I trudged, step after step after step, as I had for the last four days. Even though we had left the backpack at the Machhapuchhre Basecamp, leaving me with my sole camera bag, and even though the seemingly neverending stairs had been replaced by a simple upward trail, every slowly negotiated step felt as if I were running for dear life. We were at four thousand meters.

There is something deeply serene in the exhaustion brought by physical exercise, something that every sportsperson has probably experienced. The need to draw air, to breathe as much as possible, surpasses every other at some point — even if you might have to manage it while deflecting a blow, or simply not show it. And you are left concentrating on making your body work, with no other thought in mind. Step after step after step.

The time takes another meaning. Instead of being carried by the rhythm of your problems, worries, desires, tasks, you turn to the delicious breeze cooling off your sweat, the chirping of the birds, the comforting regularity of your shoes hitting the stone. It could be seconds or hours before you look around you again, and it does not matter one bit. There is nothing else than you being a part of the world, no more and no less than anything, rightfully existing and breathing, and there is nothing else than the simple beauty of it all.

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