Yesterday we had the traditional Puja ceremony that started already at 8 h. The weather was nice with quite a bit of sun and the ceremony was followed, as usual, with a lot of beer and shots of whiskey. Obviously, the rest of the day not much happened anymore. Today we got up early, with breakfast at 6:30 h, as most of us would try to reach C1. If only to cache supplies for the rest of the expedition. Pemba and I took off a little before 7 h. Pemba had a huge load of supplies with him. We had been told by Mingma the night before that C1 was just over 5400 m. After 2 h we reached that altitude, but it turned out that C1 was actually at 5775 m (there is also a lower camp apparently, but I guess that is not used). I will never say again that Manaslu is “easy” as it was pretty hard. This might partially be psychological as we had to climb 900 m instead of the expected 550 m. In addition, like on Larkya Lake, my left eye, my bad eye, caused a lot of trouble. Double seeing and at a certain moment, apparently a combination of lack of oxygen and tiredness, it just gave up. Pemba, luckily, takes very good care to get me down safely every time. Tomorrow we plan another resting day and afterwards we go up to sleep in C1.
