In the twenty years that I’ve lived in the US, I’ve visited my home country three times. Once, when I was sixteen for a religious festival called Puran, 11 years after I had first left. I went back again seven years later in 2023 with just my sister, visiting family and traveling with my cousins. Most recently, I traveled back this past October for a festival called Dashain, a solo trip that has been the most monumental of them all.
I woke up the morning of October 2nd with travel anxiety, already anticipating the fatigue and jet lag as I thought about the long flight ahead of me – a 4 hour drive to the airport, a 15 hour flight, a 9 hour layover, and then another 5 hour flight. The traveling was just as tiring as I had expected, although I was met with a pleasant surprise during my layover where I met a British Indian girl who complimented my side bag. We then proceeded to chat about our lives as if we’d known each other for years rather than a couple of hours.
After an eternity of sitting, I arrived in Kathmandu bright and early on October 6 with just a few hours of sleep in my system. I found my cousin after a couple hours of going through immigration and trying to find my luggage, and as I sat on the back of her scooty feeling the dusty city wind in my hair, I finally felt myself start to come alive.
The roads of Kathmandu
There was barely any time for rest and recuperation. The next day, I flew the 45 minute flight to Biratnagar to meet my aunts and cousins, and just two days later we were driving up to Urlabari for my cousin’s wedding. It was a four-day affair, consisting of the engagement, the mehendi/haldi, the wedding, and then the party. I can hardly explain what occurred – it was a blur of saris and lehengas, carrying trays of gifts meant for the bride’s family and partaking in symbolic events I did not quite understand.
The day after the party, I was expected in the village. There, I reunited with most of my family members and celebrated the biggest holiday of the year called Dashain, which essentially celebrates the victory of good over evil. We were blessed with tika on our foreheads from our aunts, uncles and grandparents and given money in turn. With my cousins, we told ghost stories and played popular Nepali card games, like Kitti, Faras, Jut Patti, and Call Break. And after five days in the village, I went back to Biratnagar to meet more family and travel to the hilly landscape of Bhedetar. It was freezing and so engulfed in fog that we didn’t have the chance to properly appreciate the sights, but just spending time with my cousins – walking, taking pictures, talking, drinking tea, dancing– was enough.
My 17-year-old cousin, a small girl whose introverted personality reminds me so much of myself at that age (except way cooler than I could ever hope to be), remarked on how it was weird that for me all of this was temporary, while for them it was their whole lives. This was something I often tried not to think about, because it reminded me of my place as a constant visitor in the permanence of other people’s lives. After the conversation, I couldn’t help but wonder what my visitations looked like from the perspectives of my other family members.
Bhedetar fog
Too soon, I was flying back to Kathmandu. There was still yet another significant event awaiting me – the four day trek my cousin and I had planned up in the mountains. We had put in a deposit for the two of us to go with a group organized by a company called Flight Sansar, which made me nervous because at the time, their page didn’t have any pictures, and I feared we were going to get trafficked (this may sound dramatic, but Nepal has one of the highest trafficking rates in the world – spoiler alert, we were fine and the group was amazing). So after days of shopping for the right gear, we packed our bags and headed out bright and early on October 23 to the bumpy van ride that would take us to the city of Pokhara.
We were meant to arrive at 1 PM, but with the terrible roads and constant stops, we didn’t reach our hotel until closer to 4/5 PM. Once we arrived, the organizer rushed to get our bags. At first glance, I was surprised to see he wasn’t the older, weathered man I was envisioning but a boy the same age as me. I had initially mistaken him for a hotel assistant.
Right away, we were put into a van with the rest of our group, which consisted of 8 people – me and my cousin, two girls, a videographer, a married couple, and the organizer. The married man, a dentist, was livid at how late we were. Him and his wife had arrived in the morning anticipating that we would start the trek early, and the entire drive up to our starting location he scolded our organizer for his lack of communication and management, while the organizer tried to apologize. The rest of us in the back smiled at each other and held in our laughs at how comically and emphatically upset this man was, considering it was a situation nobody could have controlled.
Once we reached our starting location, he cooled down, and we were set to begin. The sun was setting at this point, so we turned on our headlights and made our way up to the Australian Base Camp. I had been nervous about my ability to walk with the weight of my bag on my back, and just this 2 hour trek revealed my lack of fitness. I was readjusting my bag every minute or so, panting after just a few steps uphill, checking the time over and over again to see if we were almost there (we weren’t). Just that first day felt like six hours in and of itself. One girl was struggling with her bag so much that the organizer ended up carrying it for her. When we reached the camp, I was afraid of how the next three days were going to go. My cousin and I decided to hire a porter, somebody who could carry our bags for us, for the next two days of the uphill climb.
