The night before the trip, I consciously don’t set the alarm. I vaguely recall that my flight is sometime in the evening but sleep was such an imperative there was no way I was going to be rudely awaken by an annoying little bell (or three) It’d been a long week of traveling and working late, and I’d resigned myself to the knowledge that reading the Lonely Planet Guide to Nepal was yet another task on my to-do list that was going to remain unchecked. I had already pushed my departure day back last minute to accommodate some emergencies, so I fell into a comatose stupor knowing that I had squeezed every last drop of efficiency that 24 hours had to offer.

It is perhaps a traveler’s law that anything that can go wrong or be forgotten – will. I woke up, wrote yet another to-do list and deluded myself into believing that it was all possible within roughly 4-5 hours. To my credit, in spite of the hurricane-like state of my packing, I managed to leave my apartment with all dishes washed, garbage taken out, fridge emptied and bed made. Multitasking, thy name is Eva.

Those who know me well, know my feather-weight tolerance for caffeine. I made the mistake with equating a Starbucks skim mint-mocha with alertness and energy. Lies, all lies. It made me frantic, that’s what. My heart was constantly pounding and I couldn’t sit still, even though I knew that being low-maintenance and fairly well traveled, I was in good shape. In the hour it took to get me to the airport, I managed to forget my asthma inhaler (and here I was, traveling to a notoriously polluted city) and lose my cell phone (probably in the cab as I was stumbling over my carry-on suitcase.) Among other things. By the time I had arrived, I was bug-eyed, skiddish, and the immigration officer gave me the strangest look as I tried to stand still (but was practically vibrating with energy)

Two hours into the air, somewhere over Western China, it occurred to me that the calmest I’d been all week was the times I was on an airplane. No phone calls, no internet (wired to my bloodstream) no text messages. Sure I would have loved not to have lost (yet another) phone but on the other hand, this was a thankful break from the jungle we call civilization.

The whole Nepal trip was a mixture of things. An opportunity out of the blue, combined with a whole lot of unknowns. I’m not one for plunging blindly into decisions without planning, but on the other hand, this sort of trip is right up my alley. Rustic, off-road and off-beat. A chance to spend some quality time behind the lens, something that I don’t do nearly enough these days. Now how’s a girl supposed to say no?

So with that, I was off.. just over a week stretched out in front of me, flying to the Himalayan valley and an often forgotten nation known as “the yam between two boulders”

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