Hiking in Bhutan

The story begins as we began our (first) climb up the mountain. Within two minutes of beginning our hike, our lungs, unused to the thin mountain air, began to burn. As we walked further, our legs began to cramp. After a little while, a bizarre combination of snow and rain began to fall on us making us cold and very, very wet. We continued on, however, and after what felt like fifteen hours, but was most definitely only five, we arrived at our “halfway point”. It was a small weather beaten shack surrounded by horses and heated only by a bucket of burning coals. 

As we dried, we ate a delicious meal of food brought up the mountain by men who were easily seven times our age and seven times as fast. As we finished our meal and slowly began to prepare for the second leg of the journey, we were given some news that was a very tough pill to swallow. We would not be continuing our journey across the mountain range as it was to dangerous. At first, this news was incredibly disheartening, but as our trip leader put it, “We came on this trip to learn grit and there is no better way to learn grit than by getting kicked in the teeth and having to get back up again.” That is exactly what we did when, only two days later, we made our second attempt up the mountain and succeeded to our great jubilation. 

I chose this story to share as I felt it was an excellent indicator of the great many things we learned during our wonderful time in Bhutan.