“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”

John Lennon

Modern-day life is full of planning. We have so many commitments, engagements and pursuits these days, whether they be academic, occupational, social, sport, travel - it all adds up to a jam-packed social calendar! At times it can be quite draining to look at your diary and see so few empty days. After all, a healthy lifestyle should be balanced, and a lot of this balance is achieved by downtime.

Daily life now revolves around our phones and the media, aiding the ever-growing affliction of rampant consumerism. The Pandemic has only accelerated this. Our trekking encounters offer the chance to remove yourself from these burdensome strains, and to conscientiously exist in a parallel state of minimalistic bliss. Forget stressing about money, bills and your career - after Day 1 of your challenge you’ll have been liberated, heading back on a journey through time to a more nomadic age: One where we talk rather than text; laugh rather than lol; but above all enjoy that fresh mountain air and the privilege of experiencing the great outdoors in all its glory.

These trips are about letting go of your everyday vices and customs that come with growing up in western privilege. Put down your devices, disconnect, and take some time to reflect on the world you know, or rather how you think it should be. Who knows, perhaps spending a couple of weeks exploring the vast wilderness of Pakistan’s Karakoram will turn out to be that life adjustment you needed? And if not, don’t worry - you’ll be back to civilisation before you know it, having just completed the challenge-of-a-lifetime!

Life at the moment feels like a constant struggle, with the tug of economics, geopolitics and other macro forces outside the realms of our personal control. The turmoil this creates within our minds can have wide-reaching implications on our day-to-day lives: Our job security, our financial health, our academia, our choices, even our personal beliefs and attitudes. We often overthink situations and become preoccupied with the potential outcomes of events - outcomes that are actually unlikely to manifest. All this anxiety can feel exhausting, leading to malaise, mental fatigue, and generally being overwhelmed by some of the decisions we have to make.

With interaction increasingly shifting to social media, our habitual lives are now dominated by the digital world. Shopping for clothes and even groceries is being done more and more online, and we consume all of our news digitally, too. Even challenge events took on a virtual twist in 2020, although as far as we’re concerned, there’s simply no replacement for the real thing. If not only for the sights, smells and tastes that await you, it’s the social interaction with real-life people that everyone now craves a dose of. Too long have we spent on our monitors, over the medium of zoom, speaking to friends and family from afar... Sure, it’s great to have this technology at our disposal, but we are a tactile and emotional species that thrives off face-to-face connections.

More worryingly, through the anonymity we perceive ourselves as having online, I fear we are slowly losing our sense of decency and civility to one another. What we allude to as moral righteousness can end up just being a series of empty words, which more often than not fail to translate to actions in the real world. This is why we place so much value on the fundraising side of the journey - it’s this nobility and generosity that ultimately rewards participants with once-in-a-lifetime trips to these incredible destinations. And, on a broader note, the compassion shown by our supporters reminds us of the human capacity for genuine altruism.

We relish the opportunity to get back to basics whenever possible. It lets us appreciate where we’ve come from, and even draw inspiration from the subsistence lifestyles of those we pass by along the trail. Without question, seeing our porters do what they do, and being greeted by residents of the local communities we support, each with so little in the way of personal possessions, it is a truly humbling experience.

Unlike life, our trekking encounters are journeys with a predetermined path, which means once you’re on the challenge you can part ways with any stress. We’re a world away from reality, here, and we can exchange those burdensome complexities of everyday life for the simplicity of a few days of reflection, peace of mind, and a general recalibration of our thoughts and priorities. We discover a reality away from our devices: No longer feeling the need to scroll through Facebook to send us to sleep; nor check Twitter hourly for the latest celebrity updates; nor watch back-to-back TikTok videos to pass the time; instead we talk, we laugh, we smile, we bond, and we appreciate the simple things in life once again. Indeed, for many, it’s those star-spangled evening camps and singalongs by the fire that you’ll take away as lifelong memories, rather than the Insta money-shot posted on summit day.

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Quite often we hear about ‘the good old days’ - typically an allusion to time preceding the world wide web - and wonder how people lived in an age without technology at their fingertips. It’s incredible to think that the internet didn’t exist 25 years ago! As an invention, its worldwide utility and intrinsic value is without question, but we must also beware of the detriment it may be causing to our mental stability and wellbeing. As individuals it’s vital we take some time away every now and again, to restore harmony in our mindset, but also to remind us the value of those things in life that really matter. With a little perspective, our stresses and anxieties burn out of fuel, and these modern-day worries start to become meaningless. This is the state of mind we aspire to be in by the end of our journey, as we are graciously reminded that there’s more to life.