The Annapurna Base Camp Trek.
One of the most popular treks in the world, and something I'd dreamt of doing ever since mountains became a part of my life. Of course, Instagram deserves some credit here. My algorithm had been relentlessly feeding me those cinematic Himalayan reels — tiny humans walking beneath enormous snow-covered peaks, clouds moving through valleys, and some beautiful indie song playing in the background. And every time, I'd think, someday.
Well, someday finally arrived. I signed up with a group of complete strangers who, for reasons probably as questionable as mine, had also decided that walking uphill for days sounded like a wonderful way to spend a holiday. And off we went to Nepal.
What followed were fifteen of the most fucking incredible days of my life.
Paying to Get Tired
There's something fundamentally hilarious about trekking. You spend your hard-earned money to travel somewhere, wake up ridiculously early, carry a heavy backpack, walk uphill until your lungs start questioning your decisions, sleep in unfamiliar places, and repeat the whole thing the next morning.
All this to see a mountain. A mountain!
You could argue that there are perfectly good pictures of Annapurna on the internet. In fact, some of them are probably better than anything my phone could capture. And yet, thousands of people from around the world willingly put themselves through all this trouble.
Why?
I think it's one of those questions that cannot be answered sitting comfortably on your couch. Because somewhere along the trail, when your legs are exhausted, your breathing gets heavier, and you look up to realise how much farther you still have to go, something begins to change.
You stop calculating how many kilometres remain and start noticing things you'd otherwise walk past. The sound of the river, the cold air entering your lungs, conversations with strangers, the ridiculous happiness of finding a place to sit, and the absolute luxury of a hot meal after walking for hours.
It's strange how much we complicate our lives, only to travel thousands of kilometres to enjoy the simplest parts of being alive.
Getting Closer to Her
I don't know when I started thinking of Annapurna as her. Maybe it was the name. Maybe it was the way she would occasionally reveal herself through the clouds, only to disappear again before I could properly admire her. But every day, we were getting closer. A little more altitude. A little less oxygen. A few more kilometres. And a lot more respect.
There is something deeply intimate about walking towards a mountain for days. Unlike travelling to a destination by car or flight, you actually feel the distance disappearing beneath your feet. You earn every little change in the landscape. The forests slowly give way to more open terrain, the air becomes colder, and the peaks that once looked impossibly far away begin occupying more and more of the sky.
For hours, I had perhaps the most honest company I could ask for: my own breath and heartbeat. No meetings, no notifications demanding attention, no endless stream of things I should be doing. Just the sound of my shoes against the trail and the occasional reminder from my heart that it was working considerably harder than usual.
I had so much time to think. And surprisingly, so much time to not think about anything at all.
I recently watched Tenzing on Apple TV, and there was a line that stayed with me:
"Up there in mountains, no one tells me what to do, who to be and what to be."
I don't think I could describe my experience any better. Because that's exactly what the mountains gave me. Not some grand revelation about the meaning of life, just the rare opportunity to exist without constantly having to be someone.
No professional identity. No expectations. No pressure to prove anything. Just another human being, making his way through the Himalayas.
And that felt unbelievably liberating.
4,130 Metres Above Everything That Seemed Important
Annapurna Base Camp sits at 4,130 metres above sea level, surrounded by some of the most spectacular peaks of the Annapurna massif. For context, the Himalayas exist because the Indian tectonic plate collided with the Eurasian plate millions of years ago, and that collision continues to shape the mountains even today.
Think about that for a moment. Millions of years of geological violence, entire masses of rock being pushed towards the sky, and here we are — tiny little creatures with trekking poles, expensive jackets, and phones desperately trying to capture the whole thing in a photograph. It's almost comical. And absolutely beautiful.
When I finally stood there, looking at those enormous walls of snow and rock surrounding me, I felt something that I still struggle to put into words. I had spent days walking towards this place. Thinking about it, imagining it, watching videos of it. And now that I was there, I didn't particularly feel like doing anything.
I just wanted to look. To stand still for a while.
There are very few things in life that can make you feel so small without making you feel insignificant. Annapurna did exactly that.
The mountains don't owe you a view. They don't care how far you've travelled or how badly you want to reach the summit. Weather changes, trails get difficult, and your body has limits. You learn to respect all of it.
Perhaps that's why reaching the base camp felt different from accomplishing something back home. There was no sense of conquering anything. If anything, it was the exact opposite.
