clanciai - Himalayan realism - from the traveller's diary

The turning point of this journey was on the 11th, when suddenly the weather changed, and even the most experienced trekker here has never met with anything worse. I was then in north Sikkim, it was not as bad as on November 9th 1995, when there were disasters all over the Himalayas and 14 people perished on Mount Everest, but almost next to it. Now everyone is suffering from brutal colds, with running noses, hollow coughs, aching limbs and insufferable headaches. I will not be able to go into Nepal in a condition like this, with a sore foot at that which forbids me any trekking, but I will ride the crisis out here in my favourite place Darjeeling, since it is very strengthening and hardening to be here, my first and last love in India, for some days before embarking on the train journey back west, where Halvar expects me in Dharamsala on the 20th.

From the bottom of despair...

Infection, insect bites and running noses,
snoring room mates, sleepless nights and aching limbs,
you just lie tormenting yourself
with furious scratchings of your wounds,
you cough your lungs out, eyes are watering cascades,
and everywhere you hear around you
this tremendous Himalayan cough,
the empty dryness of the hollow hoarseness like of horses,
snows and rains, the worst that ever trekkers met with,
worse than even my friend Veteran encountered by Mount Everest,
and nightmares, worries, tortures and laments;
but still you carry on, enduring anything
just for the pleasure of surviving
even the worst thinkable ordeals
to one day finally return back home
to work, to humdrum winter weariness,
to just a normal life instead of these extremes,
however beautiful, revolting, educating and adorable.