A few reflections on 6 months on the road

From the Pyramids and Oasis’ of Egypt‘, to the splendour of Petra, from the Rhinos of Chitwan to the divineness of the Khumb Mela yesterday was my 6 months on the road anniversary!

I have to honestly say, I haven’t regretted a single day of it. There have been bad times as well as good, times of loneliness that come from being a solo traveller and an incessant flu I was starting to think might be Tuberculosis, not to mention the time I had to wait 13 hours for the train. That’s life, and one thing that travelling definitely is is living life everyday and learning to take the good with the bad, learning to accept your situation and celebrate the amazingness of the world while tolerating all the frustrations that come your way.

Yesterday, on my official 6 month anniversary I went for a small hike with my current travelling companion Kavita. The day started out beautifully, the weather was gorgeous, the Himalayas where peaking through and we where walking to a nearby village called Sarangkot, which shouldn’t have taken more than 3 hours.

Getting up there was fine, it was when we decided to take a shortcut back and leave the actual road, we got lost in a maze of rice paddies interspersed with breaks of jungle. Now in the pictures, rice paddies look pretty and small. The reality is that the walls that separate them are actually very high at times and not that easy to scramble down. The jungle parts, with no obvious paths through them where also difficult to navigate.

As it got darker local children started to tell us there was a tiger in the area, but that it had only eaten cattle so far. I’m still not sure if this is true or not.

Eventually we got lucky and found someone who knew the paths and guided us down in the dark. It was 9pm before we where back in Pokhara and eating some well deserved Dhal Bhat (a tasty local dish of lentils and rice).

But that’s what I love so much about travel, you hardly ever end up ending your day the way you set out to. So long as you don’t worry to much about tigers, everything works out in the end!