After our EBC (Everest Base Camp) trek, one of our friends’ wives organized a big party to celebrate us all and invited a bunch of other friends as well. There, they displayed the pictures taken during the trek. It was a nice party with a lot of food and drinks, and six of us, who went on the trek together were getting all sorts of questions about our recent trek experience. After dinner, the hostess asked us to share our experiences/funny memories.
Everyone started chiming in. One recalled that no matter how many layers we wore at Gorakshep, it was still so cold that we shivered for the longest time. Another friend shared that the food in Nepal had garlic in everything- including tea, pancakes, French toast, and, of course, in daal-bhaat too! Nepalis believe in natural remedies, and using garlic as the natural blood thinner helps with AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness). Food was challenging for us during the trek. Although it was nutritional food, eating the same bland food for each meal got boring after a while.
Some of us had milder AMS symptoms, whereas some of the bigger group had to be evacuated, and some chose to back out voluntarily because they got sick and did not wish to continue. One friend recalled that after the trek was finished, we flew back to Kathmandu and were seated in a van to return to the hotel. And, after using walking as the only way of transportation, sitting in a moving vehicle seemed very strange! We had seen some people in Namche Bazaar who had never been outside that beautiful village at an elevation of 11,286 ft. Namche Bazaar was the first acclimatization point for us where we spent two nights getting used to the increasing elevation. They have never traveled in a plane or any moving vehicle for generations! We could relate to them just after thirteen days in the mountains. Throughout the trek, we stayed in teahouses and did not have to sleep in the tents, which seemed luxurious to some extent. However, running water is not available after Namche Bazaar. So, we could not take showers until we returned to Namche Bazaar. At Gorakshep, almost 250 people stayed in the teahouse with only four restrooms and no running water. The water stored in the big blue containers was super cold. You can only imagine the dire situation of freezing early mornings.
Then, someone asked how you trained for such an arduous trek. And we started recalling all our practice hikes together. Staying in Arizona with scorching summers, we had to get up early to start the hike by 4.30 in the morning. And yet, many times, we had to face dehydration, sunburns, and blisters, to list the least! Although we were laughing remembering those long practice hikes, falling on the cactus/many physiotherapy sessions for recovering quickly from some or the other injuries and so on seemed daunting for others. Finally, one gentleman asked, this sounds so terrible. Why would you put yourself through this? And my friend answered, “Because we could!”
Many times, people question me: why do you like hiking so much? Especially living in Arizona, we are surrounded by barren mountains filled with cacti and desert vegetation. Therefore, there is no reward as a waterfall or shaded trails with soft grounds as you experience in California, Oregon, or the East Coast. Weather is so severe that even in subzero temperatures, one does not need more than one fleece jacket for protection from cold. My husband laughs at the pictures taken on my hikes, and he questions why you bother taking photos on these hikes. Each photo from your phone looks the same, how do you even differentiate? To some extent, he is right. You see cacti, beautiful sunrises with glowing horizons, dark silhouettes of tall mountains, and widely spread fields or just barren land spreading to the horizon. And that always mesmerizes me. I am in awe of such raw beauty and every time I witness it, it makes my heart full of gratitude! I believe this is love, how do you explain love to anyone? Can anyone explain why they love this particular person and not anyone else?
One of my friends is passionate about cooking. She makes everything from scratch. Most of us buy bread/peanut butter/jam from the store for breakfast every day. But she makes each of these at home: bread from the sourdough starter, peanut butter with freshly blended peanuts, and so on. Tonight, we were seated at the campfire, and someone said, I wish we had marshmallows for roasting. And she said, oh, I am making marshmallows tomorrow. All of us were amazed, and genuinely did not know that marshmallows can be made at home! That is the thing about passion- it is a form of love and cannot be reasoned with anyone.
Many of you writing regularly on Medium must be getting questions: how can you express yourself so precisely? I am amazed to see how you captured that in your writing! How did you come up with this story? And so on… Whether hiking, cooking, or writing, passion for something is beyond explanation and can seem crazy to many. People cannot comprehend your happiness or your craziness to some extent when they have not experienced it. Passion makes you lose yourself and fall in love head over heels without reasoning. There is no good reason other than saying, “Because I could!”
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