March 2025 - Nepal - Namche Bazar

We reached Namche at last. Alvaro was five hours behind me. The guilt sat heavy. I had left him for my own selfish need to walk alone, and the shame of it dug at me the moment I stopped moving. Solitude had blinded me to him. Pride had dragged me up the mountain faster than reason.

We met again in a small café where the air smelled of burnt coffee and sweat-soaked down jackets. Steven joined us, a young French climber who had just topped one of the local six-thousanders. He looked like the kind of man the mountains favoured, lean and sharp, still carrying the glow of a clean summit. Fifteen years younger. Alone. Free. I envied him instantly. I wanted that summit. I wanted that freedom. I wanted to outrun the stupid things I had done and rewrite whatever part of me had broken.

And I wanted to be alone.
Yet there was Alvaro.
I loved him and resented him in the same breath.

Namche Bazar spun around me with its strange electricity. The town clung to the mountainside, built entirely by porters and helicopter lifts. No road reached it. Everything was carried or flown. Since Sir Hillary’s days the quiet trading village had grown into a patchwork of bakeries, coffee shops, restaurants, imitation climbing gear stalls and an Irish pub that felt absurd at this altitude.

Sixty thousand people walked through the Khumbu every year in the short weather window between snow and rain. The sherpa community lived from the flow, but the valley paid the cost. Plastic bottles, abandoned gear, rubbish scattered along ancient trails. The mountains carried their own silent grief.

People came for ego, redemption, healing, peace. They came to find something or to lose something. The climb acted like a path and a mirror. The mountain showed you what mattered. It stripped you without mercy. Whatever load you carried inside, it pulled it to the surface.

Mine was Kate.
Her illness.
Her pain.
My betrayal.

I left her when she needed someone steady. I lied, I cheated, she collapsed and I ran. I never forgave myself. The shame sat in me like an iron box, rusted and chained shut, buried under years of dust and denial.

I kept practicing vipassana. Breath in the thin air. Breath out. Watching without judgement. The practice steadied me, settled my heart rate, helped me blend into the rhythm of the mountains. No substances. No distractions. Just clarity and the cold truth of the air.

Nima and Suren came into my life with the lightness of two sparks. Young, alive, carving their living the same way they carved tattoos into the skin of anyone wanting a piece of the valley inked forever. Their kindness disarmed me. Word had spread that two Westerners had ridden to Surke on motorcycles. Suddenly climbers applauded us as if we belonged to some impossible category of wanderer. It felt embarrassing and exhilarating at the same time.

Nima and Suren took me in like family. We ate momos and sukuti in their aunt’s wooden shack on the edge of town. The fire cracked, children laughed, steam curled around us as night settled over Namche. I liked them so much I let Nima tattoo me again.

EBC had been the goal, but ambition crept in like a fever. I began to want a summit. I had never been above 5500 meters. My ego whispered for six thousand. Alvaro could not summit like this. So the plan grew sharp edges. I would reach EBC with him, go higher myself, ride the Surke death road back to Kathmandu, reset in a day, push to the Chinese border, cross Tibet, dive into Southeast Asia. The challenge thrilled me.

I did not see the warning signs. The bearings in my mind were beginning to loosen. I kept pushing. More altitude. More objectives. No rest. Movement instead of thought. Motion instead of honesty. Anything to avoid the iron box rattling under the surface.

The mountain had called and I wanted to answer. I wanted the summit. I wanted the roar of thin air. I wanted to run from every thought I feared. I wanted to take Alvaro to EBC, then sprint down, ride to Kathmandu, cross Tibet and deal with the wreckage later. Let the rest burn.

I told Nima the plan. He grinned like a man who had seen this fever before and gave me the number of his aunt in Dingboche. The mountain air was cold and alive. I felt untouchable.

We sat in a café talking through my route when something hit me. On the other side of the valley a giant seven-thousand-meter mountain looked down on us. The sky behind it was electric blue. The rounded top. The white sheen. I froze. I had seen it before. Then it came back to me. Rishikesh. The vision. The mountain in the dream.

I explained it to Nima and Suren, embarrassed by my own words.
They smiled like sherpas smile at children discovering something old.

Do not worry, they said.
That is Kong, one of our sacred mountains.
It called you.
You are exactly where you need to be.

The afternoon slipped by in kit preparation and an acclimatisation walk to a viewpoint overlooking Ama Dablam. A short climb for them, practically nothing. Helicopters kept slicing through the valley, dropping supplies, flying out sick trekkers, and delivering the wealthy who wanted a three thousand dollar photo of Everest without walking for it. I hated it. Mountaineering had lost so much of its spirit. Money robbed people of the lessons the mountains were meant to teach.

Nima shook his head.
Khumbu Uber, he said.
They fly too low and sometimes trigger avalanches, but we need them. What can we do.

We descended with a bounce in our step. Nima and Suren skipped over rocks like mountain goats. I followed, knees aching, pride dragging me forward.

The evening was tattoos, rest and logistics. EBC. Lobuche East at 6180 meters. Return to Kathmandu. Service the bike. Reach the Chinese border. Twelve days.

Sleep came like a thin thread pulled tight. My mind spun with peaks and timelines, frustration at Alvaro, fantasies of running alone. The iron box rattled beneath its thin coat of dust. I threw more dust over it. Closed my eyes. Focused on my breath. Tried to keep altitude sickness at bay and hold the mountain at arm’s length for one last night.