That next morning, we woke up bright and early at 6 AM and took pictures with the mountain range in the distance. We ate breakfast and started our trek at 8, slowly making our way through the lush green forest of deciduous trees and bamboo and rhododendrons (which I learned is Nepal’s national flower). We walked for 3/4 hours before stopping for lunch and resting, and then it was another 3/4 hours to go. The trail right after lunch consisted of 20-30 minutes of uphill stone steps jutting out from the dirt, a feat that nearly killed me.
Start of the trek near Australian Base Camp
I don’t know how I made it to Forest Camp, but the relief on everybody’s faces was palpable once we reached our rest area for the night. By then, it was 4 PM. It began to rain right after we arrived, so we all sat in the common room and warmed up by the furnace. The two girls made us all a snack called Chatpate, which we ate by the warmth of the fire while the rain poured outside. The snack spoiled my dinner, my feet were sore, and I felt the exhaustion setting in, so while the others sat around the table talking and laughing, I turned into bed as early as 8 PM.
The following day was similar – this time we began our day with a group stretch, and by 8:30 we were on our way. It was another 8 hours to the High Camp, and like the day before, we made it there right around 4 PM. To my surprise, I wasn’t in as much pain as I thought I’d be by the end of that third day (Note – just wait). That evening, we were once again huddled in the furnace room. The higher we climbed in altitude, the colder it became, and there was no internal heating or hot water to save us. Someone mentioned cards, and I remembered I had brought a pack of cards with me in my trekking bag, so that evening we spent sitting around a table playing multiple rounds of CallBreak and Faras. At one point somebody started playing music and people began to dance in the center of the room. It was a fun, high energy, and lively night, which was a great way to commemorate our last night together before the final trek.
We awoke at 2:30 AM the following day. Shivering, I walked out of my hotel room to a crisp and cold night. The snow-capped mountain in the distance loomed over us in the the brightest night sky I’ve ever seen. We readied ourselves and began our journey an hour later, trekking up the side of the mountain. This was the most challenging experience I’d had thus far. In the pitch black, we turned on our headlights and climbed uphill, stair after stair, and at one point came to a trail so narrow we had to climb single file. There was nothing but grass and dirt to pull myself up, with no railings to hold us in place, and a long line of people both in front and behind, which would end in a catastrophic domino effect if even one person stumbled or slipped.
3AM view of the sky near High Camp
Everytime we reached a plateau, I told myself, five more minutes but it seemed that the mountain kept expanding. I was beginning to regret my commitment to so much walking. It was 6AM by the time I reached the view point, and the horizon was alight with red and yellow streaks. Once the sunrise began to hit the peak of Mardi Himal, my regrets subsided. The peaks became golden, expanding down the rest of the mountainside, filling me with a sense of peace and satisfaction. My group drank tea and sat in the serenity for an hour or two, taking in the sights and taking photos. The descent back to High Camp was far quicker and less painful than the ascent.
Me at the viewpoint shortly after sunrise
That day, we all carried our own bags. After the early morning trek of 4-5 hours, we still had a full day of trekking left to go. That was when the exhaustion hit. As we kept walking downhill, stone steps after stone steps, I felt the stress on my knees and calves. It seemed that the stairs were neverending, and I feared I was never going to reach the road. This was the point where I began to curse myself and wonder why I had ever agreed to this, because I had never felt so compromised in my life, and I knew that there was simply no choice but to keep going. So I did, and I did, and I did, until I reached the end of the trail where some of the others were already waiting, and I collapsed to the ground, popped a painkiller, and declared that I was never going to walk again.
The ride back to Pokhara was a bumpy one. You would think that we would all be tired from the long day, and yet, the majority of us (excluding the married couple) ended up sitting out on the balcony of the hotel, chatting until 1 in the morning. This was the first time I’d ever made Nepali friends my own age, which I found exciting. It turned out that all four of them were from Chitwan, a town in between Kathmandu and Pokhara. Our videographer was Chitwan based, and the two girls were both college friends of the organizer. Since they were all headed in the same direction, the organizer invited us to stop by and visit them on our way back to Kathmandu.
My cousin and I weren’t sure at first, but when they left the next day, we felt the hole of their absence. We had bonded over the past few days and were sad about parting, so then we decided we would cut our Pokhara trip short and visit them for a day or two before heading back to Kathmandu.
