Yesterday we started the day walking on the moraine, hopping huge boulders on the massive glacier. In all my travels to the mountainous reigons of the world I have never seen such an enormous glacier. Eventually we moved onto the dry glacier and spent the day walking passed rocks marooned like mushrooms on little ice stems, rivers rushing like snakes through the ice, and past a half dozen glaciated valleys topped off with stellar mountains pouring from either side into the Biafo.

Each time we pass porters who have stopped for rest and food they offer us a piece of their meager rations. They have little more than a few hundred calories each day and it is in their nature and spirit to share it with us. It makes me melt. I sat at lunch consuming the buffet set for us and bundled up in my top line Patagonia clothes and watched two of our porters huddle in their thin shalwar kamis against the wind without food. Happily at the end of lunch our guide shared the left overs with the men. Each time I pass a porter I try to hand them a small offering of my appreciation, a candy bar, some sunscreen. I want to take care of them all. Alison has become the camp doctor administering cortozone to rashes, cleaning cuts, and dressing them. I have never seen such amazing spirit from such a tough life.

We, as women, in a muslim culture have had many unique experiences. The first day the Porters invited us to sit and share tea with them at camp. Alison and I happily accepted. We chatted with hand motions, and the few English and Balti words we each know. Basically we just laughed and enjoyed each other's company and tried to show our appreciation. Afterwards Alison commented that that was likely one of the few times, if not only, that they sat and drank tea and talked with women who weren't their family.