This is PART III in a blog series about my trekking experience in Nepal. If you’re new to the series, visit PART I of the series for the full table of contents.

June 15 (Day 12) — The High/Low Point

Thank God the headache is gone when I wake and I manage a sigh of relief. I would’ve felt terrible had the group been forced to backtrack just because of my sickness.

The day’s work is a five mile climb to Larke Pass, the highest point on the Manaslu Circuit, with a sharp five-mile descent to Bimtong village, so we wake early at five AM and begin the hike since we’re told the winds at the pass are brutal past ten o’clock.

I manage to down half my breakfast roti, pack out the rest, and begin the ascent from Dharmasala higher into the mountains.

Sunbeams pierce the misty morning fog, enough to feel my face begin to burn. Lama Dai would later say I went from yellow- to red-skinned that day.

The altitude is thick and palpable and my steps are cautious as I try to breathe slowly. I can feel my sickness returning but I mush forward slow and steady because there’s no way I’m heading back. I listen to my body and take frequent breaks, even if it means falling behind the group.

As we climb higher, we ascend to new worlds—glacial mountains on all sides, patches of snow lining the trail and the occasional glacial stream and lake.

Despite the surrounding beauty, all feelings of fun have left my body and every climb is a false summit. Distant poles mark the trail and I think each one must be the pass but reaching them only reveals more climbing.

The path underfoot is rocky and difficult for my feet to navigate. I’m conscious of stories I’ve heard of careless hikers throwing up blood because they ascended too quickly, so I ensure this does not happen to me by stopping and breathing and feeling my feelings. I’m ready to reach the top but it won’t happen for another couple hours.

Finally, the top of Larke Pass is marked by Nepal’s famous multi-colored prayer flags tied between boulders and flapping in the wind, flags flown to signal good luck and good wishes.

Our new friend Mary, the woman who offered me altitude sickness medicine the night prior, carried packets of flags all the way from Kathmandu, and hands us each some flags of our own, which we tie together to form one long flag line and then again to the boulders nearby.

Despite my exhaustion, I hop in a couple of pictures, take some of my own and manage a smile.

I lay down to rest, but Lama Dai turns to me and says no sleep on mountain, so I rise to begin the final descent.

It’s a sleep climb down into they valley below and make it halfway before Lama Dai says okay, I carry your pack. He’s requested my pack a few times already during my sickness but I’ve denied his request out of pride and ego. But this time, I can tell he means it.

I think too sick to carry, he says.

I sigh, take off my pack and begin to reach for his.

No, no, he says. I carry too.

I shrug and find my sickly-self packless and gripping two poles while Lama Dai fastens his pack atop mine. Despite the newfound weight, he moves down the mountain as fast if not faster than with a single pack.

I’m still struggling, slipping and sliding down the scree of the mountainside with shaky legs and blurry eye-sight but the hike is nonetheless much easier without the added weight and I’m thankful for Dai’s presence. I surrender my ego and slide down the mountain one step at a time.

Two or three hours pass and we reach the growing village town of Bimtong where I immediately fall asleep and catch three hours of rest before consuming most of my Dal Bhat and heading to bed for more rest.

I roll over in my bed and bury my head into the pillow. I will not be sick tomorrow, I say to Bradley.

No, my friend, he says. You will be well tomorrow.

Speaking in the affirmative is a technique we learned from a communication course called Procabulary. Not being sick could imply many conditions but being well is explicit and direct. I re-state in the affirmative loud and clear so it might have the chance of sinking into my subconscious.

My eyelids shut and the night begins at eight o’clock with dreams of health dancing through my mind.

June 16 (Day 13) — Headaches & Flow States

Once again I wake up and the headache is gone but this time, I think it’s for real. My spirits lifted, I find the path with Bradley and Lama Dai and we make our way downhill with towering glacial mountain peaks surrounding us on all sides.

As we descend into a forest canopy for the remainder of the day, there is the rich smell of soil and we scavenge tiny strawberries sprouting from stems, bright green spruce tips for vitamin C, and a small orange fruit that tastes exactly like yogurt. Nature offers us sustenance at every turn—it just takes keeping our eyes attuned to what’s around us.

Just before we arrive at our day’s destination in the small village of Gowa, I feel a raging headache boiling inside my brain—the lingering effects of altitude sickness as symptoms last for two to three days after.

My saving grace is that I refocus my attention two to three steps in front of me and my field of vision narrows. I breathe outwardly and inwardly with every step, glance up every so often to orient myself to the world above, and enter into a flow state allowing the headache to dissipate.

Life works well like this, I think, when I focus on the present, allow what is to be, and keep my glimpses of the future infrequent and brief.

Lama Dai makes many promises about the village of Gowa and expectations are running high as we approach in the early afternoon. Thankfully, the prophesy is fulfilled in its entirety: charging, wifi and hot showers.

