Lessons From The Himalayas: The Gift Of being Last

Sabbatical Diaries #1

10:30am

Benoa, Bali, Indonesia

I write this today from the coffee shop I discovered yesterday in Bali. The cafe has great coffee, a mix of local and western dishes and good vibes indoors. Key word: indoors. I used to pride myself in being an outdoors person, but with the humidity and heat in Bali, I am changing. Haha, yes another re-occurring theme for my sabbatical. :)

Today I’d love to share some of the lessons from my trip so far.

I do have other things on my plate that I’d like to post, such as finishing up my explanations of how I started my sabbatical and making that transition from a period of intense work to a season of extended travel. However, for today, I’d love to start writing out and sharing some of the deep soul lessons for me from this trip.

I left Canada for the extended travel portion of my trip on March 8th and I will return in late May, so this marks the halfway point of my journey.

If I had to sum it up in one word, I’d start with: grateful.

Better than I imagined.

Deeper and wider and farther than I hoped for.

Heart opening.

I find myself already reminiscing of moments on this trip, knowing that these gems will come back to me for years to come. I’ve found and experienced many moments of profound joy, gratitude and wonder on this trip, and this was one of the things I hoped for most.

If I were to once again revisit the goals, hopes and intentions that I started this trip with, I can how say that I have crossed the threshold on all the main ones. I am “accomplishing” what I had hoped for. Or better put, the trip is accomplishing for me what I need.

It’s like a freediving on the line that goes straight deep into the water. When you’ve hit the marker that signals the end of the line, there is a sense of relief. It is time to go up. The dive isn’t over yet, but you can enjoy the rest of the way up knowing air is coming.

On second thought, perhaps that’s not the best analogy for how I feel. It’s more like running up a hill, and I have reached the summit. Someone has signaled to me that I am half way done. There were parts of the first half that felt tiring and difficult, but now that the hardest parts are done, I get to enjoy the rest of the journey.

If I can do the first half, the rest is going to be gravy.

Each leg of this journey has contained some beautiful gifts, and I look forward to unwrapping the rest of my journey.

I will delve deeper into each leg of my journey later, but for today, I’d love to share a few thoughts from the road.

My Top Lesson From The Himalayas and Everest:

Who cares if you’re the last one.

In my life, coming first has come easy. I am not always the top of my class, or the first to finish everything, but I certainly have the things I excel at. Straight A’s always came easy, and I came to expect that I should do well in school and life.

I am not a competitive person, but if I’m honest with myself, I do have a competitive side and it comes out in less obvious ways. I expect myself to be in the top 10-25% of most things I do. Sometimes, even when I’m not trying, I end up on top, such as when I was valedictorian for my master of divinity program at Tyndale University.

The Himayalas wanted to dismantle this part of me and show me the Way of Slow. From day one on my Everest Base Camp trek, I was the slowest person. I had a great group to do the trek with. Our group started out with 8 people in it. I was the only one who had signed up as an individual. There was a group of 3 Nepalese people, 2 ladies from the UK, and a young from Australia. We were all in the late 20’s - 40’s age range and it seemed like we had the perfect group.

Everyday, we start out together in the morning. We trek for a few hours, maybe stop for coffee and snacks mid morning, continue onto our lunch stop and then trek for a few more hours before arriving at our tea house for that night.

In the afternoon, we would arrive anytime between 2-5pm, depending on the distance we needed to cover that day.

To be specific, whoever was at the front of our group would arrive around 2 or 3pm, and I would arrive closer to 4 or 5pm.

When you’re on a trek, it doesn’t really matter who is first or last each day because you will all end up at the next tea house by the end of the day.

But I certainly noticed that I was last!

I constantly felt pressure to keep up. Or was it pressure I was putting on myself?

I wasn’t even that much slower, but when you’re at the back watching the people in front of you get smaller and smaller and you physically cannot keep up, it is disheartening. I didn’t like the feeling of being last.

But no matter how hard I tried to push myself… my legs would not go faster.

If I tried to go faster, I could only keep that pace for 5 or 10 minutes and then had to slow down to a pace that felt leisurely, not pushed. If I was going to walk for another 3 hours, there was a particular pace I had to walk at, so that I wasn’t straining myself or losing my breath.

I could keep walking, since I truly enjoyed the walk, but I couldn’t walk that fast.

My pace was slower than everyone else’s, which means I was at the back of our line.

Why am I so slow?!

Mortified that I was constantly last, I started coming up theories about why I might be so slow.

Reason #1 Anita Is Slow: Well of course, I had leftover sea legs from the family cruise I had been on a week earlier.

Note to self: Do not go a cruise a week before you need to use your legs for 12 day long mountain trek.

I physically could not walk straight without extra effort to balance myself. My body had gotten used to being on a moving ship and it was constantly trying to find the moving floor beneath me, leaving me feeling dizzy and disoriented. I always had to look down to make sure that I was stepping on a solid rock or patch of dirt, lest my wobbly legs fail me.

Add to that Reason #2 Anita Is Slow: In Himalayas, the path is never straight anyway. It is up, down, left, right, big steps, small steps, slide, push, tumble, reach, squat.  Combined with the sea legs, the path even more precarious.

Add to that Reason #3 Anita Is Slow: Himalaya Hazards. I had to balance myself walking in a rocky path dotted endlessly with yak poo, gravel, loose rocks and massive boulders. For 6-8 hours a day.

Add to that Reason #4:  Fatigue. We were walking 6-8 hours a day. Because I was the slowest, my treks were becoming 7-9 hours, which made them feel longer and harder. For 11 days in a row. By Day 3, I was already wishing for a day off from walking so I could recover.

