The Mountains look Good on You

 

I'm back. In the same spot I started from. Only a few experiences richer. A few nature experiences stronger. Maybe a tick more traumatized as well, facing another force of nature. A new one I haven't been exposed to as far as I can recall. Avalanches. The mountains having marked me in different scenarios when abrupt weather changes kicked in or rainy season would throw rocks at me. Either way I would be faced with my own mortality just like this time. And also just like last time he would walk into me just this moment when I start typing. I even sip on exactly the same drink. He says hi but clearly he has no interest whatsoever in speaking to me as he has also not messaged me throughout the entire time. He goes from table to table until he finds a table he wants to sit down at. At least not where I sit. Nothing new. A guy just like all the other ones. Average.

Being thrown back into civilization seems to be affecting me in different ways. I stare at the Nepali children putting colors in white people's faces. I'm tired. My body. My brain. My mind. My soul. I'm torn between worlds; opposites. Two poles. Socializing or shutting myself completely off the outside world. Sitting here feels kind of like neither or both at the same time. Being in the meeting hotspot of all and everyone and at the same time away from the streets where people would try to throw colors at you. Yet there it is this kind of loneliness. Especially now that he came to speak to me and yet not. Gives my mood just the right kick for feeling totally out of place here down in this world away from my mountains. My safe space where I knew what to do each and every day. Waking up in the early morning, get up, drink my coffee and walk. Walk, walk walk up and down the endless stairs of the Himalayas.

Now I'm sitting here this absolutely beautiful man with his dark curly hair next to me. He speaks French. Just like yesterday when I was getting a quick papaya juice in a café and just like yesterday he was also walking by; only before getting drunk of beer, listening to music, singing, dancing, processing where I am and that I've just come down 4.500m from 7am in one day. Not even. A few hours. 3pm arrival. Seeing the fog and clouds moving away from the snow peaks, allowing me a few moments of bliss, of magic when the sun starts rising behind the majestic mountain range, filling my heart with joy and with warmth and gratitude for life itself. 

A helicopter is flying by in the direction of the high Himalayas. It's almost noon. That time. That time when the Universe was generous enough to spare us a glimpse of the most beautiful mountain scenery imaginable. The mountains look good on you is what he said when he took the pictures of me and I remembered how often I've heard that sentence before. Only then just a few moments before noon when we enter the most dangerous stretch of the hike and the sunny mood switches in a sudden instance. Directly after crossing the little hanging bridge, it goes up and into the snow field that will continue to go on for all the rest of the mountain strip for a good hour and a half. Luckily an extremely friendly boy told me to get spikes just at the last village. Getting up on to the snow field it takes no more than a few moments and the bright sunlight becomes a dark gloomy field of fog and mist, completely blocking the view. The atmosphere instantaneously changes from super excited and happy go lucky to an uncomfortable notion of potential danger. In no more than two minutes of walking this notion should become a vivid reality when I hear an avalanche crashing down somewhere just near behind me.

My heart is beating, my chest tightening, my mind in total alert. Life threat. A real life threat. I wanna cry, I wanna run, I wanna disappear completely. But the way has just begun and will continue for the time until we reach the basecamp. Trapped in the gloomy life danger zone, I keep walking with the Swedish guy in front of me. I don't like it. His words, my feeling. The air is getting thinner, my breath shorter, I become dizzy, nauseous. Altitude kicking in just at the right moment. I struggle. My feet in the snow, step by step. Finally a big group in front of us. An elderly calming me down, reassuring me to take it slow. Step by step. Like a father. Another one giving me tablets for the altitude. I feel safer and yet I know nothing about this is safe.

Finally arriving some time in the early afternoon, it's dark like midnight, there are still people crazy enough to keep going up to the final destination ABC. I cannot believe how ignorant people follow their own plan no matter what nature is telling us, no matter what signs and signals are being sent. I once again realize the number one rule in life and for life: Always, no matter what listen to your gut feeling, your intuition, your primitive instincts, evaluate. No matter if the rest of the world is walking ahead, it does not mean it is the right idea to follow. The next day after a snowy night where avalanches kept coming down throughout the entire time, I am not sure if it is even possible to leave the camp. Everyone is debating if it's possible to go either up or down even mentioning helicopters. The trail has been snowed in, no footsteps visible anymore. No up no down. Stuck. I try to already befriend the new situation although it doesn't make me feel comfortable. But then... People start going down. Including my German friends and so I go into the same fearful situation again only minutes after them. Back down. Alone. Again. For some scary minutes. Away from that danger zone. Getting out and away. The same fear with me, unlucky me alone in the deep grey fog for some minutes, living through my own personal hell. Trauma. The sounds of the avalanches. 

