When I arrived in Kathmandu, I stepped off the airplane directly into clouds of dust, the pits of mud-filled construction, car horns and traffic and motorbikes and smog coating the valley. The first full day, I walked through neighborhoods spotted with yellow concrete secondary schools, houses clustered around Buddhist temples, past children begging and children dressed in finely pressed school clothes, past people on their way to work and people lying on the sidewalk, unmoving. As my Dad described Kathmandu to me over text on that first day: “Joy. Poverty. Incredible faith. Beauty. All comes at you like a firehose.” Abraham (a friend from college), and I stopped by the Buddha Stupa, to see the stupa and also the monastery where my Dad lived for a couple months when he was my age. I grew up hearing how my Dad’s travels in Nepal and Tibet shaped his career, his devotion to his patients, and who he became as a result of living in Nepal. Walking around the stupa, 33 years after he walked around that same stupa, I felt connected the lost, meandering, spiritual 24-year old David Gontrum, whom I’ve only ever heard stories of. It is hard to find the fight vocabulary for the emotional range I felt that first day in Kathmandu. The city is both claustrophobic and emotionally freeing, and we navigated through the whirlwind of people and cars to find pockets of calm, in the peaceful monasteries, colorful yak fabrics, and the rain falling from the thunderstorm crackling above Boudinath. From there, we accidentally arrived in Pashupatinath, hiking down into a city canyon, monkeys chittering around us as the smoke from the Hindu cremation floated across the river towards us. As the storm cleared, we walked up to the Kopan Monastery, overlooking the city. A Nepali girl in a sparkling red dress skipped up to me, glowing as she asked me to take a picture of her. Just as we were leaving the viewpoint, we spotted a rainbow forming over the Kathmandu Valley. As we rushed to take pictures, we were accosted by four little Nepali children, excitedly chattering about how the rainbow was better on the other side of their house. Grabbing our hands, running, screaming, and pointing, they dragged us over to see, that yes, indeed the rainbow was better on the other side of the house.
The next couple days were spent mostly panicking about whether the weather and timing was going to be appropriate to hike the Annapurna Circuit (AC). I bought a ticket to Nepal 3 weeks before I arrived, and I was scrambling to figure out whether I wanted to brave the monsoon season in the mountains. Between just literally figuring out where to rent all the gear I needed, and madly researching the Annapurna Circuit, I think my brain was a bit of a nervous anxious wreck. The nervous-anxious tangle of thoughts was compounded by the decision about whether to hire a guide or not. Technically, trekking without a guide is illegal, according to Nepali law, as of April 1st, 2023. But then there is the fact that for the last 50 years, people have hiked the Annapurna circuit without a guide. There was so much contrasting advice—that by getting a guide, I would be supporting the local economy, that by not getting a guide, I would be harassed by the checkpoint policemen, that a guide with a solo female traveler was unsafe, that guides were being hired that were untrained and were actively putting their hikers in danger, that guides were controlling and that you had to hike with them all day. In the end, after speaking with 5 different guides, we decided to just hike without a guide. Nils and Jacob, two complete strangers, posted on the Nepal WhatsApp group that they were looking for a group to hike the AC with. I have to say that my first meeting with Nils and Jacob did not inspire confidence. They certainly had just walked off a Thai island: Nils with his refusal to wear shoes (even on the burning pavement and in the dust) and his extreme flirtation with every single woman we came across, and Jacob with his flowing travel pants and ever-present appearance of being higher than the Himalayas. Both of them knew the name of the trek, and literally not a single other detail about what gear to get, where to start, what altitude sickness is, or what the monsoon season looks like in Nepal. I figured I would likely just start the trek with them and they try to meet other people on the way.
