I’ll confess — I’m a control freak, perfectionist, recovering people pleaser. I’m often up late at night reassessing and tweaking my ten-year plan. I love to plan but I don’t just formulate plan A and B but rather till plan F covering all edge case scenarios.
And I act like a mad kitten when I don’t know what’s next. It’s not because I’m scared of pain or failure – if anything I have very high tolerance for those. But I’ve a massive fear of unknown.
During COVID, when my anxiety was at an all time high, I made a promise to myself to do things which scared me and took away my control. And multi-day himalayan treks have been the epitome of everything I fear and therefore need.
Mountains don’t give a flying fuck over your plans.
You can plan your day down to the last detail— wake-up time, pace, weather window, snack breaks— and the mountain will still do what it wants. There are so many factors which you have no control over – sudden rain, hailstroms, frostbite, variety of health issues – stomach upset, periods, headache, muscle cramp – and n number of permutation & combination.
It took me a few treks to stop taking that personally. In the beginning, I’d get thrown off by the smallest drift — rain an hour early, energy dips that didn’t match my timing, trails that looked nothing like the ones I’d studied.
The control freak in me thought if I just prepared harder, I could predict the experience. Make it neat and keep it under control.
But the mountains aren’t interested in my checklists. They’re not watching how many hours I trained or how many almonds I packed. They’re not cruel. Just indifferent.
And weirdly, that indifference became the thing I trust most.
Something changes when you stop trying to control the terrain and start responding to it.
You notice more. You adjust faster. You stop wasting energy resisting what’s already true.
Plans and preparation are ofcourse helpful and needed until they get in the way. The most important skill—the one I’ve had to build trek after trek—is being flexible and going with the flow.
Not in some philosophical way. In the most practical, hour-to-hour kind of way.
I’ve coined this term – ‘blocking upcoming trauma’ wherein instead of ruminating and being anxious over what the next day, next leg of the trail would look and feel like, I’ve learned to surrender and not think about it.
It’s not that I haven’t frantically tried and failed over and over again, just to realize there’s no way any human including the veteran trek leader and guide can predict what’s next.
You have to adapt, or you get stuck.
You have to stay present, or you fall behind.
You let go of how it was supposed to go, and tune into what’s actually happening under your feet.
The mountain won’t bend for you. You learn to move with it.
And honestly, life makes more sense that way too.
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