Where every step you take kills you a little more inside and
your mind and heart are both begging you stop and sit down, it’s a situation
like no other. Where the weight of the clothes you are wearing becomes heavier
by the second, it takes everything you've got just to look up. Where your
destination seems so close yet so far away. Where weeks and months of practice
and hard work do not pay off when you need them to. Where the world seems quiet
and subdued with no life around, and you still know that environment is taking
you for all you've got.
Where talking to illiterate porters makes you realize that it is not
them that are actually uneducated, but you. Where every second you feel like
giving up, you realize that that is exactly what is expected and you plough
ahead trying to test how far you will go before you give up. Where it’s the weather is horrible and it is freezing and so your tempers run high but where when the family sits together in the tent it creates warmth and makes the bare landscape outside and troubles forgotten for a while. Where the true power of
friendship is found, watching the porters sitting together, laughing around a
small fire trying to shield each other from the freezing winds blowing around with snowflakes swirling about. Where the power of free will and family is
shown when a guide decides to become a free lancer so that he doesn't have to
stay away from his family longer than required and against his will. Where the
power of money is learnt when a porter talks about how he started training for
his job as a child and has been pursuing the same thing for 12 years just so he
can get a menial amount of money to keep his family afloat, despite his dire
fear of heights.
It’s teachings are not only limited to the major aspects of
life, but also extend to the seemingly unimportant things, like mere thoughts.
It dawns upon you; being in that environment, when you are trying to write down
every tiny thought racing across your tired mind on a sheet of paper with frozen
fingers because of the sub-zero temperature outside and a minuscule electric light swaying above your head attached to the interior wall of the tent, in the hope of
catching something brilliant before it slips away into the dreary corners of
our busy minds. It is a place where patience and endurance are tested to their
limits and a place where upon entrance we have to learn to hone the skills of
our mental strength rather than our physical one.
The mountains teach us innumerable things, all in one place
and in a short period of time. They have the power to change a person, just sitting
there towering above him, is enough for someone to question the reason of his
mere existence over there, at that point of time. But the most powerful virtue the mountains possess, is their ability
to command respect out of even the most narcissistic and overconfident of
people. Yet for those who show their humility and love for them, the mountains
nurture and care, changing each person they lay their soft touch on.
I ended my expedition with the words “I’m never
going back there again.” But, it took me less than 24 hours, to come home and
before crashing on my beloved bed think, as John Muir impeccably says, “The
mountains are calling me, and I must go."