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Gokyo Ri - A date with Mount Everest

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18th March Delhi to Kathmandu Time flies.  It's been more than a year since I last hiked in the Himalayas. Life has changed a lot since then, for the better. For as long as I can remember, climbing mountains have mostly been a way for me to cope with difficult life situations. It's different when you hike out of some kind of spite towards humanity compared to just doing it for the love of the mountains. I have erred a bit on both sides of that equation from time to time. The plan was a bit outlandish in itself, flying from Germany to India and then, the very next day flying to Kathmandu. The time difference is not much (4.5 hours without daylight saving) but it still messes with your sleep routine.  But here I am, on a flight to Kathmandu, heavily sleep deprived and honestly a little unsure of what next. I've been hiking for close to a decade now but those pre-hike jitters never really goes away. It is an endless loop of what could go wrong in your head.  Like for instance,
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A solo escapade to Kedartal

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Life can be funny. For a long time, I've been putting off the idea of traveling because apparently I had other priorities. There was a certain uncertainty of me traveling to Germany, still is, considering all the red tape and bureaucracy at work.  It started to feel like I'm no longer in control of where I am and what I want to do. The mountains have often provided me with clarity of thought and calmness. In my moments of confusion and anxiety, the mountains feel like an answer. "Feel" because there isn't any actual answer from them but instead from the way they make me feel. I suppose that's how they make a lot of people feel. An anchor that stays as is. Life can change and throw you around but we're still in this contained ecosystem where some things never change, not from our limited perspective. Why Kedartal? Because I remember someone mentioning once that it's a nice place to go. It was very random, almost whimsical. I did some short research on t
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Location: Kedartal, Uttarakhand 249135
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Nandikund lake trek

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Prologue: It's September-end, 2020 and the world has been brought to its knees by covid-19 and that too for some time now. The world is shrouded in gloom, plans have flopped and careers have been jeopardized. To be honest, it shook everyone out of their bubble, their "5 year plans". Covid is a relatively low risk disease and yet, it created a panic that has not been seen in the last 100 years (The world wars must have sucked more though I guess). A grim reminder that everything you have, can just simply vanish if it's the will of "nature". Covid took a lot from a lot of people. By comparison, I was relatively unscathed but not "completely" unscathed. It did make me drop my shoulders and embrace the new normal, Whatever the hell that means. I would dream every day about spending some time away from the god-awful media created news, the career fiasco, the chaos. So, I bided my time. As soon as the government indicated that the restrictions will be l
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