He woke up to the heat of the Sun’s rays melting the snow on his tent. It had snowed last night and put out the fire he’d lit up to keep himself warm. As he lazied himself out of the warm sleeping bag and made his way out of his tent, he saw the beautiful landscape outside. This was the seventh day of his solo trip to the Himalayas and he was, in every essence of the word, lost. Lost in the beautiful snow covered mountains. Lost in the coniferous trees that shook down the snow on them, as if shivering along with him in the cold. Lost in the chirping of birds that flew over his head every now and then. Lost in nature, forgetting all that had compelled him to make this trip.

“A traveler is never alone”, he’d read somewhere on his way. Now as he sat on top of the mountain, looking down upon sheets of white all around him, he understood the meaning of those words. The clouds floated on through him, hopping from one mountain to another. What looked so far away from down below was now in front of him, touching and embracing him in a way nothing else did. What made rain and thunder for people down below was a friend to him in its most gentle form. “Maybe that’s how people are”, he thought to himself, “It’s only a matter of getting to know them from the inside.” He saw the lake he’d seen at night on his way up the mountain in daylight, and it was as clear as the sky above him. Finally, after a week of camping, he saw his reflection in the lake.

He’d left home with a heavy heart and a mind filled with anxiety, and promised himself not to return until both his heart and soul were at peace. One week ago, he didn’t think he would achieve this and had already made up his mind to leave his old life behind and start over in a different place. He had met many people in this journey of his, and along the way he realised that it wasn’t the people in his life that were the problem. The fundamental problem in his life was he himself. It was his attitude towards everything he’d tried to do so far in his life. Failure, which he thought was his biggest enemy and had broken him in more ways than he would accept, was indeed his best friend. Failure had taught him to get up every time he slipped and never fall down in a similar way ever again. He thought his failures had hardened him towards life, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, because rocks, after all, don’t crack easily under forces of nature. That day, as he looked at his reflection in the lake, he no longer saw a defeated man. Instead, he saw a bright-eyed boy with a triumphant smile in place of an old man with a face filled with agony. He had defeated his demons.

“You may sulk about what you’ve lost and stay down forever, or pick yourself up and write a new chapter in your life, but in the end, it’s only you who gets affected by it all. Nothing ends forever, if only you can keep the fighting on. For it is this fight that will bring you the riches of victory.” He wrote this on his tent and left it there for some other lost soul to come find himself, as he made his way down the Mountain of Solace. What was it that made him realise that though? Was it the sight of the children he saw along the way who were wearing plastic bottles for sandals in the heavy snow, but didn’t have even a faint glimmer of sadness in their eyes? Was it the old shepherd who was bent over in an arc, easily guiding his sheep down the same mountain he had had difficulty climbing? Or was it the little girl he saw imitating the birds flying above, making him realise that you don’t really need wings to fly freely?

I think it was the epic proportions of nature he saw all around himself, when he was atop the mountain. He realised how the mountains have stayed in their position for thousands of years, undeterred by conditions around them. It might snow or flood, or there may even be a phase of drought, but they stand strong and mighty in the face of all adversities that nature can throw at them. The mountains are the greatest teachers of them all. They teach you how to be humble in life, yet stand firm and proud of the things you believe in. They teach you that a part of you might fall off and drift away from you, but you are made of much more than you know of, and a small part of your life should not change the way you go out and face the world. They teach you that life may bury you under twenty feet of snow, but the sun will come up one day and melt it all away, and the current of the river formed by that melted snow will be so ferocious that it will wash away all that comes in its path. Mountains teach you that strength comes from within you. So hold on to yourself, and never turn your back upon the world. Face it with a smile.