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After only five days in the Annapurna Mountains… or is it… after five long days in the Annapurna Mountains… I return back to Pokhara, Nepal… humbled… on a multitude of levels that I’m not sure I’m going to be able to explain let alone understand and integrate into my being. In all honesty… I don’t even want to write about this… a part of me feels that since I am unable to communicate my complete being triumphant and joyous… and sharing the truth of some of the shame and embarrassment I am experiencing on my blog will only exacerbate what I’m feeling and I know all about the Law of Impermanence.

Here I sit at 2500ft above sea level returning to Pokhara, Nepal after being at 10,500ft above sea level for 3 days in these small villages of Ulleri, Ghorepani, Tadapani and Ghandruk in the Annapurna Mountains and feeling my bodies exhaustion and sore muscles. After planning with a guide (Min Gurung) for a 6 day “trek” and thinking that would not be enough for me, I made my permits and registrations for 8 days, so I could stay a little longer… and here I sit back in Pokhara after only 5 days… humbled.

My body is exhausted, and my muscles are fatigued and twitching, and I can feel every muscle in my legs with every stride I take. This could be some of the reason why I’m resisting writing now and forcing myself to do it. I’m “should’ing” all over myself. The thing I advise my students and coaching clients NOT to do… I should’ve been able to do the entire trek. My body should’ve been able to do it. I should’ve been in better shape preparing for this. I should’ve been able to get closer to the mountains than I did. I should’ve been able to be more peaceful in accepting my limitations. UGH! It’s a downward spiral of self-created misery.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system let me mention what an amazing experience this was. To experience a few of the tallest mountains in the world up close like this was an incredible experience. When I woke up in the mornings, when the sky was the clearest all day and I saw these majestic peaks I was brought to my knees in tears. The sacredness and meanings of what these mountains hold to the local people was made apparent every morning I was able to see a few of these 24,000ft mountain peaks in their fullness. It’s hard to put into words.

This is the main reason I came to Nepal… to experience these mountains up close, yet my ego thinks I should’ve been able to be on the top of them. (Ooops, there I go again should’ing on myself :-). YES! I did get pretty close to them. It’s incredible the amount of effort it takes to get from one village to another, where they are only a few miles apart. It’s the vertical up and down that’s hard on the body. For instance, it took almost a two-hour drive to go 15 miles, as the crow flies, back to Pokhara from where I was picked up by the bus. This is why…

A Humble Way of Life – Clean Water, Clean Food and Personal Hygiene

Living life at higher altitudes like this is a different way of being. Simplicity. Just a normal existence of eating food and a warm shelter is what’s mostly on the daily agenda. If you are looking for something that cannot be provided locally, remember, everything needs to be carried by mule or by foot from the lower elevations. People grow most of their own fruits and vegetables.

I remember being at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for 17 days where there is a pack in/pack out rule. And when I say, pack out… I mean EVERYTHING… there is no burying your fecal matter, you carry it with you and out of the park. Up here in the Himalayas is very different. When I was at 10,000ft+ and walking across running water I could smell the septic, or the lack of a septic system. The water that was coming out of some of the guest house toilets and grey water were just running down the mountain. No wonder why all the well water here in Nepal and India isn’t fit for drinking and every home has to have a filtration/reverse osmosis machine in order to drink the water. And with these machines… I wonder about the process that the water has to go through in those machines that just strip all the life-giving qualities out of it.

I find the food in this part of the world fabulous, even as basic as it is. I’ve learned to really appreciate organic farming even more since I’ve been here. You never really know what kind of pesticides farmers are putting on their garden. If you were poor, my guess is that you would do almost anything to ensure you wouldn’t lose one of your crops. Sikkim has become India’s first fully organic state. In some ways this is way more progressive than in the USA. As far as meat goes, it is far more expensive than vegetables which is the way it should be. The USA has this a bit backwards… when I go to the grocery store and find meat that is less expensive than vegetables it makes sense as to why our culture is suffering from a health crisis. If you liked that video… check this one out. It’s time to advocate the government to make some changes in how they can support better eating habits in the USA. The government is hiding this information from the public in order to protect the status quo.

