Himalaya Odyssey (1/6)

Where Everything Fell Apart

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I lost my team.

I lost my team. One left for health reasons. The other left because it “wasn’t fast enough to be fun.”

This was when the prototype should have been ready. The app launch kept being delayed. I could do nothing.

There was no corporation. No salaried employment. I had no leverage to make them stay. And so, the project stopped.

A sense of loss. And a far greater sense of powerlessness. On the verge of my startup, I was collapsing, inside and out. Then, suddenly, I thought of my father. His old bucket list. ‘The Himalayas.’

A place whose name alone evokes a suffocating, thrilling extreme.

Why this place, this specific bucket list item, came to me at that exact moment... I still don’t know.

“Dad, do you want to go with me?”

My father was sixty-five. It was a journey I was hesitant to send him on alone.

“Dad, do you want to go to the Himalayas with me?”

Perhaps, it was payback for ten years ago. When I was in college, I asked my father, who ran his own company, to take a month-long road trip. He simply handed the company over to his executives and left with me. Running a company myself now, I understand the immense resolve that decision took. That gratitude has stayed with me.

It felt like it was now or never. I would soon be consumed by my startup. This was the most intense, yet paradoxically, the most free time. My team was gone. Everything had collapsed. I couldn’t focus on work.

My father would only get older. I felt I might never be able to give him this time again.

In truth, I desperately needed this trip for myself.

To reset my mind for the startup, facing extreme nature. I had this desperate hope: ‘Before the majesty of extreme nature and its Creator, perhaps He will speak to me.’

The Highest Pass in the World

We set the timeframe first, strangely. Two weeks. And we both wanted ‘something unique.’ My father wanted to avoid the Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) route; it was too well-known. As we debated between the Annapurna Circuit and Everest Base Camp (EBC), a piece of advice came to us like a revelation.

“Don’t do ABC. Do the Circuit or EBC.”

It was from a world traveler I had interviewed while preparing for my business. And so, it was decided. A place that fit our timeframe, was less traveled, and was known as ‘the highest pass in the world.’ Our journey to Thorong La Pass* had begun.

And so we left. The son, on the verge of a startup. The father, a 65-year-old entrepreneur. We didn’t know then, that this journey would become a ritual. A passing of the torch between generations.

(End of Part 1. To be continued in Part 2)

• Author’s Note: Thorong La Pass is also known as the Annapurna Circuit.

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