Yes, I am finally coming back!

8th June

Here I am, at the airport. I’ve been to so many airports, on so many flights, and landed in so many new countries. But this time, it’s a familiar country, and familiar faces I’m going back to.
Maybe one or two people might have noticed that I’ve been pretty silent on this blog lately. These last couple of months really felt like the end was coming up shortly, and it made it hard for me to write. The trek in Nepal was the last thing I really wanted to do on this trip.
And I had a great time. I thought the trek in itself, around the Annapurna, was nothing as spectacular as the trek in Cordillera Huayhuash, Peru. But it was spectacular nonetheless. I completed it in 18 days, taking my time, stopping here and there for a day in a village, going for a side trip. I aways had in mind Andy’s words. I told you about Andy in the previous post, I met him in Kathmandou. He said to me, when he saw I was wondering if I could make it all around the circuit: ‘Jennifer, dear, listen to me. Trekking is not about the walking. It’s about the resting. You need to be good at resting.’ And I am pretty good at making sure I have a good rest.
It all went without any problems, until the one day when I could have died in a blizzard. It was during a two-day side trip to lake Tilicho, at 5000m. We walked a whole day from Manang to get to the Tilicho base camp, at about 4300m. When we got there it started snowing. We were a group of about 10 people that day at the base camp, in the middle of absolutely nowhere. When we woke up the next morning, it was still snowing, steadily. That meant we were stuck there for the day, because the path back to the main circuit was in itself quite dangerous, with tons of landslides on very steep slopes.
But Brian and I decided to go for the lake anyway, in the snow, while the others were playing poker. We had spent most of the afternoon of the previous day chatting in the dorm. I had never met him before, so this would be our first walking day together. We walked up and around the mountain for over 3 hours. It felt like we were climbing Everest, with our snow equipment, walking sticks borrowed from the others, low visibility, very slow moves. Finally we got to the top of the mountain, where the track becomes flat and leads to the lake. But we didn’t know that then…
We took a short break, sitting on rocks. I was eating candy and Brian was looking for something in his bag.
And in an instant, we got caught by the wind, a fiercely dangerous wind, one I had never figured could exist before. It was made up of tiny particles of snow, it was loud, it was totally freezing, in a split second we couldn’t see anything at all, we couldn’t even see each other and we were sitting less than a meter apart. It took that wind just a few seconds to wipe out our footprints in the snow. After a couple of minutes of sudden fear and helplessness, it stopped. I said to Brian ‘We need to go back, now, quick! Forget the lake!’. It was one of these moments where all of a sudden a whole lot of scary thoughts hit you at the same time. It had suddenly struck me that we were alone, with no mountain experience, 3 hours away from the camp, our footprints were gone, we had no food, no appropriate equipment for the cold, and we were standing at 5000m high, on a peak in the Himalayas. And I had promised my parents that I would eventually come back home, and would do my best to be still in one piece. And not a frozen piece, even though I hadn’t thought of that possibility at the time… Oh dear God did we run down the slope, looking for our footprints, stopping and huddling whenever the dangerous wind was over us again. Brian’s hands were freezing because he had his gloves off when the wind first hit us. It was proper scary. That was serious Himalayan experience right there for us…
I spent a month with Brian after that. I have told you so many times about so many people I met, and I’ve been excited so much, all these times. So what can I say this time? Well, I have been traveling for a year, and meeting a ton of people, but once I met Brian, I was pretty confident I didn’t want to meet anyone else, he was the ultimate person I was looking for, and once he left it was just time for me to go home. I wanted to end this trip bringing home thoughts of him. I miss his presence immensely, no one had as much fun as we did while we were doing the Annapurna circuit, he is one of these very few people who have in them the power to show you how the world is a beautiful place, and how life can be such a blessing.
Then I flew back to Thailand, and went to Ko Tao to spend my last week doing my PADI, for diving. Ironically enough, I had a motorbike accident. I spent the most horrible day of my entire trip, on my own, with painful bruises, bandages everywhere. That day I definitely did see the limits of traveling on your own. I fear my parents will remember for a long time the desperate calls I gave them that evening…
So after a few days of resting, I am taking the plane. Because of this accident, it makes my return much less emotionally charged than I would’ve thought. I do think about my leg quite a fair amount… I think I feel anxious and excited. And it’s the right time for me to come back. Time for me to put this year of travel behind me and use whatever it might have taught me to start writing another page of my life. Hopefully I will find someone to write it with me.

~ by jenniferldp on June 11, 2009.