It’s 330 in the morning and i’m sitting on the roof of my guesthouse 3500m above sea level with a perfect view of the milky way above the himalayas.
The cold stings my face and fingers. My feet are going numb from sitting in the same position for so long. I’ve been up since 1am running back and forth from the toilet and the pain in my stomach won’t go away, the familiar gurgle telling me I might need to make a quick exit soon.
Every 30 seconds I press the shutter on my camera, capturing a time-lapse.
Of course I’d prefer to be warm in bed, i’m so tired my eyes are itchy and every time I blink I have to shake myself awake.
It’s not so much that I WANT to be up here in the cold taking photos.
It’s an innate need.
I press the shutter again, lay back and stare up at the stars. I feel so alive. I’m doing it right.
The sun starts to rise and i force myself back to bed before I freeze. I lay in bed shivering, cocooned under my blankets, my breath still frosting up the air in front of me. It takes me forever to warm up, my fingers are still numb and I lay there for what feels like an hour before I finally feel human again.
The pain in my stomach is still there, warning me.
But right now, in this moment, I feel better about life than I have all year.
When you're hiking at altitude you need a rest day to help acclimatise, so you don't join the many who get flown off the mountain.
We rested for 2 days in Manang, days full of snow, snowball fights, movie 'theatres' (actually a back room with plastic chairs and a TV screen) and SO MUCH FOOD.
Later that day my stomach reached the heights of it’s illness and I had to head to the doctors. Thank god we were in Manang and a quick set of antibiotics sorted me out. The higher you are the harder it is for your body to heal. I’ve met a few people who got sick in Manang and couldn’t heal up and had to return to Pokhara. While I was waiting in the doctors a lady with altitude sickness came in. She was supported through the doorway, her face was grey and she looked like she was dying, as they bought her in she fainted. People where running around hooking her up to oxygen and eventually a helicopter came and picked her up. Made me appreciate that all i had wrong was a bad stomach.
You can never forget the altitude while you're in manang. We were staying in a 3 story guesthouse and the dining hall was on the 3rd story. Every single time we had to climb the stairs we had to laugh at how breathless we were.
