Many of the Sherpa porters and guides were women.

Today’s trek was a true treat of what Nepal’s Himalayas have to offer. It’s more than just a mountain experience; it’s an enchanting blend of nature and culture that dragged me out of my past, present and future and left me hanging somewhere in mid-world. It was so easy to forget who I was or why I was there. I was just there.

Despite the pain yesterday’s descending trek gave me, it was a little warm up for my legs to get ready for today’s ascent of a further 800m. It took about 8 hours for us to reach Namche Bazaar, one of the most beautiful stops along the Khumbu route.

Namche sits at approximately 3400m altitude. Standing almost vertically on the mountain, it is one of the largest villages we stopped by along the route. Numerous restaurants, shops, and lodges owned by the villagers are beautifully clustered together, leaving a large semi-flat area for the Tibet market, where Tibetans cross borders and settle to sell some of their products.

I fell in love with the place the minute I stepped foot in it and began to walk in its bumpy alleys. But by the time we arrived I was too tired to take any further walks uphill or downhill. I settled in the lodge dining room by the fire and began to write.

Unlike Kilimanjaro, the climb up the Khumbu route is a combination of uphill and downhill treks. I liked the idea of being forced to gain altitude as slowly as possible and hence be better acclimatized. To cross from one mountain to another we’ve had to go downhill to the river, take a metal bridge, and then go back up. I admired those bridges. They would bounced up and down with trekkers’ steps like a fun shock absorber ride. I’m sure Sir Hillary’s trek wasn’t as fun without those bridges, but at least he probably didn’t have the aching joints I had, so a bridge like that wouldn’t have meant that much.

The minute I would step onto one of those bridges I would feel that I’d been lifted off the ground and was now flying over the river, barely touching the water with my feet. The wind would be at its strongest, blowing through the colorful prayer flags that had been placed alongside the rails. I would hold up my poles with one hand and let the other caress the flags as I moved along.

Sometimes a single downhill to a bridge would take no less than an hour, but the trekker, Sherpa, and yak company were most of the time a nice distraction. In the steeper parts I began to breathe loudly and struggle with each step, but I knew it was a small price for having slacked the previous couple of months. I don’t recall ever feeling older than the moment when young school children were gliding past me with exceptional ease, laughing and chasing each other with their school bags. Some were carrying their little sisters or brothers on their backs, while I struggled with my poles and counted my every step.

Namaste kid! I could hear this little boy's repeated namastes to a line of trekkers. I took his picture when it was my turn.

I learned so much about the Sherpa just by looking at their children. The minute I saw those kids and their energetic sprints up and down the mountain I understood the special physiological make up with which a Sherpa had been blessed. Yet they are also not without their simple pursuits of fun, feeling awe at everything they deem different. A few minutes ago as I was writing the TV was on showing an Indian movie with a woman screaming her lungs out as she hung by a single hand from a cliff, then suddenly dropping meters down to a river and getting shoved from rock to another, when suddenly a muscular man with a torn shirt shows up to her rescue. Some trekkers were staring at the screen with a blank expression from sheer exhaustion, but the Sherpa waitress sitting across me at the table was staring with full intensity, oohing and aahing each time the woman hit a rock, then finally sighing with relief as the handsome man rescued her with a single hand.

Kind, shy, quiet, and with superb physical abilities, the Sherpa make the perfect representatives of mountain people. I could see humility and respect behind the strong jawlines and the sharp features with which they smiled back at me. Spirituality runs in their veins and takes over the air they breathe. I could hear Buddhist chants coming out of shops as I passed by. I saw prayers engraved or painted on stones, some dating back hundreds of years. I saw women stopping in the middle of their errands and making an effort to keep prayer wheels spinning, spreading bliss among the hills.

The Sherpa are strong, stout-hearted people who haven’t lost their sense of smallness as mortals. Perhaps this is precisely because they are of the mountains, they understand the mountains in all their ways and all their changes. They have experienced both their blessing and wrath first hand.

This time I don’t only feel the company of great mountains, I’m indulging in the hospitality of some of the world’s most amazing people. And for that I feel grateful, and truly humbled.