Day 2: Into the mountains

4:45 am - Wake up (jet lag again!) to a lovely clear day. Morning chill, meditation, walk, swim, and/or run (depending on who you are).

Bridget and I wander and explore some other lakeside parks before the humidity and dust fill our pores and lungs.

8 am - Our eyes pop and stomachs growl when we return, and we pile plates high at our 5-star, multi-national breakfast buffet spread: made to order fresh-pressed juices, eggs, waffles, pancakes, 4 kinds of specialty water (detox water, fennel water, etc.), chai, espresso, full English breakfast, French & Danish pastries, Indian & Nepali breakfasts, chicken wings (who eats that for breakfast?), muesli with toppings & 4 kinds of local honey with dietary/health benefits listed, 5 kinds of sprouts – wow!

plate 1 of 2. My eyes are bigger than my stomach....

Masala chai joyfully replaces my daily coffee on this trip

9:45 am – Pile into the jeep with our guide and porters for the initial drive out of the valley of Pokhara into the foothills of the Himalayas.

After the stop to get our backcountry permits, the road goes from bumpy and narrow to deeply rutted and running perilously alongside a cliff edge.

Don’t look over the edge.

A week later, a bus full of people careens over the edge of a similar road nearby with no survivors.

11:30 am - With a sigh of relief, coughing up dust, we make it to our trailhead at a sharp turn in the road, where a small bridge crosses over a splashing mountain stream.

We start with a pleasant uphill walk, through sunny stone & wooden villages blooming with red roses & geraniums, alongside a ravine with a white river, headed towards lunch, in an inviting blue & white teahouse, overlooking a bamboo forest.

Lunch: my first momos (Nepali dumplings) of the trip – steamed.

I later try many preparations – all delicious: soup-momos, deep fried momos, pan-friend momos, chili momos. (I dream of doing an international dumpling-tasting tour one day….) Turns out there are very similar menus at every teahouse, but the interpretations vary –Maybe it’s the hiking, or maybe it’s the fresh, local ingredients – but I swear literally everything is delicious, even the Western-style dishes you wouldn’t expect to be good.

12:45 pm – Energized and ready to go after the long, dusty morning and good food, we bound over several very wobbly metal swinging bridges draped in prayer flags over a deep ravine, passing big rapids and a huge waterfall. Like many things to come, its scale isn’t captured realistically on a phone camera.

The hike continues, but now the pleasantly uphill stone path has evolved into steep stone stairs, etched into the lush green mountainside. Bracketed by terraced fields, we climb for the next 2 hours, taking in distant thunder, birds singing, crickets chirping, far-away silly song-honking of the bus, cows mooing. Heavy breathing. Sweat pouring down our cheeks and into our eyes. Some mules pass by. Local villagers harvesting local crops. Our destination is a tall, pink teahouse at the top of the ridge, with panoramic views of the valley we just climbed out of.

Pack-mules jingle as they pass us, with distant thunder rumbling, the physical exertion intensifying the immersion in the present moment

The teahouse feels towering, although it’s only 4 stories – because of its hilltop perch. There’s a pleasant courtyard and balconies, but the sky opens up two minutes after arrival and we duck inside. Everyone behind us on the trail gets soaked. Maybe it's the prayer flags on our packs, but we somehow time our teahouse arrivals each time, as if on cue, right before the mid-afternoon monsoon.

Our rooms are small but cozy with views. Toilet-shower is attached – a luxury the first two nights. We hang clothes soaked with sweat on the window bars but later see that people hang them around the wood-burning stove in the main dining room for better drying.

I’m so grateful for bringing a bedliner sheet last minute! The beds are comfortable, but only have a thick comforter, and it’s so nice to crawl into a silky sheet after a long day.

We warm up by the fire downstairs after lukewarm showers and share a pot of lemon ginger honey tea, an Ayurvedic and Nepali staple. Dinner is our first taste of dal bhat – a traditional Nepalese meal that consists of a round-rimmed tin plate of rice, curried veggies (meat, if you chose), spicy sauce & pickles, and crispy cracker, accompanied with a bowl of steaming, soupy dal (lentils). Each teahouse/family has a slight variation, so even though it’s the same dish, it’s never the same. They generously refill any dish you want more of, but it’s so filling, I can rarely take them up on it! It’s my dinner (or lunch) every day here on.

After dinner we laugh and play Uno with our guide. It’s odd not to have other distractions. Nice. I’m glad I have limited phone access, although there is Wi-Fi. It’s supposed to be clear tomorrow – we can just see green foothills, but you can tell by how steep they are that there are much bigger mountains nearby.

We’ll start to see them appear, like a magic trick, tomorrow after the rains pass...

View of our teahouse the next morning, after the rains pass.

View from our bedroom window the next morning.

Travel notes: On the fears that hold us back

I’m traveling with 3 amazing women: two old friends, one new one. I’ve traveled solo, as a couple, with mixed groups, but never with a group of female friends like this – and it’s amazing, I have to admit.

It's interesting, we all have different fears going into this trek. Fear is a powerful emotion: it’s our mind/body’s way of saying “pay attention!”

⁉️Will my team think I’m taking too much time off? Can I stay competitive with very competitive colleagues, at a very competitive company?

⁉️I’ve never done anything like this before; will I be physically fit enough to complete an unknown distance and altitude climb each day for 7 days?

⁉️We don’t all know each other; will we get along? What happens if one of us falls behind?

⁉️Am I being selfish taking this trip while I leave my husband at home with three kids and a busy job?

These are things we care about - caring is good - but it's a fine line between caring and letting your fears take the wheel. This is especially tricky when fear is under the surface, not put into words yet. Despite being a coach, I've learned it's quite hard to do this on your own. Or even if you can articulate them - what do you do to really address them, with intention? It's much easier to react to hidden fear with dulling or distracting: drinking, smoking, binge-watching/reading/scrolling, or even workaholism - dull or distract from the discomfort.

Anna Lembeke, author of Dopamine Nation, talks about how pursing pain is harder than pursuing pleasure. It's countercultural. I'm not exactly pursing pain on this trek, but I'm leaning into something unfamiliar and uncomfortable for sure.

If nothing else, this trek becomes an opportunity for me to be fully present with the wildness, unexpected beauty, and humbling awe of the world around me, rather than my thoughts. There’s something deeply mesmerizing and grounding about a long walking journey that I wasn't expecting to experience. It's like I awakened something dormant, deep in my bones. It transforms my fear.