Often we get set in our ways, we find a routine and it works for us. We wake up, pack, have breakfast, start walking, have tea, walk more – have I mentioned the many steps yet…? Have lunch, walk more, settle into accommodation, have tea, read, have dinner, snuggle up into the sleeping bag and sleep… And then all of a sudden something changes… The food isn’t like we expected, the accommodation isn’t what we had in mind, the weather isn’t playing fair… we get jolted back into reality. But that’s all fine, especially when you strike up a conversation with the person sitting next to you or the people you now need to share a room with. And that’s exactly what happened, we met Johanna and Bart the chilled, relaxed German – Dutch couple which we ended up becoming good friends with after pretty much spending the next 3 days together.

Lesson: Always be open to new interactions, who knows, you might just make an awesome new friend or four, (And trust me, on this trip I made such great new friends from my inbound flight where I met Prisca – we chatted non-stop for nearly the whole 9 hour flight – I’m sure we drove our neighbours nuts! To Penny Light, who I am certain is my spunky, wiser and funkier older sister from another-mother, to Sophie my new travelling yoga-buddy and then of course Johanna. And many more fabulous people I met on the trek, my travels in Kathmandu, Pokhara, Bhagtapur and Nagarkot.)