During the rest of our time in Pokhara, my cousin and I walked around the lakeside, traveled to a few different landmarks, and got tattoos. It was at this point that my knees and calves hurt so bad I could barely walk, and every staircase was truly a traumatizing experience. It took three to four days for my legs to feel somewhat normal again. We also made the mistake of allowing a stranger to take us to the fishing village of Majhikuna, cursing ourselves in his car in fear that we were getting kidnapped. In the end, all he did was drive us up the mountain and then buy us food and drive us back down. The entire ride, we feared he was a mafia member prepared to abduct us. It turned out, however, that he was actually a local politician.
Then came time to go to Chitwan. When our friends had left a few days prior, I had come to the horrific and unfortunate realization that I might have developed a small crush on the organizer, which my cousin caught onto immediately. Maybe that was why we so readily agreed to visit. The organizer booked a hotel for us but was too busy to come and pick us up, which was a disappointment considering I was beginning to like this boy. I didn’t even understand what it was that I liked – maybe I am easily won over by men who are inclusive and ask me questions (even though that’s his job). Maybe I thought he had a nice smile. Maybe he was just the only boy my age (sometimes the bar is low).
He ended up coming by later in the evening. The two girls were unable to join us, so it was me and my cousin, the videographer and his girlfriend, and our organizer. We sat around on the hotel balcony, ordering beer and snacks and talking. There was a moment when the others left the organizer and I to sit alone. The beer was already making my memory hazy so I had no idea what I was talking about, but I remember a single instance when he smiled into his cup while I was talking– for days afterward I wondered if that meant anything at all.
I woke up surprisingly early the next day, drinking water to drown out the leftover alcohol in my bloodstream and sit out on the balcony. I ruminated on my feelings and wondered if the boy reciprocated them in any way. There was a part of me that doubted it (he was probably just nice to me because I was his client) and a part of me that thought it could be possible (something about that smile). I was also incredibly embarrassed by this sudden development of my feelings after knowing him for only a couple of days, so I tried not to let it show. Anyway, let’s be real – considering the distance, there is no world in which it would work even if the feeling was mutual.
Later that day, my cousin and I went to Chitwan National Park. We rode on canoes in a lake that had rhinos and crocodiles, then got to see the elephants in the breeding center. One of the elephants adorned us both with a necklace. That evening, the organizer had invited us to the Deusi Bhailo program he was helping to put together, so we got to see a series of traditional performances and participate in the dancing.
Getting blessed by an elephant
By the time my cousin and I were boarding the bus to leave, we all shook hands goodbye. The organizer had told us to call when we reached the city, yet when I did, his voice was so bored over the phone that I felt perhaps I had let my delusions inflate my ego. This sounded like the voice of a boy that did not have any interest in me at all. I guess I should have just left it alone there. (Unfortunately feelings are stronger than logic — let’s not talk about the cringey DM I sent later on, or the fact that I kept checking my phone wondering if he’d call me back.)
Anyway, it was a whirlwind once we got back to Kathmandu. We had a list of things we needed to buy our cousins for Bhai Tika, which is one of the days of Tihar where you bless your brothers and male cousins. We did multiple rounds of shopping, and after the celebrations I had only a couple of days left to buy some last minute souvenirs.
On my second to last day, however, my cousin and I didn’t do the shopping we had intended. Instead, we went to a cafe and sat down for a drink, and somehow we spent hours talking about so many things we had never talked about before – family, fears, insecurities, boys, heartbreaks. It was the first time we had spoken in depth about these aspects of our lives we had never talked about before, and I felt like I understood her on a whole new level.
I suppose that explains the tears the night of my flight. She had lied to her boss in order to take an extra day off, and a gloom hung in the air as the evening approached. We watched a movie in her bed as night fell, forcing ourselves up at around 10:30 PM to call for a taxi. There were multiple times I choked back my tears, until it came time to part and I couldn’t hold them in anymore. We both began to cry when we hugged goodbye, and my uncle quickly shooed her away so I could go and check in.
There was a dread within me that kept growing as I stood in line. I thought about all of the things I had gotten to experience, all of the family I had visited, all of the places I had gone and the people I had met. I thought about the lonely silence that awaited me back in my room in the US, the lack of job security and the uncertainty about my place in life. I thought about how much easier it would be if I could jump around and travel from place to place forever, existing in a perpetual state of constant distraction from my ever growing responsibilities.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.
Pulling up my mask to hide my tear streaked cheeks, I waved a final goodbye to my family and my country, and walked in to check my bags.