I had walked all that way to stand before something I could never conquer. And I was perfectly happy with that.
A Place Where the Internet Doesn't Follow You
One of my favourite parts of this journey was how disconnected I felt from the world I'd left behind. Or perhaps connected is the better word. Connected to everything that was actually around me.
We live in an age where practically every moment of our existence has a digital extension. We work online, talk online, entertain ourselves online, and occasionally spend hours watching other people live their lives online. Even silence has become uncomfortable enough that we immediately reach for our phones to fill it.
And suddenly, here I was, somewhere in the Himalayas, in places where connectivity was unreliable or simply absent. No endless scrolling, no checking whether somebody had replied, no wondering what was happening on the other side of the world.
The funniest part? I didn't feel like I was missing anything. There were people to talk to, landscapes to admire, stories to exchange, and an entire world outside my little glowing rectangle.
As someone who spends a considerable part of his life writing code, building things, and now watching AI burn through tokens at an astonishing rate, this felt particularly refreshing.
Turns out, a region without a data centre can still offer a pretty extraordinary experience.
Who would've thought?
The People Who Walked Along
If there's one thing that made this journey even more memorable, it was the people. People from practically every continent, with different languages, professions, cultures, and reasons for being there. Some were travelling alone, some with friends, some had been trekking for years, and some were probably wondering why they'd agreed to this in the first place.
I met people as young as fourteen and others approaching eighty, walking those trails with an enthusiasm that put plenty of younger people to shame. Imagine being eighty and still having that curiosity. Still wanting to see what's beyond the next hill. Still being willing to put yourself through discomfort just to experience something beautiful.
That, to me, is a life worth aspiring to.
We tend to associate adventure with youth, as though curiosity has an expiry date. But watching people of completely different ages making their way through the same mountains made me question that idea. Everyone had their own pace, their own struggles, and their own little victories. And at the end of the day, we'd all find ourselves somewhere along the same trail, sharing stories over a meal.
Nobody particularly cared about your designation, your salary, or how impressive your LinkedIn profile looked. You were just another tired person hoping tomorrow's climb would be slightly easier. And somehow, that was enough to build a connection.
I loved how easily conversations happened, how strangers would encourage each other along difficult stretches, and how people could come from completely different worlds and still find something to laugh about. No elaborate introductions required. Just a shared experience and, preferably, a cup of something hot.
All with Slack comfortably snoozed.
Coming Back a Little Different
I've always felt that mountains do something to people. I don't mean that every trek magically transforms your personality or that you return home with all your problems solved. You don't. Your responsibilities are still waiting, your inbox hasn't become any kinder, and the world continues being its usual complicated self.
But I came back thinking about the people I'd met, the conversations we'd had, and how much of the world I'd still never experienced.
We get comfortable with our routines, our familiar places, our familiar people, and the version of ourselves we've grown accustomed to being. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But there's an entire world beyond those routines.
There are mountains we haven't seen, conversations we haven't had, foods we haven't tasted, people whose stories we've never heard, and experiences we don't even know we'd love. Somewhere out there, there's an entirely different version of you waiting to be discovered. And perhaps the only way to meet that person is to occasionally step outside everything you already know.
I don't think I've returned as some wiser, enlightened version of myself. I'm still the same person with the same questionable sense of humour and the same responsibilities.
Just a little more aware of how much there is left to experience.
And a lot more eager to experience it.
Until We Meet Again
So yes, I went to Nepal to fill an empty space on my fridge. And I did bring back a magnet. But I also brought back fifteen days' worth of memories, a few new friendships, some very tired legs, and a feeling I know I'll spend a long time trying to experience again.
I'm back home now. Back to my desk, my code editor, and the wonderful new AI-SDLC my team has built. Back to writing prompts, reviewing code, burning tokens, and pretending that all of this is perfectly normal.
And I genuinely enjoy that part of my life too.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, there's still a little mountain calling.
Maybe one day, when I've written enough code, attended enough meetings, and collected enough fridge magnets, I'll disappear into the mountains for good.
A small coffee shop somewhere in the Himalayas. A few books. Some good beans, a grinder, and an AeroPress. People walking in with stories from places I've never been. No rush to get anywhere. Just me, making coffee, listening to strangers, and admiring the mountains that have been there long before any of us.
For now, that remains a dream.
But then again, so was Annapurna once. And look how that turned out.
Until next time, Annapurna.
The fridge still has some space left.