A few extracts from the diary I kept in India when I was 15...please excuse the profanities and pretentious sentiment...I was 15, trying to be cool..
"I've never felt anything like altitude. You get
breathless from walking 10m on a straight road! Every bone in your body
tingles with a painful numbing, you feel light headed every time you stand up accompanied by the WORST head rush in the world. My muscles are groaning all over my body with unbridled exhaustion. I never thought it would be this hard. If I had, I wouldn't
have bloody signed up. It's 6am. I'm cold. I'm frign freezing.
I've never felt so weak, I have absolutely no energy..can't even
talk to anyone. We all just collapsed when we got to a good rest site
and have been lying here like overturned turtles on our sacks, unable
to move. Ce, Daniella and I have been sat in our tent motionless and
soundless for god knows how long. I'm scared right now. This
is the first day and I feel like this...17 more to go. Jesus Christ."
"It's day 14 of the trek and I am going to punch someone in the face. No. Not just someone...everyone. They're my friends.. How annoying can they really be? Well, I tell you, spend 14 gruelling days walking up 6,000m mountains and other mountains FOR BANTER and you'll be struggling to remember anything you liked about them at the start. They whine, they push you when you don't want to be pushed, they're always there and then, just when you want to moan and be upset about how tired and in pain you are, they turn round and tell you how ungrateful you're being and..ugh, I don't know, blah frign de blah. Hate everyone. They smell because we haven't washed in days. Ugh. Hate this. I want to go home."
"I don't think I've sweated so much in my whole life. Buckets of
water cascading from face, boob and thigh right now, I feel like I'm
melting. Maybe I am. How is this place habitable?!!? Walking from the
airport was like walking into a sauna.
We had to cross a main
road and it was like a game of dodgeball...dodgeball extreme where life
and limb were at risk as you close your eyes and just run for the
other side, through the 7 lane traffic of Delhi's streets.The rickshaws
are hilarious, painted green and yellow and driving on road, pavement
or wall to get by."
"I was left with a baby today. Yep. Left...with a baby. It started off as a great day. We woke up early to the sun shining down, encouraging an irridescent wave of colour to shimmer down the river towards Hadimba Temple which was our destination for the day. On our walk to the temple we saw monkeys, an elephant, snakes, yaks and absolutely loads of donkeys and cows. We hadn't anticipated that we'd turn out to be the main tourist attraction for all of the other tourists visiting the temple that day. They formed lines to take pictures with myself, my ginger friend and my blonde friend...felt like a celebrity...not guna lie, I loved every second!! Anyways, we let them take photos and then one family gave us their baby in preparation for a photo. We look up after cooing over how cute the baby was...to see the bloody parents running for the hills!! We sprinted after them, baby screaming and all, but they'd buggared off into the thick of the trees and were nowhere to be seen. Sound...stuck with a baby....casual. What the hell do you with a frign baby?!"
"I hate the men here. They stare, they spit and they lick their lips and its disgusting. I'm 15!!!! Young enough to be their granddaughter....rank."
"Today was AWESOME!!! Best day so far on the trek. We bathed, we ate, we relaxed and then a bunch of us went in search for a nomadic tribe to see if we could trade some goods with them. We ended up only having to walk a short (but very uphill) distance to a nearby village. It was amazing. They welcomed us into their house, we all looked at each other just a liiittle bit scared coz we'd been told these people were cannibals but we decided to go in anyways. It was like a home you see in museums, from the Viking times. Although it was only around 2pm the whole house was pitch black inside. There was no electricity, natural light or gas. We walked in through the front foor to be confronted with hammers, snow shoes and knifes hanging from the ceiling and straight ahead was a stone base covered by a wooden seat, constituting a toilet. The smell was intoxitating but alluring. It was so smokey, a very very musky apple wood type smell. We passed a beam of light striking from the ceiling onto a trap door, and then plunged back into the delicate darkness. On our left a door slid open and this OLD Tibetan woman was standing there with a huge, toothless and incredibly wrinkly smile mushing out "Joule, joule!"...
