Solo Travel in the Himalayas

By the time I finally reached the summit of the pass, the sun had already begun to dip behind the jagged, snow-dusted peaks of the Himalayas. I had been trekking for nearly ten hours, and every muscle in my body was screaming for a reprieve. Looking down at the silent valley thousands of feet below, I realised with a start that I hadn’t spoken to another human being for three full days. This solitude, which I had initially feared when I set out from the trailhead, had gradually become a strange and comforting companion.

I sat on a frozen rock and reflected on the cryptic advice my brother had given me before I left London: ‘Don’t try to find yourself; try to lose yourself.’ At that moment, shivering in the increasingly thin air, I finally grasped his meaning. The ego, with all its worries about career and status, seems to disappear when you are confronted by such vast, indifferent beauty. In the silence of the mountains, you aren’t a somebody – you are simply a witness to a world that has existed long before you and will remain long after you are gone.