, I was a bit scared of stray dogs but it turned out these ones were pretty friendly. They sniffed me and showed me the way to the second lake, like the one I met in Bhutan. 🙂

The trail was icy as it had been trodden by too many people and horses (there were horse trekking trips). The snow became compact because of that I guess and it turned into ice. It was so slippery that I fell over a few times. I was glad I didn’t fall on the poops of the horses. The entire trail was so full of snow and poops, so much more than any other treks I did in South America and other countries. And they were very close together. One pile after another. Gross.

The snow still hadn’t melted. The second lake became a natural ice rink.

The second lake was very nice. It was covered with ice. It was now a natural ice rink. It was so beautiful. I walked to the lake and washed my feet in the cold water. It was so soothing. But I had to wear the wet socks again. That wasn’t soothing at all. Mount Fitz Roy in El Chaltén in Argentina was hot and dry. That was a very nice experience with Marie and Travis. I still missed it. 

The natural ice rink. But the ice was a bit too thin to do ice skating. I was extremely careful when I walked on it. The trekking trail was exactly like this. You can imagine how slippery it was.
I took a few more shots of the first lake on our way back to the entrance.

I was so tired after I finished trekking mainly because I fell a few times. The path was really too slippery for me. I kept telling myself ‘there’s no helicopter here’ as I walked. That’s what Marie said to me.

The host served us dinner when we went back to the guesthouse and invited me to try his sauna cum ‘shower’. Wow! That was a very different experience. It was a real sauna room and it was extremely hot. I couldn’t stay in the sauna room for too long. There were basins of water in the room and I quickly poured the water on my body and that was the ‘shower’.

The host then prepared tea for us. I was thinking, if I were with some backpackers, we would have enjoyed it a lot. I really did miss travelling with backpackers who were eager to try new things and were curious about almost everything. Staying curious is so important in our lives.

28 March 2013

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