Top Of The World

Alli on the summit of Mera Peak

By Alli Sinclair

In my late teens and early twenties, my vacations involved beaches, palm trees, and many hours reading books or playing water sports. At the ripe old age of twenty-four I decided to fulfill a dream I’d had since I was twelve—to travel through India. As I thumbed through guidebooks, Nepal, India’s neighbor, wouldn’t quit calling my name. Nepal is a quick flight from India, so I looked into adding a short trek in Nepal to my backpacking trip in India. This innocent thought changed everything. My ten-day Nepal trek morphed into a six-week mountaineering trip in the Himalayas and got me hooked on the one sport I’ve never lost passion for.

I’ll be honest and say I bit off more than I could chew. Up until that trip the longest I’d slept in a tent had been four days—this mountaineering expedition meant six weeks of camping, including at least two weeks sleeping on snow. In my head, I had the confidence needed to undertake such a journey but when I told family and friends about my plans there were more than a couple of raised eyebrows and exclamations of “Are you sure you want to do this? Didn’t you want to lie on the beach at Goa?”

After 18 months of rigorous training in Australia (where our highest mountain is one third the height of my Nepalese goal) I travelled to Nepal, determined to prove my silent critics wrong. I’d only been in Kathmandu two days when I sprained my ankle in a pothole and it looked like the trip had finished before it began. A few tears, icepacks and lots of drugs later, I made the eight hour trip to Jiri, our starting point for the trek.  The first few days were a blur of painkiller-induced delirium, but it go me through the discomfort and I hobbled up and down valleys with my awesome expedition team.

Mera Peak photo taken from two valleys away

For weeks we acclimatized to our new home—the Himalayas—and met amazing locals along the way. We travelled far off the beaten track, away from the usual trekking routes, and met school kids in remote villages who hadn’t seen foreigners before. Farmers with yaks in tow smiled as we passed by, women washing clothes in the freezing glacial rivers waved, and my notion of what makes a wonderful vacation changed forever.

We endured heat, cold, tiredness, sunburn, storms, boredom, blisters, and homesickness—yet our band of intrepid climbers stuck it out. Many, many times I questioned why I wasn’t laying in a beach sipping piña coladas and chatting up the pool boy, but I remembered why I undertook such a journey—to prove to myself I could take the easy with the hard and not ever give up.

When summit day finally arrived, we left High Camp at 2 am. Even though we were swaddled in the super-dooper technologically enhanced climbing gear, our fingers and toes remained numb. We traipsed through the dark, a line of head torches bobbed up the side of Mera Peak, the mountain we desperately wanted to summit. At a height of 6,476 meters (21, 247 feet), it’s not a skip through a meadow of daisies. Climbing at this altitude is serious business and one false move could mean your death, or that of your team members.

The sun rose and we traipsed onwards and upwards. The summit was in sight, yet it was still hours away. All I wanted to do was sit down on the freezing snow and sleep, but my ego and pride wouldn’t let me. The thin air at altitude meant breathing was a struggle, and near the summit we were taking one step to every two breaths.

High Camp on Mera Peak

After eight hours we finally made it to the summit of Mera Peak and I will never forget that moment. The weather cooperated and the cloud had lifted for us to view the 8,000 metre peaks around us: Sagarmatha (Mount Everest), Lhotse, Cho Oyu, Makalu, and Kanchenjunga. Bright blue sky formed the backdrop and in that moment, standing on the summit of my dreams, I was in awe of the beauty of the world before me.

The sun danced across my face, warming my skin and the air I inhaled was the freshest I’d ever experienced. Silence wrapped around us. This, I discovered, was my ideal vacation from the craziness of the world.

After summitting, it took a couple of weeks to return to Kathmandu. The mayhem of the traffic, the pollution, and the busyness of life took over and I clung to that moment on the summit. Even now, nearly twenty years later, I can close my eyes and remember the feeling of pure bliss standing, literally, on top of the world.

Less than a year after Nepal I traveled to South America to climb Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in the Americas. That’s a whole other post, though.

Sure, I love my beach vacations but for me, the most memorable vacations are the ones where I have climbed peaks around the world. I loved it so much I ditched my job as a graphic artist to work in the adventure travel industry and take my own clients on expeditions.

