The balance between relaxation and adventure - Nepal

On the way to Pokhara I met probably the most interesting people I have met so far. A Brazilian in his mid-60s who grew up in Brazil during the dictatorship at the time, studied medicine there and moved to Paris shortly before the coup and the democratization of the country. There he became a pediatrician and worked for Doctors Without Borders in various crisis countries around the world for around 10 years. After the emotional strain became too great, he began working as an expedition doctor and supervised expeditions to the Arctic, the Himalayas and many dives in tropical oceans. 10 years ago, the enthusiastic mountaineer founded his own trekking company and today acts both as a guide and as an expedition doctor for mountain hikes and climbs in the Himalayas, Atlas, Alps, Dolomites, Cascades, Urals and Kilimanjaro... If that's not the case coolest job in the world. Expedition doctor! Now I am one step closer to the answer to the question of which specialty or professional group I would like to go into after completing my medical studies. Expedition doctor. The sound alone is wonderful and the word melts on my tongue at the thought of adventure and general medicine.

When I arrived in Pokhara I started a binge that lasted a week and only ended because I was sitting at the airport in Kathmandu and no longer had access to Indian and Nepalese cuisine. Although I had Paneer Butter Masala with two butter garlic naan breads packed for dinner later yesterday :-)

I use the time there primarily to regenerate and organize. I was desperately trying to find contact lenses in my prescription because my glasses were sliding merrily across the sand-covered floor during a bus ride at night, giving them a new edge. It took 4 hours, at least 7 pharmacies and eyeglass shops, one after the other sending me to an address of a friend who supposedly had some and when I got there the whole thing started again to finally get contact lenses, at least like that approximately. Finally, the next morning, a man with clothes that were way too big drove up to my hostel on a half-broken scooter and stopped in front of me. He pulled a small package out of his sweater pocket and handed it to me. I gave him the agreed money and he quickly left. So it took 4 hours, an optician who sent a courier to deliver contact lenses because he didn't have the right ones in stock, and 5€ per pair of Montas contact lenses to finally be able to see properly again in Nepal.

I met some really funny people and then went river rafting, which I can say without hesitation that it was the most dangerous adrenaline-filled recreational activity I had done to date, much more dangerous than skydiving, bungee jumping or paragliding. Both of our guides fell into the water, one didn't surface for 10 seconds and then gasped for air 50m further on when he got stuck on a rock. I was thrown out of the boat once, with my left foot stuck in the boat and my head flailing parallel to myself under the water. But I can't express enough how much fun it was to spend 1½ hours traveling across a raging river in a small boat while being yelled at from behind about who should paddle and trying to avoid the whirlpools and the water just rushing into you face hits. While I was rushing around with my company, a familiar smell came back to my nose, one that I had smelled several times in the last few months and that always gave me a tingling sensation. That's what adventure smells like.

When I sat down with others in a cozy open-air cinema in the evening and watched Interstellar and made my way home, I phoned Malte and talked to him about his upcoming visit and also about Eva. Eva is by far the person I have the most contact with on the trip, writing daily and having a phone call every two to three days. And the development that has taken place since our separation in February is simply unbelievable, so that I can say with complete conviction and pride that she is my best friend and that I can't talk to anyone about all topics as easily and with interest as I can with her. Nevertheless, after 10 months of separation, I still notice that there are moments or situations when feelings that are characterized by stronger affection arise again. When we talk excitedly about love and our intimate life, which for me is more than dull (but that's completely okay at the moment, the priorities are just completely different) and is blossoming more than ever for her, there isn't necessarily a feeling of longing Her experiences are high in me, rather the longing for her. And that surprised me a lot at the beginning and led to insecurity and mixed feelings, because 99% of the time I see Eva as the best 'buddy' and then very rarely my synapses short-circuit which leads to apparently romantic feelings. But at some point I realized why.

