Then vs. Now: Same summit, different me.
I was bent over, hands on my knees, dragging air into my lungs like it owed me something. My stomach clenched in protest. My feet felt like dead weight. The trail ahead stretched unforgivingly upward, snow-packed and steep. Every part of me screamed to stop, but stopping wasn’t an option.
A little over a year apart, I stood at the start of this same trail. Same climb. Same mountains. But I wasn’t the same person.
Seven treks in roughly 15 months. That’s the number people get stuck on. “Wow, that’s incredible!” they say. But numbers don’t tell you about the sleepless nights, the freezing winds slicing through layers of clothing, the stomach that refuses to cooperate, the endless troubleshooting that turns every trek into an unpredictable mess. Numbers don’t tell you how much of it is just figuring out how to keep moving when everything is telling you to stop.
At one point, I turned to my trek leader and asked, “Will there ever be a trek where nothing goes wrong?”
He barely looked up. “No.”
Like I’d just asked if the sun would stop rising.
Experience is what you get when things don’t go your way. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.
Treks will always be unpredictable. So will life. If everything were easy, where’s the challenge? Where’s the growth? Where’s the story?
This was a repeat trek. But nothing about it felt the same.
Last time, I shivered in patches of snow. Now, I moved through thick layers like it was nothing. A year ago, I brushed this trek off as “too easy” because I had to wait for others. This time, I had snow, my period, zero sleep, and three days of a stomach that rejected every bite of food. Not so easy anymore.
Back then, I refused to step out of my tent after sundown because it was “too cold.” Now, I stood outside at 9 PM, feet completely numb in wet socks, talking to my trek leader under a sky bursting with constellations. A year ago, I complained about washing dishes without hot water. Now, I forgot my hand towel, plunged my hands into freezing water, and went straight to breakfast with fingers so stiff they barely worked.
Last time, I survived three days on barely three hours of sleep before AMS hit out of nowhere. On the fourth night, they handed me a paracetamol just so I could get five hours of rest. This time, I survived four nights of almost no sleep, a wrecked stomach, a headache, and exhaustion—but no AMS. Some victories don’t come with a finish-line moment. They sneak up on you in the quiet.
The people around me changed everything. Previous group had been too big, too loud, too absorbed in their own world. I counted down the hours until I could be alone again. This time, the group was smaller, more thoughtful. Everyone looked out for each other, stepping in without being asked. It reshaped the entire experience. The same trail, but with the best team, the best trek leader.
Growth isn’t something you feel in the moment. It’s something you realize when you walk the same path again and see that you’re not the same person walking it.
The mountains hadn’t changed. But I had. And that changes everything.
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