Saying goodbye to our porters in Samagoen

The last 24 hours has been quite interesting. We arrived in Samagoen and said goodbye to our porter team that had been with us since Arughat. It hardly seems like eight days since we set out from Kathmandu.
Samagoen is a small place from which all expeditions to climb Mt Manaslu are mounted. It is from here that teams move up to the base camp from where the climbing starts and ends.

Saying goodbye to our porter team in Samagoen

As anticipated Cham (our Sirdar) set about getting our freight into the queue to go up the hill to base camp. 

We have met a Japanese team in front of us and the mixed team that we met earlier are already up in base camp. We can only use the resources from the village and these are limited and today our equipment has started to be transported up the hill by Yak, pack horse and porter.

Today we all had a walk out of Samagoen with a view, gaining a little height to aid our acclimatisation. Rob and I walked up to base camp, which is situated at approximately 4850 metres above sea level (about 38 metres below the summit of Mt Blanc) and back. It was quite tough as we’ve only been up to 3550 metres so far here in Samagoen.

The team remain in fine fettle and we are very much looking forward to heading up to base camp soon.

Views of the Manaslu massif from Samagoen. The summit is above the building that is under construction on the left of the photograph.

Please feel free to look at the team blog which has more photos and updates from the team and myself.  http://remec-manaslu13.blogspot.co.uk/