The first morning together, Nils and I ran to the bus stop together (Jacob ran behind us, having stayed out drinking the night before). While running, I was treated to a lecture on how I needed to get my stress under control by Nils. Then we entered into a lengthy discussion of astrology, because although Nils is Christian, he also incorporates spirituality and astrology into his religious beliefs. Nils is an Aquarius, which is a very important part of his identity. Nils also brought along 800 g of protein powder, and was genuinely worried about losing his gains while on the trip, made several points about how bread makes you fat (lol), and only consumed boiled eggs and canned tuna as snacks. Beneath the veneer of gym bro- Instagram alternative medicine soundbyte echo chamber—Nils is startlingly perceptive and aware, charismatic and warm in a way that caught me off guard, filled with childlike joy, practice honesty with everyone, and is very connected with his inner sense of self. Jacob initially stuck me as very young, head in the clouds, mostly because he couldn’t remember the name of the trek or the town we were headed to for the first night. I also think he was likely high for about 90% of the trek, including the day we crossed Thorong La pass. While extremely friendly, he also has the outward appearance of a chaotic 22 year old who has just discovered psychedelics and believes that they have the power to change the entire world. But Jacob also genuinely cares about people he has just met, is invested in improving sustainably agricultural practices, and mostly wants to talk about human duality and the meaning of existence. He happens to be a devout follower of the Dualistic Unity podcast.
As we got off the bus at Besisahar (the original beginning of the AC), I met Marie, a solo trekker from Sweden who appeared to actually have some semblance of knowledge of what was going on, unlike Nils and Jacob (at least initially, they improved significantly after the first day or two). Thankfully, I invited Marie to join us in our jeep ride to Syange, where we were planning on starting the trek. Marie, although she originally planned to hike solo, ended up joining our group and being exactly the brilliant, witty, no-nonsense glue that we needed to get our Thai island boys into shape and encouraged me to stick it out to see the kind, genuine characters beneath the layers of psychedelic and gym enthusiasm of Nils and Jacob. Marie laughs at everything, brings such an effortless lightness to conversations, and is intimidating in her independence and confidence.
Although I had been warned that the Annapurna Circuit would be overrun with tourist trekkers, we saw exactly zero other hikers for the first 4 days. During low season (read: monsoon), the guest houses are completely deserted, and many of the shops begin to close as the people living in the mountains move to the cities. Marie and I both felt strongly that we wanted to hike alone, to experience the long days from Jagat to Dharapani, Dharapani to Chame, Chame to Upper Pisang, and Upper Pisang to Manang on our own. We ended up getting caught up in conversation, and shrieking together with joy about a mountain, lake, village or cloud. And just how beautiful everything was. The first four days of the trek were jungly, with vines and apparently also leeches and red pandas, although we saw neither of those. The trek itself is supposedly the “best long distance trek in the world,” and covers about seven different microclimates. Each microclimate reminded me of a place I’ve been: muddy, thick jungle (Indonesia/Borneo), silty river winding through rocky plateau (reminded me of the Green River—we even saw a battalion of river raft soldiers, in their red jackets and yellow helmets, marching in a circle on the banks of the river), high mountain forest (Colorado mountains), foggy clear blue waterfalls (Oregon Coast), high mountain orogeny (Wind River Mountains), absolutely mind-boggling staggeringly massive snowy peaks (I’ve never seen anything like this), wind-blown orange-red-yellow-purple desert (parts of Utah that are never-ending, mixed with what I imagine Afghanistan must look like). We began down in the jungle (Jagat), climbed steadily on a road through most jungle, high mountain forest, through Dharapani and Chame. Upper Pisang had one of the most stunning views I’d ever seen. We walked when it was raining, and when we woke up, the sky had cleared to see Annapurna III glowing in the 5 am sunlight. I cried, mostly from gratitude that I had made it to this place that I’ve dreamed about for years. That I was walking in the Himalayas! That I, out of sheer force of will, despite altered plans and heartbreak, had found myself exactly where I had wanted to be. From Timang to Thanchok, I cried, walking down into the sunny valley brimming with cows and wildflowers, the mountains watching over me like sentinels witnessing my emotion, the earth enveloping me.
