With no time to really process the past few months of wonder, I took off with a friend for a few days in Nepal to fulfill a lifelong dream of standing toe to toe with the Himalayas. As we made our way through the capitol city of Kathmandu, we made arrangements to get Pokhara, a starting point for many hikers through the Annapurna Himalayan Mountain range. We quickly learned the next day that a strike shut down the entire country and had to reschedule a flight. We finally made and began our hike to Poon Hill at the elevation of 10,500ft. While we did it a little quicker than I would have liked it was still amazing to see the sun wage war with the stars against the back drop of the Annapurna Himalayan Mountain range. It was truly an inspiring feeling that I will never forget. Seeing true beauty like that is a rare privilege and a distinct honor that I can never really recreate, but will always keep etched easy into the forefront of my memories.

After spending another day in the city by myself, I made my way back to Delhi to meet up with a couple of friends as we did some last minute shopping and made our way to the airport. We boarding the plane and flew back into Chicago. We couldn’t believe our eyes and ears. Had we really done it? How could we make sense of it all? Before we all knew it, we were back in Portland, going through yet another culture shock.