Along with the conversation of clean water and organic food there is a question about personal hygiene in this part of the world. Coming from a Judeo-Christian upbringing and culture there is emphasis on cleanliness. The expression “cleanliness is next to godliness” was first recorded in a sermon by John Wesley in 1778, but the idea is very old, found in Babylonian and Hebrew religious texts and is still invoked to this day, often as a requirement to wash or clean up. In the Jewish faith there is a blessing that is said when washing hands. Is being clean a sign of spiritual purity or goodness? I’ve stayed in people’s homes that are clean to the standards of USA clean and I’ve stayed in places that had cockroaches and rats (not for very long though). I trekked into the Himalayas and didn’t wash my clothes or shower in days… but not showering or washing clothes for weeks? That’s a completely different idea of cleanliness.

The Humility of Yielding to Myself

As I was putting my body through the ringer trekking up into the mountains I could feel my irritation growing at people and my surroundings. I was paying my good hard-earned money to have this experience and I had sometimes felt entitled to get what I wanted. Mostly when I was cold and wearing wet clothes after a long day of trekking. India and Nepal are cultures where some people feel they do not need to wait in the queue, or to have the awareness to watch where they are going (walking down the sidewalk or even driving a car).

I could feel my own irritation and all I could do is be with it. I could feel how entitled I felt to be the one closest to the wood stove, so I didn’t have to be cold. I was tired of everyone else’s entitlement and me being the one to have to wait in the queue. Everyone could go fuck themselves. I’m sure nobody else has had these moments in their lives. I wanted to move everyone else’s wet clothing from hanging over the stove and replace it with my own clothing, so I could be dry after 2 days of wearing wet clothes. I was tired of smelling the same old stink from people who couldn’t take showers and wash their clothes. I was tired of having to deal with living conditions that I thought weren’t good enough. Yup… I was tired.

One of the expressions used here is … “Wat to Do?”. It is said when there is supposedly nothing to be done in a particular situation. I think that expression is used to not have to try to even do anything. Sure, when you are at 10-15-20,000ft in elevation you need to be in complete surrender to your surroundings, I get that.

In these moments I knew I had to be my irritation and be my frustration and that taking it out on people would not do me any good. I knew the cravings I was experiencing were going to bring me nothing but misery. I knew I needed to ask for what I wanted, peacefully… to be able to have dry clothes for the following day. I was wearing dry clothes and was mostly warm and I was able to sit around the evening fire, just not in the king’s chair. I needed to yield to myself… nobody was going to do anything for me. I was in unfamiliar territory and I had a guide with me and guest house owners whose jobs were to help out trekkers like me.

Eventually I got over myself and was able to get warm, dry my clothes and get into more acceptance of my surroundings. The alternative was my own self-created misery. Plus, I made the decision that I wasn’t going to do anything that would mask what I was feeling or experiencing. Sometimes having a beer is nice… but not to get away from being present in the moment.

The moral of this story…. Suffering is Optional

I’m recovering and feeling my body heal from this trek. I’m able to accept and appreciate more and more as my body heals what I just accomplished… walking up the mountain in the time I was able to do it in. I’m continuing to appreciate and be grateful for this 50-year-old body of mine and for the experience that I have been given at this moment. I’m respecting the different cultures I’ve been able to live into and offer my perspective whenever it is asked for. I’m able to continue to practice the art of letting go and yielding to myself in the moment so I don’t succumb to my own self-created misery.

We are the ones that get to choose how we want to live and even how we want to feel. What are the practices you have in your life that allow you to point your own mind into a peaceful direction and existence when you think you aren’t getting what you think you want, or what you are getting isn’t what you asked for?