Home

I was recently traveling for a month - a week in India, 3 in Nepal.  But this post isn't about my travels in these countries; they're about home.

That time in Nepal included a 16-day trip to the Himalayas.  We hiked every day.  "Rest days" actually meant climbing up a nearby hill, though not with our (heavy) overnight packs.  "Hills" meant, for example, hiking from 15,500' to 18, 500'.

It was a trek through one of the most amazing mountain regions in the world:  we got to see several 8000 meter peaks (Everest, Cho Oyu, Makalu) as well as the stunning Ama Dablam.  We had fun trying to capture our experience with photos and videos.  Some clear evenings I had the pleasure of taking pictures of stars and doing time-lapse photography of them, too.  The weather was consistently perfect every morning; we joked about nearly everything; the trip went just as planned.

Despite all this, about halfway through this trek I started thinking about home.  I started thinking about what it would mean to not have frost on the inside of a bedroom window in the morning.  What it would be like to be able to wash my hands after a dirty, dusty day of hiking.   About washing my hair.  About how badly I smelled.  Even my Patagonia nano-puff jacket reeked of sweat.

I thought about how great it would be if I could sleep through the night without getting a headache from dehydration.  And not needing to struggle with an aging water filter to purify 4 liters of water every day.   And not have to carry toilet paper with me at all times.  (Public toilets never include toilet paper in Nepal).  I daydreamed of the flush toilets that I knew existed in Namche Bazaar, where we'd spend a night on our way back to Kathmandu.  Being able to sit down to take care of that business sounded like a luxury.

And I daydreamed about oxygen.

Many of our days we reached altitudes over 18,000', where the density of air is only half of what it is at sea level.  This means that each breath only contains half the oxygen that we sea-level-residents are used to.  Not only does this mean that every uphill step is significantly harder; it also means that hikers are susceptible to maladies like acute mountain sickness (AMS).  For me, this only meant the occasional headaches.  But on top of the headaches that I was getting from dehydration and other minor issues, it meant that I had headaches much of the time.

I daydreamed of home, which had all these things, plus a very sweet boyfriend I hadn't seen in a month.  Perhaps, I reasoned, it would be possible to move my flight a day earlier; that way I would have an extra day to recover before flying to California for my next work trip.   Or perhaps, as it became apparent that we'd wrap up our trek a day earlier than planned, I could fly home two days early.  That would mean a full day and a half to just be home.

A day and a half to lie in bed.  Maybe watch a movie.  Or maybe turn of the electricity and just read.  And lie in bed.  It sounded amazing.

The interesting thing to me was were the many things that I didn't miss.

In general, I didn't miss any particular food.  Or email or the internet.  (We had some opportunities to pay for wireless internet that I passed up.)  Or movies or cars.  I didn't particularly miss my responsibilities back in Seattle: paid work and unpaid work that I do.  Does this mean that none of these things are important to me?  No.  But perhaps there are some clues here about what I should focus on if happiness is the metric I'm trying to optimize?  Or perhaps one should not base life decisions on experiences during vacation.  I really don't know.

But anyway, back those thoughts of being home.... Upon our return to the world of internet, I started investigating what it would take to return home two days earlier than planned.  The cost wasn't prohibitive, so I made the call to make the change.

And so it was that on Saturday November 8 I returned home, a mere 32 hours after I left my hotel in Kathmandu.  Charlie and I slept. We talked.  We slept more. We talked.  (We had lots to catch up on!)  We slept.  We walked to our favorite bagel shop.  We talked.  We fixed up some things at home.  We treated ourselves to the expensive grocery store in our neighborhood.  We made dinner.  We talked (we hadn't been so excited to see each other in ages!).  We slept.  We talked.  We slept.  Monday arrived and after more talking, eventually made it into work.