Guest Post- Finding Love in Nepal

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This guest post is written by Brenda Stampton, who enjoys writing about travel and culture.

Well it’s holiday time again and I feel a deep need to tap into my love of traveling and love is the right word when talking about travel with my greatest love being the small but wonderful country of Nepal. How lucky I feel that I have had the luck to visit such a beautiful spot on my first foray overseas and found love in such unexpected ways. I very much hope others can find that too.

The greatest love Nepal ignited in me is the love of the simple. I have a habit of over complicating things but I discovered on my first trip overseas that a love of the simple translates into less is more. It lead to a much more stress-free way of traveling. Less clothes meant less foraging day and night into my bag which helped me feel lighter psychologically and I suppose more carefree and that is what holidays are all about. It also taught me that freedom in simply attained. I love that I’ve discovered that I don’t need much materially and it’s been a suprisingly easy learning curve. There is great beauty in traveling to your favorite places with a feeling of being unencumbered.

I found a love of the local people who taught me so much. I would watch what they did as things got hard and I learned that I too could cope when days were longer than expected. I loved that I learned that when times got tough through snow, heat, exhaustion or homesickness that you don’t panic you just break the day into smaller bits and keep the vision of that cup of tea that feels so nurturing at the end of a long day. I developed a love and trust in the knowledge that I could cope and survive hard times on trips.

Oh how I love yaks! Nepalis who live at altitude are lucky enough to have these very special animals that are load carriers, providers of fibre for rope, tents, milk and ultimately meat. They tread so assuredly on loose rock, snow and through swift rivers. They became my great friends when I needed one. I could trust the route they would take in mountain country and their company meant I never felt on my own.

I love my tent after a hard days climbing. The tent becomes a palace of comfort after late night finishes on climbing days. It helps you feel snug as a bug in a rug as you drift off to sleep and if you are lucky enough, a sleep-in may ensue with the sun being your alarm clock.

Even trips of a lifetime do come to an end but still at the end there is more to love. The love of a shower after a six week trip in the mountains, the love of a cold beer to celebrate the end and of course a great benefit of any adventure has to be the new friendships that are made so easily and deeply when you have had adventures together where you have felt deliriously happy, desperately overwhelmed, homesick beyond tears and just plain terrified where you need to rely on your team mates for help.

Learning to be part of a team would have to be one of life’s great lessons and one of the best feelings on earth. So I love you Nepal for all that you have taught me and as I write about you once again I can see it is you that I need to get back to because I know that you are so special and that you will never stop teaching me all about me and you have to love that!