It’s 2:00am and I just woke up to take a pee. Then I started thinking about the process I have just yesterday set in motion — a trip to the remote NW region of Nepal and a trek into Tibet to Mt Kailash.

It suddenly took on a feeling of reality when our son Julian responded to my inquiry as to whether he might like to join us. His enthusiasm is marvelous, but it also makes me realize that I have started a chain of events that may very well lead to.a challenging, or shall we say, scary experience. After all, this is a route that gets up to about 18,000 feet and where there are plenty of real dangers of exposure in an extremely remote part of the world.

What is it that brings me to do things like this?

Especially as my body starts to show signs of aging. An adventure like this is certainly not “necessary”. So why expose oneself to risks like this?

When I got Julian’s reply, I was delighted that our son might be joining us. But it also is quite sobering to realize that we are moving from the purely speculative planning stages into the reality of boots on the ground, facing a distant mountain vista and asking ourselves, what have we got ourselves into now?

Time to go back to bed; maybe having written this, I can get back to sleep.

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