Add to that Reason #5: Altitude. I started taking altitude sickness medication on day 3.  It certainly helped prevent the worst symptoms of altitude sickness like headaches, vomiting and nausea but it still affected me.

The higher up we got, the thinner the air was. I couldn’t tell if I was loosing my breath because I was unfit, or because the air was thinner. Either way, when we were going up the steeper slopes, I would need to pause after only 3-5 breaths to catch my breath. This meant that a mountainside where where we walking 100 vertical feet could take me a whole hour.

Reason #6: I never actually trained for this trek. Some blogs will say that training doesn’t help but it probably doesn’t hurt. My guide said he’s had ultra fit people who could bench 90kg get taken down by the altitude and 80-year-olds make it up. Making up to Everest seemed to have less to do with how fit you were and more how your body handled altitude. I berated myself for not training more so that I wouldn’t be last.

Reason #7: Maybe I was just weak. Maybe I was just naturally less fit than the other 7 members of my group who seemed capable of walking faster. I thought I was a relatively fit person. I’m an average weight and normally exercise 3-4x a week. I even did intense F45 boot camp workouts for a year before my trek….

Why am I so slow?

I asked myself this again and again as the hours passed on and my trekmates disappears around the bend ahead of me.

“Maybe my sea legs are hampering me more than understand…” And I would start at the top of this list again, mulling over more reasons why it was unfair that I was but.

No matter.

Coming up with 7 more theories (excuses?) on why I was slower would not make me faster.

Besides, everything I read about trekking Everest said that going slow is a good thing. Some blogs even said that if you need to stop more than the rest of your group, make an excuse that you need to go to the bathroom or take photos or stop for a snack. There should be no shame about going slow.

Whether I liked it or now, I was slow, and this was meant to be a part of my Mountain Lesson.

By day 3, I had to accept that I would be slowest for the entire trek. I had to let go of my ego around it. I wanted to enjoy my trek.

Learning To Be Last

Everytime I wanted to berate myself for being slow - Why didn’t think of this?! Why didn’t you train more? Why are you so slow? Why are they so fast?! - I would also hear this a silent voice tell me: this is your Mountain Lesson.

How else were you going learn to be ok with being slow?

This is what you came here for.

This is my gift to you.

If you want to arrive at the top of the world, go slow.

For the first time in my life, I had to accept that I was “last” and also, it didn’t matter because I was on my way to freakin’ Everest.

That Everest.

Who cares if you’re “last”? You’re in the Himalayas, woman! Look up! Look around you!

And look up, I would. I would see the mountains stretching on and on in front, behind and beside me, and I would agree. It really does not matter that I’m last. I’m here, and that’s all that matters.

I’d pull out my iPhone and snap a few quick photos, take a couple seconds of video and walk forward again. I must have done this at least 20-30 times a day, sometimes every 15 minutes.

Who cares if you’re “last”? You’re in the Himalayas, woman! Look up! Look around you!

Camera. Photo. Smile at the mountain. Back to walking.

Who cares if you’re “last”? You’re in the Himalayas, woman! Look up! Look around you!

Camera. Photo. Smile at the mountain. Back to walking.

The Gift of Being Last

Plus, there was one big gift to being last. I got to spend a lot of time with our guide, Kishore. The assistant guide walked at the front with the fastest people in the group and Kishore, our main guide, walked at the back with the slowest, me. This was the safest arrangement because it mean that he could help anyone ahead who might get stuck and no one would be left behind.

Throughout the days, I had so many long conversations with Kishore.

He told me about his family, life in Nepal, his life as a trekking guide and so much more. I could feel that he had a good heart. And he had a very hard job. Firstly, it is physically demanding. How about walking up and down a mountain day after day?

Then, it is socially and emotionally demanding. When we would sit down at lunch to rest, he would be taking our orders and bringing us the dishes. His breaks were mere minutes long and we hardly even noticed when he rested, which means he didn’t much. We would ask him logistical questions about this, personal questions about that, cultural questions about this and that and he would always answer instantly. I marvelled at his ability to remain unflustered and smile back at us.

I heard about his hopes and dreams for the future, and his fears and anxieties around the present. Although we come from very different worlds, he was human too. He took care of his mom and dreamt of a good life for his family.  I would listen silently and digest his words in my heart.

Last November, I led two volunteer trips with H2O4all in Cuba and that took so much energy.  I could imagine how much energy and inner strength it takes Kishore to bring tourists up these mountains, not only physically, but also emotionally and mentally.

It made me so grateful.

Suddenly, being slow felt like a gift.

I had a lot more headspace to talk to Kishore and think about these things because I was trekking with him so much of the time.

There were a few days where I had short stints not being last, and Kishore walked with someone else, but I must have done 60-70 % of the trek with him by my side, or within 20 metres of me.

I think about him from time to time and I say a prayer of gratitude and protection for him. I send my prayers upward, hoping that he is doing well as he continues to walk up and down the Himayalas for the next few months.

While I sit in Bali in an air-conditioned coffee shop today, he is still walking.  Maybe he is laying exhausted in a dark tea house in -10 degree Celsius mountain air with a new group of trekkers. I am certain he is gently, courteously and graciously taking people up and down the mountain so that they can receive their own gifts from Mother Everest.

All this, because I was slow.

All this, because I was last.

I didn’t know it then, but this lesson of slowing down would come up again later in my trip, in a whole new different form.

Post Notes: I did my trek with Ace The Himalaya and if you are interested in going with them, I highly recommend Kishor as a guide. You can inquire with the company and request him to lead your trek. A 5-star human being.