Today was our rest day in Manang, mainly to acclimatize. When I woke up this morning, I reached above my head and pulled open the thin drape. I looked up and saw (upside down), the snowy peaks illuminated pink and orange by the rising sun.

Eventually I mustered the courage to leave the warmth of our sleeping bag and we went for breakfast. Afterwards, we headed across the river and up a ridge to acclimatize. The ridge was actually the rim of giant crater, which held an aqua glacial lake. Heading higher up the mountain, we passed a tea stall for tourists and then an abandoned village, before reaching an amazing viewpoint. It was pretty steep and all of us slipped and fell on our butts plenty of times due to last night’s snow. On the way down, some of us just squatted and slid down the path, using our hands to steer.

Having finished our acclimatization work for the day (going up to 4000m and then returning down to 3500m), we spent the duration of our afternoon just hanging out and talking to other people. Perhaps I should backtrack to this morning when we met a couple of German guys. After the initial exchange of ‘where you from’ and ‘what’s your trekking itinerary,’ one of them asked, “So are you going home after this or are you one of those fortunate Americans who is traveling the world for ten years?” After explaining that we belonged more to the latter category than the former, he said (in his German accent, which I think I’ve got down now), “You Americans are lazy. You just think life is a game about having fun. You don’t think or care about work, but just about having a good time.” The two things that bothered me about this were: one, he said it like it was something bad to have fun and, two, I was hearing this from a European. So I asked him how much vacation time he gets; 30 days. 30 days! That’s six weeks of paid time-off per year, not including sick and holiday time. I don’t want to hear about work from some socialist European working a 35-hour work week with 6 weeks of vacation.

A much more interesting conversation was with some American’s we met. Well actually, we first met the Canadian contingent of the group, Hans. We started talking to him at lunch and he explained that he had already been in Nepal for several weeks and had already been on a climbing expedition that had been cancelled at Camp 3, due to avalanches. He had wanted to go on, but the majority of his group wanted to retreat down the mountain. So he said after this trek, he might spend his extra time rafting or canyoning. Oh yeah, he is about 70. We asked about the adventurous things he’s done in his life and he told us about all the places he’s been. He was a person who was really taking advantage of his good health and living life to the fullest even at that age- still traveling and doing super adventurous stuff. By the end of our short conversation, I was convinced I’d be pretty satisfied if I could see the amount of regions/countries he’d visited in his life. That night, he introduced us to his two buddies from California, Sky and Cal. Both were cool to talk to, but Cal told us a really captivating story. Back in the mid-eighties, he and his wife flew out to Portugal and bought a sailboat. From there they sailed a circuit around the Mediterranean and then out to the Canaries. From there, they sailed across the Atlantic and all over the Caribbean. Then across the Panama Canal and up the coast of Central America, back to the US. He also told us about sailing around Australia and across the Pacific. But the thing that stood out the most to me was when he was describing sailing around the Aegean. He said they’d be sailing in crystal clear waters in Greece and Turkey and could sometimes just look down and see ruins. They’d see stoas, Doric and Ionian columns just below the surface of the sea. Sometimes ruins would be poking above the sea’s surface. Unbelievable. I’m not a sailor, but I like the sailing trips I’ve been on. And I do love history, especially Greco-Roman history. And Greece and Turkey are definitely two places that Joylani and I want to return to to explore more. Anyways, it just got the wheels of my mind turning. But beyond personal travel ideas, it was really awesome (even somewhat inspiring) to meet Hans, Sky, and Cal. It was a good day.