It was magical, marching through the miniature, dollhouse sized mountain towns, perched in the jungle over black and grey striped cliffs, reds and blues and purples and pinks, decorated carefully in some kind of Germanic-Nepali fusion style. Towns that felt reminiscent of the impossibly high granaries built by indigenous peoples of the southwestern US. The Himalayas extend through Bhutan Nepal, Tibet, India, and Afghanistan, and have been inhabited by people since 1500 BC, although most of the people in the Annapurna region seem to live there for only the tourist seasons. I was astounded by the fact that the Himalayas provide water for 1/5th of the world (How is this possible?) The scale of the 8000 meter peaks rising from rocky valleys and jungle is truly incomprehensible. And the biodiversity of the Annapurna Conservation Area is astounding, with 35 new species discovered every year from 1998 to 2008. The cultural diversity is striking as well, from tiny Hindu villages in the foothills, Tibetan culture in Manang and lower Mustang, and the mixed Hindu/Buddhist religious pilgrimage site of Muktinath. And the people in the villages! I saw one woman who had to be at least 90 years old, carrying three times her body weight in plant up the steepest, rockiest staircase. Children ran out of each village with one finger to their cheek, apparently the signal that they wanted candy. I didn’t have candy, but I did have tiny vegetable toys from a Japanese store in Bangkok. I passed out miniature plastic eggplant, pumpkins, and peppers, and they seemed to be satisfied.
Our group transformed from strangers into a trekking family, practicing all elements of a traditional family trip, most notably, cheesy photographs, movie nights in the teahouses (14 Peaks), and of course, ridiculous family arguments. The group solidified in Timang, as we leaped around like little gremlins with the majestic view behind us, braving a forest of flies, crossing the swaying bridge, Nils skipping across it and making the whole bridge bounce four feet in the air and causing me to fear for my life. By the time we made it to Manang, we had achieved a sort of rhythm. Marie and I would get up earlier and start walking right after breakfast, needing some time to ourselves in the morning, Nils would traipse behind, stopping to pet every single dog, and Jacob would roll out of bed as we were leaving, and would still manage to reach the next village hours before the rest of us. On my rest day in Manang, I had a fever (incredible timing), and spent the entire day in bed. The fever faded at night, and I walked through the town, children running up and down the rocky staircases, leading up to their glowing homes, armed guards genuinely smiled at me while holding rifles and examining their motorbikes, kittens and mangy dogs scurried around, and the snowy peaks towered over me as I watched the sun set.
As we began to ascend from Manang to Yak Kharka and then to Thorong Phedi High Camp, my breathing became much more labored, and my fingers tingled. Above 14,000 feet, all of us had altitude symptoms. On an acclimatization hike with Marie, we meandered up a hillside followed by a Himalayan Freya, which we named Igor. While there was some trepidation about sleeping above 15,500 feet, we followed several guided trips up because the guides highly recommended it. On our lunch break, we had a fascinating conversation about ancient history and the cataclysm of 11,000, whether history is cyclical (Aristotle and Plato), or a progression(Kant), and whether achieving a perfect democracy signals the impending end of history. We also exclaimed at the incredible notion that every step we took was the highest point we had ever reached. And then proceeded to shout “Personal Best!” over and over again as we walked. Not a single one of us slept much at high camp. Next to me, after our nightly camp-style gossip session, Marie’s breathing was terrifying to listen to. Periodic breathing, which is common while sleeping at high altitudes, usually sounds like several deep breaths, and then several breaths that sound like a dementor sucking in air through a straw. At 3 am, we huddled together to slowly trudge up the rocky trail. I thought about how many animals I had seen up there, Himalayan field rats (that look like bunnies), yaks, Himalayan Tahr (pheasant), eagles flying overhead, Himalayan yellow-throated martens. We skipped across to the prayer flags marking the pass, holding hands, screaming with joy, the wind burning our faces.
As we descended into the arid desert of the Upper Mustang valley, I thought about how every moment of this journey felt right. We had almost no rain, even though it was monsoon season, not having a guide gave us freedom and ability to make our own decisions, we saw almost no one else, and pretty much had the entire trek to ourselves. Every single part led up to the transformative realizations that I journaled about and are too private to write here. I have had an indescribably beautiful trip, in incredible places, but I feel connected to Nepal in a way that I do not with other places I’ve been. Mountains rising from the arid desert, with green patches of rhododendrons and fields of leafy greens, trickles of spring water collecting in pools, surrounded by ballooning yellow dry hills, dotted with desert plants, expansive pebbled river beds, all beneath the snowy mountains.
