HERE WE GO AGAIN: Somehow we're going back to Nepal

NOVEMBER 2024

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GORAK SHEP, NEPAL — I'm not shivering anymore. I'm still cold, but I think my body is too tired to care. It's just numb.

It's dark. Probably around midnight, but I dare not move to check the time. Body heat is too precious. We're huddled in one of Gorak Shep's guesthouses. Accommodations are basic, but at an elevation of nearly 17,000 feet, anything resembling indoors is a win.

Our guesthouse stands at a bit of a lean, having settled over the years. The howling wind outside is drowned out by the echoing voices of neighbors on either side of us and fellow trekkers traipsing down the hall for runs to the bathroom.

The awkward lean causes a substantial gap toward the ceiling between the walls separating the rooms. Light shines through the gap to my left, and with it comes the sound of two trek mates coughing up a lung.

The gap to my right is dark, but through it I can clearly make out the room's inhabitants murmuring about the unbearable cold.

One voice is loud and clear.

"Chelsea."

It's my husband, Jamieson, from the twin bed across from me. We're both wearing our fleeces and down jackets inside our zero-degree sleeping bags.

I pull the hood of my sleeping bag down to free my right ear, trying to cut down the swishing noise from the fabric.

"Yeah," I say back, feeling the sting of the air on the newly exposed side of my face.

"I hate this," he says.

Yeah, me too, I think to myself.

He adds, "After this, I'm never traveling with you again."

We both start to laugh; the side-stitch-inducing kind that only suffering and torment can genuinely create.

You don’t have to tell me twice, I think. This is misery.

TWO YEARS LATER

"We have to respond to Jamon," I say. We're back home at one of our favorite restaurants.

Jamon invited us to go back to Nepal, only this time for the Manaslu Circuit Trek, which will take us around the world's eighth-highest peak. It would be a new trek for all three of us and a chance to reconnect with some of our trek mates from the 2024 Everest Base Camp trip. We have been going over the options for a month or so, but with the trek beginning in October, it is time to get serious.

"We have to do it," Jamieson says.

Jamieson pulls out his cell phone and starts tapping away at the screen. My own phone dings.

"I have done the logistics, we are in for Nepal" reads Jamieson's text in a group chat with Jamon.

I'm in disbelief.

I ask again if he is sure. I remind him of how miserable things got up at Gorak Shep.

In the end, misery often becomes a building block for the best tales to tell.

Who knows what we'll come across on this adventure. We head back to Nepal on Oct. 10, 2026.