[Post-Edit Note: All pictures in this post was originally taken in 2013 and content subsequently written in 2020.]

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For many reasons not uncommon to travellers faced with a writing block, Nepal remained for a very long time, a country I couldn’t quite bring myself to write about.

My biggest conundrum in writing has always lied in trying to seek a balance in syntax, i.e. the age-old debate about whether to keep it formal or casual; and more importantly, an approach that will do justice to what I continue to believe is one of the most beautiful countries in the world – and the hardest to talk about after. Which is how, for the longest time, it seemed the better option to hold my peace until I found a more suitable way to write about it.

To start off with, your flight to Lukla will be one whole league of an experience on its own altogether. Put aside the naysay about Tenzing-Hillary Airport being the most dangerous airport in the world (it actually really is); the views you see getting there more than make up for any fear about not getting there. Mountains upon mountains drenched in brilliant sunlight, blazes of snowcapped peaks that give you a real sense of scale. As you cross this immense landscape, you will be treated to a startling resplendence that will, most certainly, evoke an immediate cosmic consciousness that will set the right tone for the rest of your trek. 

So how, exactly, does one succeed in describing an experience that many have attempted to and failed? Jumping on the latest electronic media trend of conjuring lists and whatnots seems almost sacrilegious; and going at length will categorically result in this being classified as a tl;dr. They say to speak only if it improves the silence. And right now, I feel like the only way to improve on this 7-year silence, is not to dish out the Top 10 Experiences To Not Miss While In The Himalayas, or Top 5 Local Foods to Try…  but rather, to indulge in a catalog of wild, random musings collected during my time on the trail- both during and after: 17 photo-led reflections specifically, which will make no chronological or structural sense whatsoever except to the ones who’ve been there before, with, or after me.

This is perhaps, the only way I will ever know how to write of this place that continues to touch me 4 years and 2000 miles on.

(P.S.: These are photos I took more than 7 years ago when I was barely acquainted with photography and still very much into my phase of tacky filters and lens flares. My apologies in advance for the lack of aesthetic appeal and direction. 🤭)

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In Thamel, it often feels like you have a neon sign over your head that says, ‘Ask me to buy something’. The minute you start looking, the store owner appears… and hovers. Up and down the store he follows, like a shadow until you’ve made a decision.

And when you do, get ready to be waltzed off in a carefully choreographed tango, a spirited back-and-forth as he overquotes and you under-counteroffer. Your psuedo walkout will soften his pretend stoicism, and soon the bartering pendulum will reach a midpoint with both sides satisfied. 

It’s exhausting, but it’s tradition, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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The first day will take you by surprise. No matter how much preparation you made, you still somehow find yourself, ironically, woefully unprepared. Starting almost level, the path fast becomes intermittently rocky and cobbled, then decidedly undulating. The views (and the passing animals) leave you in a state of sensory overload, but every step increasingly becomes a grunt of a climb. By late afternoon, you can’t be sure if the buzz in your ears are the chirping of crickets or just blood pounding in your sweaty head; and at the end of the day, the only thing that’s running through your head is, Wow.

This is definitely a holiday I’m going to need a holiday from.

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Whether you’re on the EBC trek or the Annapurna circuit, prayer flags fast become a welcoming everyday sight, the historical trademark of the Himalayas range. The average Buddhist family hangs up dozens of strands of prayer flags every year, and stupas are choked with them. Anywhere the wind blows, these statements of goodwill flutter triumphantly, a riot of flickering fabric. Like prayer wheels, this defining characteristic of the Mountains is a meticulous afterthought to Nepal’s unparalleled landscape, a tangled blaze of religion and culture that gives each day on the road its rhythm, its similarities, its memories. 

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Prayer wheels.

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Nepal is the ultimate bucket list entry, the one raw adventure the intrepid crave for at least once in their lives. The second you step out of Kathmandu, the country unravels like a world unto itself: a land of brooding mountains, overwhelming beauty, and a mosaic of ethnic cultures that is unanimously agreed as the one most resolutely charming detail of Nepal.

It is often said that while you first come to Nepal for the mountains, you return for the people. From your low-key Sherpas to the boisterous next generation of little ones, Nepalis are across the board, the happiest people I have ever seen – even with the harshness of their landscapes deeply etched upon the burns on their faces.

This country may have its own fair share of conventional sights and Mountain Ranges, but if you ask me, the clear winner has always been the magic of its people.

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Namche Bazar is always fondly remembered by all trekkers as the last point of luxury before things get serious. Before you run of change, meds, snacks. Before meat gets questionable. Before even something as gentle as the wind becomes an enemy. Before AMS kicks in. 

A dense sprinkling of shops and villages make up this colourful community. It’s an established pit stop on the trail, the unofficial first base camp on the EBC track (but don’t quote me on that). Time stops for you when you’re in Namche. There is to it a beautiful timelessness that makes you sit back and go, “Aha! Now this was what I came here for.“

And indeed, this is, without us even knowing until we reach it, what we came here for. 

