The Spreadsheet Years Are Over
There's a moment—usually around 3 a.m. in a grim Dublin office—when you realise your entire existence has become a series of automated tasks and colour-coded cells. That moment came for me during a Tuesday morning standup about quarterly synergies. I was thirty-two, owned a house I never saw, and couldn't remember the last time I'd felt properly alive.
So I quit. Bought a one-way ticket to Kathmandu and told myself I'd figure out the rest when I got there.
Nepal didn't care about my existential crisis. It just threw mountains at me and said, "Come on, then."
Into the Vertical
The first thing you need to understand about Nepal is that it doesn't do flat. After three days of getting my lungs accustomed to Kathmandu's altitude and its particular brand of organised chaos, I met Pemba, my guide for the week. He was small, weathered, and had the kind of smile that suggested he'd seen plenty of sad Dublin lads like me stumble through his country before.
"You want Everest?" he asked, over buttered tea at a café in Thamel.
"Maybe," I said carefully. "I want to not die, though."
He laughed. "Different things."
That's when he introduced me to the concept of trekking in Annapurna/Langtang/Everest/Upper Mustang regions Trekking in Annapurna/Langtang/Everest/Upper Mustang regions. Not a fixed package where you get herded onto the same trail as five thousand other Gap Year Grads in matching technical gear. This was bespoke—you pick your playground based on what you reckon you can actually handle. Pemba reckoned I should start with Langtang, which sits at the sweet spot between "proper mountain experience" and "you probably won't die."
"Langtang is humble," he said. "Everest is famous. Annapurna is dangerous. Upper Mustang is alien. You choose."
I chose Langtang.
The Slog Begins
Day one on the trail and I understood why people write poetry about mountains—it's because talking to them at 3,500 metres is the only conversation that makes sense anymore. The world shrinks. Your lungs burn. Your legs question all your life choices. And somehow, that feels honest in a way Dublin never did.
We walked through rhododendron forests, crossed suspension bridges that swayed with a casualness that suggested they might give way at any moment, and stayed in teahouses where the owner's grandmother cooked better food than I'd eaten in years. By day four, I'd stopped checking my phone for emails that would never come. By day six, I'd forgotten what day it was.
Somewhere around 3,500 metres, at sunrise on the seventh day, I had what I can only describe as a mountaintop epiphany. Standing there in the cold, watching the light hit the peaks, I genuinely believed I'd figured everything out. The meaning of life. My purpose. The whole thing.
I wrote it down in my notebook with frozen fingers.
Reading it back a week later, it said: "Mountains make you feel small and that's nice."
Pemba was right. I didn't die.
Cooking My Way Back to Earth
After six days at altitude, my body needed fuel and my mind needed reminding that joy doesn't always have to come with difficulty attached. That's when I booked myself into the Local Women Lead Nepali Cooking Class Local Women Lead Nepali Cooking Class in Thamel.
I expected the worst: a tourist trap, a photo opportunity, the culinary equivalent of that time I took a "Buddhist meditation class" that was actually just a man in a room telling us to be quiet. Instead, I got Ramila and her sister Anita, who ran their kitchen like generals commanding an army. They didn't speak much English. I spoke no Nepali. But we spoke fluently in the universal language of butter, garlic, and the correct way to make momos.
For four hours, I peeled ginger with my bare hands until they burned. I squatted beside a stone mortar and ground spices that smelled like every good decision I'd ever made. Ramila corrected my knife grip three times without saying a word, just guided my hand until it was right. We made dal bhat, spinach curry, and about forty momos that I suspect she was silently judging me for folding incorrectly.
But here's the thing: at no point did anyone ask me why I'd left Dublin, what I was searching for, or whether I'd "found myself." We just cooked. We ate. We laughed when I dropped an egg. And somehow that was more healing than any mountain top had been.
The Tourist Trail (With Purpose)
I had two days left in Kathmandu before flying out, and I wanted to actually see the city properly rather than just stumble through it jetlagged and overwhelmed. That's when I booked the Private Full Day Kathmandu Day Tour covering the Top 4 UNESCO Heritage Sites Private Full Day Kathmandu Day Tour | Top 4 UNESCO Heritage Sites.
My guide was a university student named Arjun who knew Kathmandu the way I'd never know anywhere—with genuine affection mixed with brutal honesty about what works and what's just there for tourists. We hit Swayambhunath, Pashupatinath, Boudhanath, and Patan Durbar Square, but we didn't rush. He told me about the stukas and stupas, the different traditions, the family histories embedded in the stone. More importantly, he showed me the city beyond the monuments—the shops where locals actually buy things, the tea stall where the owner knew Arjun's father, the quiet courtyard where you could sit and watch Kathmandu actually happen.
It was the kind of tourist experience that doesn't feel like a tourist experience. The kind where you remember why you came in the first place, but on better terms.
The Silly Bit
Before I left Nepal, I did something that went against every principle I'd adopted over the past month: I booked an Everest Base Camp helicopter tour with landing Everest Base Camp helicopter tour with landing.
No trekking. No earned summit. Just an adrenaline shortcut that would get me to Base Camp in five hours and make every serious mountaineer on the trail proper angry with me.
But here's why I did it: because sometimes being consistent is a form of cowardice. Sometimes you have to contradict yourself, do the touristy thing, feel the rush without the discipline. The helicopter ride was absurd and expensive and utterly unnecessary, and I loved every second of it. We flew over ridges I'd read about, saw Everest from angles no trekker gets to see, and I remembered that adventure isn't always noble—sometimes it's just silly.
Landing at Base Camp, I stood there in my helicopter-provided oxygen mask and laughed at myself. The guy I was a month ago would never have done this. He would have judged it as inauthentic, touristy, weak.
Maybe he was right. Or maybe I'd just learned that authenticity is overrated, and sometimes the best travel story is just doing whatever mad thing feels right in the moment.
The Reckoning
The last bit of wisdom usually comes near the end of these stories, some hard-earned truth that makes everything make sense. I don't have one. I'm still figuring it out. What I do know is this: I came to Nepal to run away from spreadsheets and routine. I found mountains, kind people, food that tasted like memory, and the weird freedom that comes from being no one in a place where no one cares who you were.
I'm going back. Not because I've found myself. Because I've found that I quite like being lost, as long as the view is good and there's decent tea at the teahouse.
The spreadsheets will wait. Some mountains won't.
