A Tale of Coming Back From Nepal

For those who don’t allow themselves to feel afraid. Ever.

This is a story about my “trip of a lifetime”. One of those journeys on which you depart to find yourself, or the truth, or… whatever it is that you are searching for at the time.

More specifically: it is about the way back from that trip. It was the circumstances in which I returned that happened to be particularly important.

It might be that this article is the most personal and vulnerable piece of writing that I have published to date. Why? Because it is about the deepest fear. The kind of fear I am barely ready to admit. The irrational, panicky feeling born from my own thinking — which makes it feel very much like my responsibility.

At the same time, this is a very real and feasible feeling. I am talking about the fear of death.

The fantasy of a “life-changing experience”

There is no way to tell the story of coming back without mentioning how I embarked on that journey. And how I embarked was: with a lot of confidence.

I was certain that going for a seven-week trip to India and Nepal, on my own, was the one and only thing I needed. It was supposed to be the experience of my life. The big transformation.

Booking my flights back in July, I was absolutely positive that this was THE thing to do.

Why was this so important for me? Because I had a very specific idea for what kind of person I am supposed to be in life. And an important characteristic of that person was: reckless.

By reckless, I meant: able to manage her emotions on her own, no matter the size, spectrum and depth of these emotions. This was a zero-one judgment in my head. Either I am able to deal with myself no matter the circumstances and do exactly what I intend to do (that’s how I score a “one”) or… I am not worthy of my own love (that’s a terrifyingly absolute zero).

I am only able to notice the above from today’s perspective. If you asked me three months ago, my decision to go on a solo trip was motivated by very reasonable statements.

• I wanted to create a personal challenge and grow from it;
• I wanted to give myself a proper holiday after my first year of freelancing, which did tire me mentally and emotionally;
• I wanted to mark a definite pause before finally diving into serious depths of my writing career.

I thought these were legit reasons to go — and so I booked the flights. From that point on, the clock started ticking. The big day was scheduled for the 1st of November.

No right to feel afraid

Since this is a story about the way back, I am not going to give you all the details about the preparations before my big trip. You can well imagine the vaccinations, the shopping, the packing list and the phone calls with friends and acquaintances who have gone on similar kinds of trips before.

During the last month before departure, I simply spent a substantial amount of my time making sure that I was not sending myself for a certain death.

And no, this is not a metaphor. Before I realised, my concept of the dream trip to Nepal moved away from “we’re going on a great adventure” to “I fucking hope I am going to survive this”. No joke. This change in thinking came as such a surprise that I didn’t want to accept how afraid I was. I kept clinging to the life-raft thought:

“it is normal to get nervous before such a big thing.”

At this point of telling my story, I am really tempted to add something like: “and the people around me didn’t make it easier”. But that would be blaming others for the fear I was feeling. And while there were people who discouraged me from going (“this is so dangerous”; “I don’t understand why would you do this on your own” or even “you must be crazy”) — even more of them consistently expressed their support and cheered my idea.

So I need to be honest and say that all the fear I felt was mine, and mine alone.

Despite the biggest fear I ever felt in my life, I kept taking the decision that I was going. That decision had to be taken numerous times — that was just due to the number of doubts I had. On the day of departure, the trip didn’t feel like a reward or pleasure to me anymore. I saw it as a challenge which I created for myself and which, therefore, I had to take on.

Remember what I said in the beginning? A part of myself firmly believed that I had no right to feel afraid. At least not to the point where I couldn’t manage the fear. So I was not allowed to turn back.

I had to get on that plane. And so, I did.

My Asian Grand Tour in 232 words

During the next week spent in Delhi, I entered a survival mode. I used most of my life energy to cover up the fear. I couldn’t afford to consciously feel it anymore — because I was on my own, in some unknown part of the world.

It felt like all I needed to do was to survive. Excessive fear wouldn’t help me with that. Only a few times my coverage failed me and so, for the first time in my life, I experienced panic attacks.

I saw it clearly: I was simply afraid to die.

I sometimes enjoyed myself — to a limited extent and on a limited number of occasions. Yet, every single day, I was looking for reasons to go back home.

My body finally produced a substantial reason. Feeling pain in my right ovary, I went to a gynaecologist, who diagnosed an infection. I started taking medicines which were supposedly going to cure me.