Finally making it out of the most dangerous part more people keep coming up in the darkness of the warning weather. Nobody listens, nobody cares. They go up. Including small children. After a few hours and my own struggle to soothe my mind and get out of anxiety mode, I give up and only greet everyone with the usual Namastē.

This should become the longest walk of my trip. 9 hours, 18km, 36000 steps and 3700m to 2100m down, I finally arrive with weak knees and sore thighs in my favorite guesthouse, having to climb up for the last one and a half hour before finally reaching Happy go lucky. I feel like my knees are giving in, I'm crawling up the last steps. Meeting a mid aged Dutch couple the woman looks into my face and radiates full empathy for me. My way, my experience, my shock, my situation.

Walking up from the hot springs the next day, the last steps for the day, the ones that I assume will feel like an entire lifetime in my sore legs, take me by surprise flying up as if the warmth of the water has injected a whole new capacity of energy into my legs. Within only minutes I'm back up. Besides having bumped in to my Spanish travel companion and the Chinese girl for all the way from the beginning til the end now here at the hot spring; I also walk into the Dutch couple I’ve seen the day before. The woman looks at me smiling. ‘Hey how are you? So good to see you here like this’. She speaks to me personally. Directly to me. To my heart. I can feel it. I smile and tell them I’m fine. She says ‘I’m so glad to see you like this. Yesterday I could still see some fear in your eyes from the avalanches’. It feels warm, I am safe. 

Also my new favorite Germans who I had met on the way up and who had made sure I was ok throughout the danger zone, arrived in my lucky place just like I’ve silently manifested it all along the way since we got separated. 'I hope you can let go of the fear that you have carried.' she also soothes me. It seems others could see it all over my face what a mental piece of work I had carried around for the 24 hours in the threat of the deep snowy mountains of the Himalayas. 

Returning all my manifestation skills seem to be coming back alive like I am.

Sitting with my second cup of hot Raksi to bypass the time until dinner, holding a cigarette I see her head through the door ‘Hey Lina’. I jump up to give her a hug. Out of the hundreds of places they could have chosen to stay for that endless day of getting back down, they walked right into my Lucky place to join me for some more drinks and our team effort master hike. Master BC.

After the survival and saying bye to my team mates, I decide to rest a night in a place I know from the year before which is only making my hike about four hours longer... I think about resting but when I wake up the next morning as early as all the days before at 6am, I know that I cannot and so I start getting on my next hike. I feel kind of lost now being alone again, don't really know what I'm doing except for keep going. Don't walk too fast sister says a Chinese man on the way. I also don't hear that for the first time. Step by step, be slow. He's taking a video all excited. Look there is this young German girl hiking alone in the Himalayas. She is so strong. You're so courageous. It's always the same words I hear. And I know to appreciate them.

Being back in town a similar feeling of being torn between worlds is haunting me down. I feel pressured to do certain things I wasn't doing hiking when I know all I deserve is rest and there is really absolutely nothing I need to do. I feel like sharing and socializing and being with a friend who would understand but there is no one here. This is how I feel although everyone is there for me yet in the geographical absence sometimes it's difficult for me to feel it when I would love to have someone in my physical presence. This is when my encounter from before the hike kicks and why it kicks in at all. Because I could have needed a friend but this person isn't a friend. I receive so many reminders that it's almost scary. But one in particular is making me really laugh and taking in seriously what kind of an self centered dickhead this person is. Only having met her once unfortunately when our hiking plans put us onto different paths, we yet stayed in contact every single day.

Only having met one time we still seem to have similar hearts and a great understanding for the other person's situations and feelings. Hearing her voice in the morning somehow returned all my power, self respect and confidence to me as she is one of these people who is just raw and directly herself, speaking out loud all that is meaningful and important without hesitation, however she feels. Having spent her last days before me here, she tells me that she thinks she knows who I am talking about and that she saw him and his interactions obviously at the one and only social place, hanging there every day, apparently knowing nothing better to do. Her words make me laugh so much because they are in every detail exactly my thoughts and feelings that I've had long before. How he has this really discomforting aura, looking at the girls around when especially in this place there are only young people. How she didn't like his attitude and she could sense that ego game. Especially in that same surrounding that brought out these same notions in me over the last days I feel so seen and understood and not because I told her but because this were her personal thoughts on how she felt in that place.

I realize again it is not me, it is not that there is anything wrong. Other people feel the same way and other people see the things clearly as they are only right now I have not in reality gotten in touch with any of them right here right now just like back in Rishikesh. It is always the same game. Feeling like an outsider when you are in your own head, building your own story that has nothing to do with reality.

The full moon eclipse is doing its own share inviting to let go. To not put pressure on myself and find exactly that sweet spot between finding the motivation to do the things we love and that are good for us and to let go of the pressure of needing to do more than we should. Story of my life, never getting old. And yet here I am to sit with it and be ok. Ok to do absolutely nothing about it. Nothing for or against it.