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Sometimes, it feels like your sole task of the day is to,

b r e a t h e.

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Hike high, sleep low. That is the whole design of the acclimatization theory. People who don’t know better find acclimatization days a chore, a waste of time – why take 12 days to get there when you can take 10?

These people are, incidentally, the ones who don’t make it to the top. 

Never underestimate AMS. You’d be lucky if dashed hopes of reaching Gorak Shep is the only thing it takes from you. 

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There is nothing more welcoming than the smell of a bakery when you’ve just trekked 3,800m in altitude. After five or six days of eight-hour treks punctuated by less-than-satisfying lunch, tea, and dinner stops; all you will smell-hallucinate when you see this sight, is the pinnacle of paradisical perfection that is the scent of freshly baked bread.

If you make it as far as Tengboche, you will have no trouble spotting this bakery. Like the mirage of an oasis, it is comforting, and it is emotive, and its welcoming arms will most likely promise you more than it can deliver. But at 3,800m high, any pie you can lay your hands on is good pie – even when it comes cold and dense and two spoons too quizzical.

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After ten days of decreasing temperatures and increasing winds and intermittent snow, your body will start to rebel. It starts by requesting an audience with one Diamox, then two, and three, then four. Windbeaten faces set in, blisters bloom, parched lips and cheeks triumph bottles of Vaseline, and your skin ages three years in a week.

But perhaps, what is more troubling than all that, is the psychological rebellion that leaves you running back and forth between grief and high delight. Some days you wake up ready to take on the world, others you wake up wanting to head home. Your emotional instability loses its comfort zone, and there are moments you find yourself exhausted and emptied – physically, mentally, maybe even emotionally.

But magic happens when you do not give up, even when you’re at the brink of it.

The Universe always favours the tenacious heart.

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Important note: the further up you go, the barer it gets. At some point, certain amenities almost come across as a luxury. 

Strangely, you will still be able to get wifi all the way to the top. 

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Nepal is a particularly popular choice for people to take up spiritual pursuits. I wasn’t setting out to trade in my clothes for a set of monastic robes, but I did secretly hope that this country would bring me closer to my spiritual side, one filled with a little more calm and inner peace, and a little less greed for today’s material wants. No one who traipses amongst mountains goes home unchanged, I’d heard. 

After seven years I have learnt, it takes more than higher altitudes to sustain change. It takes resolve. And determination. And an actual commitment to change. Thing is, the kind of solitude and spiritual clarity anyone attains on any Nepal trek -however temporary- remains deeply affecting for life. But with time, and with each year that passes, we forget another face, another conversation, another pit stop. Another day.

There are many lessons which will continue to shape us even after we’re thousands of miles removed. But many of the truths we cling on to will still depend greatly upon our own points of view- all in the hopes that some day, we will finally learn to separate what seems to be important, from what really is important.

There is nothing more transcendental than coming face-to-face with what is meant to be a Yeti skull.

Yetis. Did you ever believe in Yetis at all before this,  you wonder silently to yourself. 

“Looks like a coconut husk if you ask me,” someone murmurs. 

Snickers pass quietly around the room. 

And just like that, revered legend becomes questionable myth again. 

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On the EBC trek, progress is tracked not in kilometres, but in the hundreds of tiny personal landmarks that punctuate your trail. Making it to morning break, passing the one-hundredth prayer wheel, meeting the fourteenth yak, your third Snickers bar of the day – which typically marks the final hour before you wrap up for the day.

You don’t need experience to make it through what many deem one of the most difficult treks in the world… but a touch of crazy will help.

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Your legs ache and your shoulders burn from the weight of your backpack. Your boots soaked, with not a dry patch from top to toe.

But you’ll never feel more alive. You step out of the front door every morning into a broth of dawn cloud; and when the sun dips in the evening, lakes glitter and the cold grey mountains turn a warmer hue.

It’s like living in a painting, and the best part of it all is leaving the world behind.

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Alot of the EBC trek is over-romanticized. They tell you about the crazy views, but not about the ironic darkness that clouds you past Gorakshep. They tell you about the animals and the flowers and the culture you will see along the way, but nothing of the scabs and bruises and nausea you’ll pick up along the way. Despite the 360-degree view, most days, all you’re really doing is walking through a channel of rocks. Everything about EBC is glamourous, but like all great treks, it is glamourous only in retrospect. 

Go with a strong heart, but with an even stronger mind. It isn’t snow peaks and glistening mountains all the way, but when you reach the top, the payoff is immense. 

When you reach any top, the payoff is always immense. 

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My favourite thing about Nepal?

Even in the trenches, there is always another adventure.

It’s one big adventure paradise, with a plate of fried momos on the side.

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Enjoy Nepal.

I know I did.