The full moon rises over the mountain tops, a crystal ball on a marine velvet cloth. In violent gusts the wind blows from the pass, spreads coarse-grained sand and tears at the tent. The temperature is far below zero. We are cold, even though we are lying in the sleeping bag with thermo underwear, down jacket, and Goretex clothes. Between the gusts of wind it is silent, as silent as it can only be in the high mountains. Our tent stands at 5500 meters. Actually way too high to stay. The air is too thin to sleep peacefully. But after the careful plans we have made in Pokhara we should not be at this place.

How glad we have been to reach the foothills of the mountains after the humid-hot Terai. And honestly, we were really happy about the touristy Pokhara. Nice hotel room, clean bedding, hot shower, fast Wifi, tasty food. From time to time such a place feels just good. But Pokhara also frustrates us. We did not know how regulated Nepal is. Hardly a trekking route, which can be done alone. Everywhere you need an expensive special permit and the hiring of a guide is often mandatory. That is not how we like it. But we are here to explore the Himalayas and so we try to arrange. We sit a few days over maps and invent a route, which is not yet in any travel guide. Dhaulagiri - Hidden Valley - Lower Dolpa - Lower Mustang. 18 days, a camping only trek, supply possibilities on the way: None. "That's an expedition, not a trek," the gentleman says in the tour agency before he starts trying to find a guide who knows the region. We shrug. If we need to take a guide with us, then he should also be of some use.

Two days later we are in Marpha, the starting point of our trekking, together with Chham, our guide and his "pleasure friend", a delicately built woman with pink fingernails and brand new blue sneakers - our porter. "She is very strong," Chham tries to calm us, "she can do it." Well, we have been underestimated more than once by our appearance ourselves. But after five minutes it is clear that our feeling was not wrong: She can not do it - at least not so. We take half of our supplies back again and strap two drybags on top of our already overfilled 30l backpacks. And where is our careful preparation and planning now? After two days, Chham also sees that his girlfriend certainly has her qualities, but not necessarily as a porter. We repack our stuff and send the lady back. And although from now on we use every rock to drop the heavy weight for a short moment, we get on much faster than before.

With the Dhampus Pass we reach the "Hidden Valley", and here we turn off from the main route of the Dhaulagiri circuit. The sun-drenched valley floor narrows to a shady gorge. Icicles hang on the rocks - and we have to cross the fast flowing glacier stream for the third time already. The monsoon has risen the water level and the trail is disappeared. Further down the walls touch almost each other, the water rises to hip height. Too dangerous to cross, the current is too strong, the water too cold. "We have to get over Muli pass, it will bring us out of the valley," says Chham, and we turn back.

The pass has a name, but no path. We climb a blocked and rubble-filled ravine. Every time we set our shoes in the loose slate we are causing small avalanches of debris. Does Chham know where he is leading us? Since hours we are all completely exhausted by the steep climbing, the sun has long awakened dark shadows, which are grasping at us with cold fingers, but here we can not camp anywhere. With the last evening light we reach a flat ground at 5500m, just before the "pass" climbs over several rock steps to the Grande Finale. Despite careful planning in Pokhara we are now here.

The next morning we climb the remaining 400 altitude meters, often on all fours and struggling for breath. Muli La - you are a bitch ... How happy we are when we cross the much easier Mula La the next day on a good trail. The ascent leads through a wide high valley up to the pass. In our back a mountain landscape in all brown shades expands until a high plateau in the distance - Tibet. The majestic Dhaulagiri Range rises majestically in front of us. Steep rock walls, falling glacier tongues, whirred snowflakes on the sharp edges: a topnotch pass. For us it is the gateway to the Dolpa region, for the traders and their caravans it is an important supply route. Now at the end of autumn they bring rice, oil and salt into the remote villages with heavily laden mules and yaks. For almost half a year, people will be cut off from the outside world.

The woman kneels, blows into the fire and puts a pot on the stove. We are invited for lunch. The potatoes are not larger than quail eggs. The first time we feel that people have so little that it is not right to eat them away the little they have. Toward evening we set up our tent on one of the flat roofs. Slowly the clapping of the flails stops. A flock of jackdaws flies out into the dusk, while a group of red-cheeked children watch us with big eyes while cooking.

The next days we hike on a spectacularly built path through a narrow valley towards Charka Bhot at the border to Upper Dolpa. We encounter caravans on their winter migration, cross other medieval villages, walk along long Mani walls of carved prayer stones and meet people who seem to have escaped directly from a film set. And although it is fascinating that in the twenty-first century there still exist places like this, we know that life here has nothing to do with nostalgia, but above all with survival.

"Botte People", that is how the Dolpa inhabitants are called from the other Nepalese people. Everyone knows: They are too lazy to shower, live happily in the dirt and are very rich! Even our guide believes this rumor. "In the spring, they go out to the alpine pastures to harvest the Yartsa Gunbu, the Chinese caterpillar fungus. The Chinese are crazy about this aphrodisiac and pay millions!" The fungus grows only in the Tibetan highland and has its origin from a caterpillar, which is wintering here in the soil. And in fact, in China, it now costs a fortune. For Dolpa residents it is an important commodity to buy salt, sugar and clothes from China. The Chinese traders are usually paying in natural goods. But hardly anyone will get rich this way. And showering? Well, not an easy task, as our guide must admit when he creeps out of his tent shivering early in the morning of the sixteenth trekking day.

With the autumn the days in Nepal have become short. We have packed in the torchlight. The path is steep, the Jungben La high. It is the last big pass of our trekking before we descend back into the Lower Mustang valley. One last time we are at over 5500m. The wind shakes the weathered fabric of the prayer flags and causes a loud rattle. We look far over mountain chains and valleys. A lonely star is fading, a diamond, put to sleep in a pink velvet cloth. Then the sun rises.