One more agonizing headache springs up at the dinner table but fades again after twenty minutes. Before I shut my eyelids, I hope the pain stops tomorrow and no one gets sick again for the rest of the trek.

June 17 (Day 14) — Quitting Your Job

After eating Tibetan bread for the first twelve straight days, chapatis (thin bread) and a welcome change to my diet. I devour one with a fried egg and the second deserves a slathering layer of honey. It goes down into my stomach nicely and is more than enough fuel for the walk ahead—six downhill miles to the river village of Dharapani. I listen to a couple podcasts and before I know it, we reach the town in two hours time.

It’s only ten thirty and we’ve already finished the day’s hiking. It’s a weird, confused feeling but we settle into our respective cottage rooms, login to WiFi and nap as raindrops patter against our guesthouse windowpane. My plans for exploring the village and playing hacky sack shatter in my mind and I elect for more screen time and a long meditation.

If there’s one thing I’m grateful for today it’s health. My headaches are gone and sickness has left me. One day it’ll return but for now, there’s no almost better feeling than rising from the ashes of sickness.

I cap the day off with my first order of lasagna. It’s hearty, filling and, to the great delight of my table-mates, shareable.

As I head to bed (the food was too much and I needed to lay down), Bradley stays to connect Mary, whose hike ends tomorrow morning with a Jeep ride back to the city. I’m happy he makes the effort as we’ve mostly kept to ourselves.

When he returns, he tells me she’s thinking about quitting her job to travel. I smile and nod and know he added just enough fuel to embolden the fire.

Wanting for someone to quit their job sounds like a funny thing to encourage, but knowing where such a decision has taken me and how it colors my experience, I now root for those who feel similarly.

Once I got a taste of a new life and how things could be, it became very difficult to go back. One will do anything it takes to avoid that life of old. Sacrifices in lifestyle must be made and there will be a few or many difficult days, but eventually one adapts. You pick up new tools and abilities and friends along the way and you begin to feel confident in your ability to survive and thrive.

Equipped with these new survival skills, a new life awaits you, one filled with growth and adventure. But it all depends on what each person wants. That life is not for everyone. It’s only for those who feel like they want to try something new and leave behind those things which no longer serve them. I once heard a saying by Confusious that goes: a man lives two lives, and the second begins when he realizes he has only one. May we all live as if we only have one life, and may we live it well in the pursuit of our own definition of happiness.

It’s my wish for Mary as the new day dawns and the Jeep vanishes behind the bend.

June 18 (Day 15) — The Waterfall

We walk slowly as the trail comes to a close. The miles run thin and there is nowhere to go. Only two days of hiking remain. Instead of our usual pioneering pace, we stand atop green bluffs and gaze at distant waterfalls.

My eyes are big as I stare. The snowmelt rushes ceaselessly, cascades into the void above and vanishes mid-air into a cloud of smoke. We wish for one to stand under, if only to cool ourselves from the day’s heat.

When we spot one in the village nearby, we follow the waterway into the jungle. Long grass and forest plants grow over the footpath but the trampled steps from those before us lead the way.

The sound grows louder as we approach the clearing. It is like a storm of rolling thunder, wind and pouring rain. The water slides hundreds of stories tall, bends to the wind and slams down into the bedrocks below, soaking the surroundings yards in all directions with a fine spray of mist. I can feel the drops splash my face as I step nearer.

Down to my shorts, I slip and slide and fall and creep my way atop slime-covered boulders, my sights set on the great shower before me.

The power of the downpour sends my heart beating against my ribcage as I crawl towards the wind and rain. I breathe heavy, conscious breaths as my feet find sturdy ground among the rocks and sand. There, I maneuver myself directly under the eye of the storm.

The cold river collapses atop my head as buckets of ice water beat against my body. I let out a yell from deep inside my chest and glance upward to where the water falls to see the shining sun.

I stand for no longer than twenty seconds beneath the falls before I am soaked and shivering. Stumbling back across the boulders to the grassy shore, I lay against my back to sundry. There is clarity from entering the storm and seeing it from the outside. I sit up and watch as the water fall ceaselessly into the rocks.

It’s one of our day’s side-adventures before arriving at the village of Jagat where I overhear a conversation in English between the owner of the guesthouse and another man.

Apparently, the monsoons arrive in three days. It’s unbelievable to hear knowing our hike ends in two. We feel lucky and I can only shrug and smile from hearing this small piece of good fortune. With all this luck and only two days remaining, it seems at this point, nothing could possibly go wrong.

June 19 (Day 16) — Mad Honey

We begin the day ready for breakfast when the guesthouse owner swings by our table and offers us “magic honey” with our chapatis.

Magic honey? we ask. From the trail, we’ve see huge honeycombs lining the distant cliffs and wonder if he’s speaking about the special, hallucinogenic honey made from the Nepali cliff bees.