Despite everything I was feeling, I decided to continue my travel.

With a noisy internal dialogue still going on, I boarded a plane to take me to the next stage of my journey: Kathmandu. After landing, I was already in so much pain blended with fear, that I went straight to the emergency unit of the local hospital.

During the next few hours spent on medical tests, I finally took a decision to terminate this excruciating holidays.

A moment of nothingness

I let go of the idea that I had to complete the challenge. I abandoned the assumption I had made in July — that this trip was the best thing I could do for myself at this point in my life.

It clearly wasn’t the best thing. How did I know? Well… because I suffered from it.

This was hard to admit because it also meant acknowledging that I felt afraid to a point that I could no longer handle. And according to my established standards — this basically meant that I was weak.

FUCKING FAILURE.

But was it? Luckily, at this point in my story I was aware enough to be able to make a conscious choice.

OPTION A was to treat this experience as a personal failure, a letdown, and immerse myself in misery because of it. After all, I had been dreaming of Nepal for months and this could have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience of getting to know myself. The life-changing experience. What a shame. So let’s be sad about it for some time.

OPTION B was to see what happened as an opportunity to… do something else instead. And to feel and appreciate the relief and sense of safety that coming back home brought upon me. And to become grateful for the fact that, in the end, my ovary didn’t turn out to be a huge health issue. And to find excitement in having lived through such a peculiar experience and being able to tell it to others. And to congratulate myself for coping with the amount of fear that I have never coped with before. And to appreciate my own honesty and readiness to admit what has really happened.

And much more than that.

The “everything-happens-for-a-reason” attitude

I can already tell you that the trip to India and Nepal was a life-changing experience. Not in a way I had imagined, of course. But this is exactly why it is impactful.

The most significant part was the homecoming. After one week, instead of seven.

This homecoming — I realise — could have been a massive failure. Maybe even a trigger for depression. It could have been, had I chosen so.

And I had a moment on the plane back home when I could have made that choice.

I was aware of myself in that moment, waiting for the stewardess to bring my vegetarian meal. I was still feeling all the pain and the anxiousness. My mind was just beginning to generate projections of how miserable it would be after I come back home.

The tempting vision of turning myself into a victim of the whole situation presented itself in front of me. I was in a context in which I could turn everyone’s attention on myself. My long-lived dream of a journey to Nepal was now broken. It was an understandable reason to be sad. And I could have chosen that, counting on all the people in my life to understand and “be there for me”.

But staying with this vision for a while, and seeing it as a real possibility… bored me. I just received my meal and the stewardess smiled at me, asking if I needed anything else. This was my first time travelling with Qatar Airways and (they didn’t pay me to write that) I truly experienced what I may call “luxurious service”.

I asked for a glass of water, and she handed it to me in a way that made me feel like a queen. I had no choice but to smile back at her. Then I opened the aluminium box which contained dinner — and tasted the best plane food I have ever had.

The smile remained on my face and inside of me for a little longer. My pain was slowly subsiding. I was realizing that it was probably nothing serious, and that much of the physical pain seemed to be correlated with the emotional turmoil I was experiencing.

Finishing the meal which consisted of all the fancy little treats, I realized that I had nothing to worry about.

I didn’t have to fight with the fear any longer. I could experience comfort from now on because I decided to go back home. Whether to see it as a failure or a perfect decision, was only up to me.

So… I decided to see it as a perfect decision — and to believe once again that everything happens for a reason. After all, I have already witnessed numerous times how this belief helped me and others to be constructive about whatever event occurred.

And yes, I want to repeat it again, just so it is clear:

The “everything happens for a reason” attitude is one of the most productive and helpful beliefs I found so far.

In fact, it is so helpful that I don’t care if it is “objectively” true.

Life continues

Just to wrap it all up, I want to tell you what happened in my life since I came back from Nepal ten days ago.

I joined university for a course about mindfulness & compassion.

I decided to live in my parents’ house for a while — an idea I would have resented a month back — because I love them and because I finally feel ready to receive their love.

I put my most important goals first, and I started working on them — without procrastinating until “the time is right”. This includes writing, studying and starting to work on my ultimate life goal, which is to create a hospitable venue for people interested in spiritual growth.

And the fear?

It is there. I don’t know what to do with it yet. But at least, I allow myself to see it. And this already feels like a “life-changing experience”.