Introduction

After 3 months of prepping and training for the high Himalayas it was finally time for possibly the worst part of every expedition, the commuting process. The flight to Kathmandu, which includes 2 connecting flights, takes about 36 hours from the time I leave Los Angeles to the time I land in Nepal. The flight time to Shanghai is about 9 hours with a 10-hour layover, then a 5-hour flight to Kunming China, with an 8-hour layover, and lastly another 3-hour flight to Kathmandu.

After arriving in Kathmandu, I was greeted with a challenge; a broken Panasonic HPX250 camcorder camera which was manhandled at customs. The HPX has been my pride and joy for the past 8 years and now it meets its sad end in Nepal without even filming a single wolf, the very reason I brought it.

This was to be my main camera that I was to film the entire expedition with, but fortunately I brought a backup; a Canon 7D DSLR which I was only going to use for High resolution pictures, but now it was going to be the primary story teller. Unfortunately, it didn’t have nearly the capabilities or capacity as it's predecessor HPX but it would have to do. There was an upside though, it meant that I had one less bag to carry.

I stayed 5 days in Kathmandu trying to get the camera repaired or alter the Canon so that it would be sufficient for the task at hand. I booked my flight to Lukla which is the furthest village any tourist can fly if wanting to trek the Himalayas. Anything further would need to be done by helicopter or by foot. It's the highest and quite possibly the most extreme landing and take-off for any commercial flights in the world. Its runway is only 1,729 ft. long compared to the conventional 7,000-8,000 ft. long runway that most commercial airlines need to make for a safe landing. It was exhilarating.

The trek from Lukla to Namche had to be done 3 times, each time carrying one of the 3 heavy backpacks. Since this is a self-funded expedition I don't have the luxury of hiring porters, yaks or donkeys, but in all fairness, had I the money I probably would still opt to carry my own gear since it was important that I stay fit for the higher altitudes. Everything was about training up to this point for the expedition, but now that I had arrived, it didn't mean that training would seize. In actual fact, training intensified.

The good thing about high altitude is that one can pretty much eat as much as you like, or should I rather say, eat as much as your appetite allows. The trek back to Lukla each time to collect more gear, meant that I could treat myself to the awesome village samosas. I can't say that I’ve ever tastes samosas this good. They are literally food for the soul.

I would often buy enough to last me a couple of days but they very rarely saw the end of the first day... They were that good.

Once all the gear was at high altitude; I felt a sense of accomplishment already since just getting the gear to this point was an adventure in itself. Now the true scope of the expedition could be revealed.

I had arrived in Lukla with a heavy heart, I was missing someone close to me and with my sensitivities I had overthought a few things that had been said, or perhaps hadn't been said. I tend to take friendships a little more seriously than what I should and with the combination of uncertainties within the expedition, my overblown imagination and my expectations of what friendships entail, I had spoiled the beauty and simplicity of a clean farewell with my closest friend, but nothing I couldn't fix. I just needed to get to Wi-Fi so communication could be established, restored and understood. I do believe this is why I push myself so hard, that perhaps I can find solace in who and why I am what I have become.

The lack of opening up my heart to a secure relationship with a life partner has intensified my friendships with multiple people, especially with younger more active and vibrant personalities that I best relate to, or am inspired by. My soul is young and eager, enthusiastic, energetic, determined, irresponsible and full of curiosity. When my heart finds someone it can connect to, and is encouraged by, it's as if my soul grants my heart rite of passage to give that individual every morsel of love I am capable of giving. My soul understands the isolation and risk involved in the type of lifestyle I have chosen to live, so when possible it makes full use of every available moment it can with those it loves when the moment is presented. However, with the combined efforts and detrimental consequences of this particular quest, the separation from the social aspect of what it longed for, intensifies my emotions and tends to blow simplistic human emotions way out of proportion.

When my soul is exposed to a kindred spirit, it becomes beautifully intense, no matter what the age, gender or creed. Little did I know; this expedition was going to become more internal than I could have ever imagined. As much as my physical self was about to embark on an expedition high up into the Himalayan mountains to search for the most elusive wolf species in the world, my soul was also about to embark on its own inner journey, one that would help me understand more about why it is here and where it is going.

It does however mean that for me to understand more about myself, I would have to dive deep into the very core of my sensitivities. A place I have avoided most of my life.