Humans as tiny dots near the summit of Mera Peak

The innocent trip to Nepal started me on a lifelong journey of appreciation and respect for mountain climbing and Mother Nature. As many expeditions leaders have told me, “the mountain will only be climbed if it wishes.” After witnessing a handful of accidents and getting involved in rescues on the mountains, I know this saying to be true.

Now I’m older, nowhere near as fit, and a mother of two young kids, nicking off to climb a mountain for a couple of months is a big ask. But I have my memories and stories, and the kids love to hear about my adventures and look at my photos. Perhaps I’ll inspire them to follow their dreams and find their own adventures. I certainly hope so.

Mi Helado Es Su Helado (My Ice-cream Is Your Ice-cream)

When the plane touched down at Ezeiza International Airport, Buenos Aires, I had a backpack full of climbing gear and a head full of dreams about summiting Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas. I hadn’t expected to land in Argentina for the first time and feel like I was finally returning home.

At the airport, Spanish with an Italian lilt blasted over the speakers and women with legs like spaghetti paraded in short, tight mini-skirts. Dark-haired men that could easily have been models sauntered through the airport, comfortable in their own charm and sex-appeal. By the time I hit Buenos Aires proper I’d decided that this was the place of my heart – and I hadn’t yet tried the ice-cream.

Half the population of Argentina comes from Italian heritage, easily identified by their passion for coffee, cakes and ice-cream. Argentines have a great love for “lunfardo” (slang), as do Australians which was one of the first things I found we had in common. Slang and wine, but that’s a whole other post. It took me three visits to Argentina before I finally took the plunge and moved there.

The first friends I made in Argentina were through bonding over homemade ice-cream. It’s not uncommon to find ma and ma shops on every street corner, a rainbow of frozen flavors just waiting to be devoured. Plastic chairs and tables are set up on sidewalks and locals gather to eat, laugh and gossip. It didn’t take long to find my favorite ice-cream shop, and I set about trying to fit in. Boy, that was a lot harder than I expected.

I thought my love for Argentina would give me an automatic “in.” Here was a single woman who uprooted herself, moved to their country and had fallen in love with the people and culture. But wariness lined their acceptance. When I was asked “Boca or Riverplate?” I thought they were talking about political parties. I had no idea which football (soccer) team you barracked for could have such an influence on how people view you.

Often, I was asked why I would choose Argentina when I could live elsewhere. I never found it difficult to answer. The language, warmth of the Argentine people, astounding scenery and lifestyle all added up to something I couldn’t resist. Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of amazing places in the world, but for so many reasons, Argentina captured my heart. But no Argentine could understand why I would want to live in their country, even though their patriotism is amongst the strongest I’ve ever experienced.

Fortunately, my Argentine friends embraced me and my flawed Spanish, inviting me to family functions, including weddings and milestone birthdays. I learnt how to tango (very badly), eat asado (Argentine BBQ) without looking like I’d just had a bath in a tub of fat and I perfected how to swill copious quantities of Mendocino wine without falling over. Life was good and it didn’t take long to adjust to my new country.

In the early days, though, especially when my Spanish was worse than a toddler’s, I felt left out. The gap between languages left me floundering, especially in large gatherings and I felt like an imposter. I desperately wanted to be “one of them” yet my accent gave me away every time. But the harder I tried to learn Argentine ways and their Spanish, the more accepted I became. When people realized I wasn’t just flitting through, they took me more seriously and went out of their way to help me negotiate customs and language challenges.

When the economy in Argentina took a dive in 2001, many Argentine’s couldn’t escape their dire circumstances. And even though it was never mentioned, I know many friends and colleagues were thinking that the gringa could go back to her life outside the financial shambles of Argentina at any time. I wasn’t privileged by any means, but because I came from a non-South American country, people naturally assumed I was rich. But man, I was far from it. Although if you measure richness by experiences and the depth of friendships made in Argentina, I was richer than all the Spanish galleons put together.

But I stuck it out, protesting right alongside the nation. That single action changed how I was viewed forever and finally, I felt I was amongst my people.

And in case you need to know, my answer is Boca.

What have you found in common with people from other cultures? Did that commonality help build friendships?