A question from the peanut gallery :)

Q: When you're laying in your tent at night, what sounds can you hear around you?

A: When we are laying in the tent and darkness surrounds us and we are about to fall into a deep sleep :)...we hear all sorts of things.

Life stops not long after dark and it gets dark (like really dark) at about 9:30, so by 10:30 (if we can stay awake that long :) it is very quiet. The herdsmen all go home at dusk, so the livestock are put away - we may hear the occasional moaning cow/yak, but not often. We rarely hear people. We have heard dogs barking - one place we heard what sounded like a massive dogfight, we wondered how the locals put up with it - it sounded awful and we were at least half a km away.

If it's windy or raining then we hear those sounds against the tent. If there is a bigger road nearby then we hear the occasional traffic...and horns (they love their horns here :). Only when we were camped by the river did we hear river sounds...and occasionally though the night we could hear the rock wash tumblers grinding away and the occasional truck taking the washed rock away (Medro Gunkar was a decent sized town compared to where else we camped so it was noisier).

In the morning we hear lots of different birds...and the start of traffic. Life is very much linked to daylight, so you hear things slowly get going as the sun comes up (it's dark at 6am but light by 7ish...7:30 if the sun is blocked by the mountains).

We have not heard anyone or anything walking near our tent....except yaks :)