On the one hand, I currently live a life of rapid transience, which leaves little room for deeper and romantic relationships. It's completely natural that in a situation like this, consciously or unconsciously, you long for exactly this familiarity. During the four years of our relationship, I finished my school career, moved to a foreign city where I was never able to really settle in and make valuable social contacts (which I found in other cities) and was heading towards the end of my training Knowledge of a much greater change that would soon come. So Eva was quite a constant for me, one that I quite liked. She was the person, alongside of course my family, who accompanied me emotionally through all this time and thus became a kind of personification of home for me at a time when I never had the feeling of having really arrived. I lived these four years with the thought that it would be the beginning of a long journey in which I would set the course and then jump from this springboard into the future that I dreamed of so much.

Even though I am now much more aware that the here and now is just as much, if not more, to be appreciated and enjoyed as the thoughts of a possible future, I am still and above all still traveling and thinking about that The concept that Eva still embodies this familiarity and the feeling of home for me just leads to mixed feelings every now and then. In addition, I (sub)consciously long for these deeper and romantic relationships and people who stay, while Eav has all of that more than enough at the moment. It is in no way as if I have any doubts about the wisdom of the breakup or desire to rebuild the relationship, let alone have an intimate bond with her.

It's just the simple need to be close to a familiar person that you really like.

My last stop before heading back to Kathmandu to catch my flight was Chituwan National Park. In what is possibly the most famous national park in Nepal, I met the nicest hostess you could only imagine. She organized everything for me, cooked the best food and was just a lovely lady. With her husband, who was my tour guide, I then set off on a one-hour canoe tour across a foggy river, where we passed crocodiles and a 9-hour walking safari. The mystical fog slowly lifted with the midday warmth and revealed a view of a jungle as dense as I had ever seen before. It would have been absolutely impossible to fight through the bushes even a meter away from the narrow path, and that's coming from a damn stubborn person. Here the lianas hung from the trees in thousands while parasite trees slowly spiraled around other trees, stretching and growing until the wrapped tree could no longer produce branches and died because it could no longer convert the light energy into biomass. The parasite trees were in turn overgrown by other parasitic plants, which grew in a fan-like manner directly on their trunks in the form of very strong leaves, thus forming small circular collecting stations for foliage. Among all the undergrowth, birds of all different colors hissed around and sang their small but beautiful songs, while packs of deer searched the foliage in clearings for nutritious food. In the fog we saw the silhouette of an elephant breaking off the thick branches of a tree with its trunk like splinters of wood to devour the leaves and slowly walked towards the grassland. However, the grassland consisted of 3-4 meter high elephant grass and turned out to be quite a hurdle. We followed dozens of tiger footprints, ate a variety of berries, crossed mango and litchi trees and climbed high on treetops to look for animals with binoculars, when suddenly a rhino came out of nowhere and charged at another rhino that we hadn't noticed comes. The huge behemoths started fighting for territory in front of us and we ran away as quickly as we could. It was by far the most beautiful national park I've been to and when I heard that you could go on week-long hikes there, sleeping in high stands and cooking with the ginger and many other plants that grow everywhere, I felt a little sad.

The next day I went to Kathmandu, met Marlon there again and went paragliding. I was like a helpless pigeon that couldn't even fly on its own, but I felt like a keen eagle circling over the Himalayas, braving the cold and hunting for small and large mammals as a feared predator. It was a lot of fun and above all you fly for 30 minutes, do acrobatic tricks and enjoy the incredible view. Otherwise we went bouldering, visited the oldest district of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, went to the monkey temple and chatted a lot until late in the evening in a really good bakery that sold a whole loaf of banana bread for 70 cents.

Well, and now... Now I'm sitting on the plane to Vietnam and looking forward like a bear full of honey to seeing Malte and Eva tomorrow, celebrating Christmas and New Year with them, exploring Vietnam, having social evenings and gaaaaaannnnzzz doing a lot of nonsense. And then... Then Lara comes! Wow, I'm just as excited about it! I will celebrate my birthday with her and just have a wonderful time together ^^

Oh yes, how beautiful (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)

And even now I don't know how regularly or whether I'll even get around to writing down my experiences and thoughts in the next few weeks ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Until then, bye with Ö