Is it really magic? we ask.

He laughs and says no, not this year, because the rhododendron flowers, which contain the psychoactive ingredient, did not bloom. He’s been eating from it for some time and it’s not magic, he says.

We say okay, sure, and he returns with a huge blue bucket containing a large comb steeped in a sticky, brown liquid.

Each of us salivates at the sight, scoops some out with a spoon and slathers the rare honey on our Chapatis. That’s when Bradley looks up with bright eyes and asks if he could have a bite of the comb.

Sure, says the man, and he tears off a small piece for Bradley who takes it and begins to chew. The honey is delicious and it slides easily down our throats.

After breakfast, I notice Bradly has been in the bathroom for some time. I start to wonder about him as my bag is packed and I’m ready to hike. His restroom trips are usually expedient and this one seems uncharacterisically long.

Nevertheless, I wait and ten to fifteen minutes later, he emerges from the restroom door covered in water with swollen cheeks and red eyes.

I nod at him as if to ask, you good?

He exhales through his shut lips and shakes his head. Then it hits me. Was the honey magic? Didn’t I eat some too?

I walk over to him as he sits on the ground with head in hands and ask if he thinks it was the bite of comb he ate.

Yeah, man. I think since the comb hung there for seasons, the “magic” still lives inside it.

He flees into the bathroom a couple more times to purge before finally lying down on a mattress we bring outside to sit the shade.

Magic isn’t always what it seems, he says.

He explains he’s experienced similar effects before from trying Sapo, applying dart frog poison against a skinburn. It’s a massive purge complete with fever, dizziness, stomach pain and excretion from both ends, but while the dart frog experience lasted only fifteen minutes, we’re now past that amount of time and the process does not seem to be slowing down. It does not look fun, to say the least.

There’s WiFi at the guesthouse and I do some research. Apparently after ingesting the honey, the person lays down and sleeps for some time. Bradley becomes well enough to walk the three floors of stairs up to our room and does exactly this with pressure and pain twisting his stomach in knots.

There’s not much to do in the meantime. WiFi shuts off for the day along with the electricity and won’t return until nightfall. I start some yoga and meditate and eat a bowl of soup for a late lunch, hoping he’ll feel better soon.

Over twelve hours pass and by nightfall, Bradley is still in bed and the pain from the mad honey has not let up. There’s nothing we can do but wait and hope the honey loosens its grasp.

I wish him healing as we fall into sleep.

June 20 (Day 17) — The Final Day

Thankfully, the honey has done its job and Bradley is mostly better when we wake.

It feels nice to walk again but it’s bittersweet knowing these are our final miles. With a day lost to sickness, Lama Dai says it’s best if we take a bus at the next large village and end our hike. The trail seems like mostly road walking anyway, so we’re not too disappointed, also realizing the rest will do our bodies and minds well.

We walk in silence, listening to the wind and our respective digital audio choices, soaking up our last steps of the Manaslu Circuit. Hiking these trails has been a deeply cultural, naturally spectacular and surprisingly insightful experience, and I feel grateful for every step.

I’m reminded of how important it is for my well-being to take trips into nature, to walk with my life atop my shoulders, to expose that which is useful to me and what no longer serves me. It’s a difficult leap to leave behind what is comfortable, and there are many challenges along the way, but time and time again, I emerge from these walks feeling more connected to my inner-self, lighter in mind, and stronger in body than ever before. It’s here I’m reminded of what really matters in my life. And for that, I smile.

It’s the late afternoon when we reach a village and no more than five minutes later do we catch a local bus, a bumpy three-hour drive to the small city of Besishahar where our hike ends.

The noises of the city are a stark contrast to the mountain walls and waterfalls that once surrounded us, but we settle into our hotel room, eat dal bhat, and stumble upon a crepe and waffle store down the street for an end of journey celebration.

The night passes and just as our bus arrives to transport Bradley and I back to the city of Pokhara, it’s time to say goodbye to Lama Dai.

We thank him profusely, trade contact details and exchange one final embrace before boarding the bus.

We’ll send you the blog posts and videos we make from the trip, we say.

Lama Dai smiles, nods and waves. We think he understands. In fact, this time, we know he does.

I grab onto the seat in front of me as the bus pulls forward from beneath my feet and rattles up the red and dusty road, away from the Himalayas and deeper into the concrete jungles of man and motorcycle.

Thanks for reading! A special thanks to my patrons who support my work, Everest Holiday, Gossamer Gear and friends and family for your support.

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Wishing you well.

Love,

David

PS — If you enjoyed the story, you can purchase my hiking memoir The Trail Provides on Amazon and Audible today.

If you haven’t yet read PART I of My Nepal Story about my time spent living with a wise spiritual teacher in Pokhara, you do can so by clicking here or below: