For a few years I’ve been following a couple on Instagram who do yoga, teach yoga, travel, and seem to spread good juju everywhere they go. A few years ago they started to post about treks they were doing to Everest Base Camp and I was immediately intrigued.
First of all, you can do treks to base camp? Second of all, this means that I can potentially fulfill a dream of mine: being in the presence of the Himalayas? Sign me up! It took me months of following them then weeks of messaging with them before I decided to apply for the May 2019 and May 2020 treks and see what would happen. When I applied in November 2018, I wasn’t working and didn’t have any job prospects in the foreseeable future. So I applied, and a few weeks later got an email that I was accepted to the May 2019 trek.
Well, I guess this is it. Time to jump into the unknown and live my dang life.
It took me weeks to finally commit to going on this trip. Daily internal conversations filled my mind trying to figure out whether I should go on this trip or try again in the future. Could I really afford to spend money and take time to go on this trip? At the end of the day I realized that there would never be a “right time” and that no matter where I was in six months, this was a trip I had on my mind for a long time.
I put my deposit down and slowly but surely reality started to hit me: I was doing the dang thing and finally going to be in the presence of the Himalayan mountains. Fast forward about five months that were filled with questions, shopping, packing, talking, and preparing and May finally rolled around.
With away messages set and airplane mode on, I was ready for takeoff.
I cried when the plane left Washington DC and when it landed in Dubai, and when it landed in Kathmandu. The first four days in Kathmandu were spent with a family friend who lives there. It was simply amazing. Being able to spend time with a local, experience touristy (the many temples) and non-touristy things (thanks for the delicious food, Tasneem’s Kings Kitchen), and have time to explore on my own were moments I would treasure for the next two and a half weeks – and beyond, of course.
After a few days of farmers markets, temples, arts and cultural centers, cable cars, lots of good food, and some rest, I packed up my stuff and moved to the hotel where I’d be meeting the rest of the group. I’d already met a few of them, thankfully, so it wasn’t all going to be awkward introductions.
Truth be told, it was hard to not make presumptions about the rest of the group. And another truth be told, it was a good lesson in letting go of control and going with the flow.
The next two days in Kathmandu were filled with last minute gear shopping, visits to Pashupatinaht Temple, Swyambu Temple (also known as Monkey Temple) and Boudha stupa. I had already visited two of the three sites but it was nice to have a different perspective on these places.
The third day, we had to be ready to leave the hotel by 1:45am to take a 5-hour car ride to an airport that would then take us to Lukla. The Kathmandu-Lukla runway at the Kathmandu airport was under construction which meant there were very limited flights. The car ride is a bit of a daze – we all were in and out of sleep for most of the trip, waking only to adjust our position or use the bathroom. As soon as we got to the airport, bags started to get weighed and plane tickets were distributed. But, let me set the atmosphere…many bags getting piled onto each other, general tickets getting passed out, and no sense of a thorough security check.
Heh, like heather. 