Entering China from Nepal felt like stepping into a time machine. On one side was a deeply spiritual land, steeped in superstition and wrapped in poverty. On the other stood opulence and power, saturated with hyper-materialism. The gates to China were imposing, imperial and modern. A towering newly built structure loomed over the ramshackle Nepali village that formed the border. On the Nepalese side, multi-coloured prayer flags fluttered in the valley winds. On the People’s Republic of China side, red communist flags snapped violently in the same air.

I wanted punishment, I wanted atonement. The grind of the uphills was brutal but I felt alive. Blood in my veins, air thickening with every metre descended. The pain was just more fuel. I was running, gliding, tears mixing with sweat, free of myself for a few hours. Alive. Myself without the burden of myself.

But the summit was not a victory. It was fear and exhaustion wrapped tight around my ribs. No triumph. No sense of achievement. Only the cold realisation that I still had to get down. Pride mixed with dread. The job was not done. There was no space for the past up here. Fuck the past. Fuck Laura. Fuck the army. Fuck the failures. None of it mattered now. Survival did. I trusted Lakhpa entirely. We hugged briefly and began the descent.

Looking down, I saw everything we had climbed and everything waiting to punish a single mistake. The true point of a climb is not reaching the top. It is getting down alive. We used the same ropes to abseil. One slip meant being impaled on the ice. Fear surged through me, tightening everything. Fear is a toxic mistress. She lives in all of us. She has her place. But now she needed to fuck off. Trust the rope. Trust Lakhpa. I turned my back to the wall and began to descend.

The Khumbu had its own hierarchy. Climbers at the top, trekkers in the middle, tourists at the bottom, and Sherpas carrying all of us whether we admitted it or not. I pretended I was above it, but the truth was that I cared deeply where I sat in that unspoken ranking. I wanted to be seen as strong, as capable, as a man with purpose. Judgement was just camouflage for insecurity. I had come to the mountains chasing something like absolution, but standing there I felt like every other wanderer trying to convince himself he deserved to be here.

I needed to get away from humanity before I said something unkind. So I climbed higher for the evening. Climb high, sleep low. A rule drilled into me years ago by some drunken senior officer in some forgotten mess hall. The wind bit. The boots crunched rhythmically. At a small monastery at 4400 metres I found quiet again. I meditated but my mind was wild. When I came back down, a pack of village dogs settled around me. Two big mastiffs pressed against my sides, one licking my ear like an old friend. Their calm was better company than anything else that day. We sat there on the rock, looking at the valley below as the sun collapsed behind Ama Dablam and the world widened for a brief moment

Sixty thousand people travel through the Khumbu each year in the narrow weather window between snow and rain. Sherpas make a living, but the valley suffers: pollution, trash, poor waste management. People come for ego, redemption, healing, escape. The climb becomes a path to finding something lost or shedding something heavy.

The mountain shows you what matters. It strips you down in ways you don’t expect. Whatever emotional load you’re carrying, it drags up.

Rounding a tight corner with a cliff on one side and a long drop on the other, I almost walked into a full two-metre wooden door. It moved up the path on a pair of flip-flops underneath. The porter beneath it panted hard, each step a battle. The sight froze me.

Then a large, Arcteryx-clad westerner appeared, red-faced and irate that his path was blocked. He moved to grab the top of the door, ready to drag it aside, which would have toppled the load and sent the porter tumbling into the void with eighty kilos on his back.

Alvaro and I set off on our Don Quixotian quest to chase down windmills toward Kathmandu. The road was dusty, muddy, and full of drunk lorry drivers intent on running us off it. As I swerved around loose chickens and a souped-up tuk-tuk, a two-stroke motorcycle suddenly flew past, two-up. The rider was clearly Western; I could tell from the build and the full-sleeve tattoo. He was riding in jeans, a long hunting knife on his belt, and behind him a slight Nepali clung on for dear life. He left me in a cloud of dust.

My ego was bruised. The red mist rose. How dare he overtake me, a world traveller. I couldn’t take the affront. I gave in to anger and competition.

Fuck him. It was on.