Returning to Pokhara after being in the mountains for two weeks was another long, extremely bumpy jeep ride that tested Nils’ patience and Jacob claimed to relish the ability to practice his meditative skills. Pokhara feels strikingly familiar to make of the mountain towns I’ve visited (El Chalten in Patagonia, Park City, lake resorts across the Western US). But Pokhara means City of Lakes, which I took to mean that it is the sister city of Salt Lake City. It is peaceful and filled with anti-GMO, raw, vegan, seeded, chia-ed, sprouted, locally sourced restaurants that appear to be out of a Portlandia skit. But it wasn’t all peaceful—I also talked myself into bungy jumping, piercing my ear with Marie, paragliding, and swimming in the polluted waters of Lake Fewa during a lightning storm.
As my very strange and yet effective Indian yoga teacher named Ganesh told me in Pokhara, there is no achievement, there is no success, there is only pain, suffering, and growing. It is hard to wrap up this section of my travels. I have pages and pages and pages of journaling that I tried to summarize in this post. I want to leave this on two notes: 1) I am enormously grateful to my ancestors, because every one of their actions (and of course their money and power) allowed me to stand there in the Himalayas. I have also never felt more gratitude toward my parents than I have while I have been traveling. For teaching me endless curiosity and respect of other cultures, for raising me to be unafraid the mountains alone, but most of all, for modeling how to live a rich and meaningful life. 2) I cried, almost every day of the trek. I cried from the beauty of it all, from joy, from the feeling of freedom. I cried because I felt unafraid and unconstrained. I cried because it was the one-year anniversary of the night I submitted my medical school application. And on that night, I didn’t think my life was worth anything. I was certain that I would never be able to see the world around me as beautiful or meaningful. I was unable imagine a world in which I was happy. And then there I was, one year later, gallivanting around the Himalayas, completely at peace with myself, with strangers that had unquestioningly and immediately met me with warmth and love and acceptance.
Disjointed thoughts:
-Nepal is 15 min offset the hour timezone system, and that is completely on brand for the country
-People here could genuinely win BMX biking competitions in the US, on motorbikes that are easily 30 years old. The roads in the Himalayas are genuinely more difficult to drive than the most difficult single-track mountain biking in the US.
-Nepal was never colonized, which they are very proud of. I don’t think anyone could colonize this country because they couldn’t attack and retreat, the roads are too difficult to drive on.
Quotes:
“There is no value in the internet here, you literally can’t book a bus. You just have to find the guy who knows the guy.” – Abraham (truer words have never been spoken)
“You don’t want to go to the Annapurna Base Camp. Basically all you’re going there for is to see the climber’s tents, and they take them down for the monsoon season. So there’s basically no reason to hike the Annapurna Base Camp if there are no tents” – a carrot-headed trail runner (?) who was convinced I was here to see tents, and not mountains, apparently
“I can already tell we are going to learn a lot from each other on this trip” – Nils (This turned out to be true, but I certainly didn’t want to hear this from Nils at this point)
“Creatine is to the body what DMT is to the mind” -Nils, hilariously educating me about nutrition science and explaining the supplements he takes
“In my previous life, I was a viking that died from an arrow to the chest, and I was also a Brazilian single mother living in a jungle raising her three kids by herself” – Nils, extremely seriously
“This is Switzerland vibes” – Marie, looking at the mountains and holding tiny Swedish strawberries we discovered
“Yeah, but this is Nepal” - Nils, looking confused
A few extra iPhone pictures:
Rooftop moon in Manang
Sunrise over the Annapurna Rang on our last morning of trekking, on Poon Hill
High Camp, with a couple guided groups
3:30 am on the morning of Thorong La pass
Me, looking like Yogi Bear, crossing yet another suspension bridge
The very first day of trekking! Bus ride to Besisahar
Abraham and I on our way back from Kopan Monastery, post rainbow sighting
A photo taken by Abraham, a very talented photographer, on the first day I arrived in Kathmandu. Capturing the awe I felt!
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