Dzo Jongo East 

We began our ascent of Dzo Jongo East, the lower of the two summits, at 4.30am the next morning. We set off in mountaineering boots, but carried crampons, harness and rope in our packs, expecting to encounter a glacier somewhere along the way. In fact, Dzo Jongo East was nothing more than a straightforward plod up a snow-lined ridge, slightly trickier towards the top as it crossed awkward boulder fields hidden beneath the snow.
From the 6,220m summit, we could see that it was only a short scramble down and back up along a triangular ridge to the higher summit of Dzo Jongo West. The weather was perfect, and we thought seriously about continuing over to it once we got our breath back. But in the end we decided to head back down and continue with our plan of climbing it separately from the other side.
When we returned to our secluded base camp nine hours after setting out, we were surprised to discover that our tents had been absorbed into a huge camp that had been erected by the Indian trekking operator Trek The Himalaya (TTH) in our absence. Despite the miles upon miles of open space available in this broad and remote valley, they had inexplicably decided to stop exactly where we had and surround our tents with theirs!
For a trip report see: www.markhorrell.com/blog/2022...
For related photographs see: www.flickr.com/photos/markhor...
Music: Night On A Boat by Jangwa is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License: freemusicarchive.org/music/Di...