"Nobody Warned Me About Day Three"

I need to revise my earlier optimism.

Day three. Shira Plateau. Approximately 3,800 metres above sea level. And altitude, it turns out, is not a theoretical concept. It is a very specific, very personal, and entirely unwelcome physical experience that arrives without warning and sits behind your eyes like a houseguest who was never invited and shows no signs of leaving.

The headache started on the climb to Shira Camp. Not dramatic, not the thunderclap that altitude sickness horror stories describe, just a persistent, dull pressure that parachuted in around mid-morning and refused to leave. I drank water. I walked slower. I ate lunch with the enthusiasm of someone who was not particularly interested in lunch.

Our guide Julius noticed. Of course he noticed, noticing is what these people do. He checked my oxygen saturation with a small device that I had previously thought was unnecessary kit and now regarded as my most treasured possession. The reading was fine. Not spectacular, but fine. 'Your body is adjusting,' he said. 'This is normal. This is why we walk slowly.'

Here is what nobody tells you about altitude: it is democratic. It does not care how fit you are, how well you trained, how expensive your jacket was or how many forums you read. The fittest person in our group spent an afternoon lying in their tent. The person who had expressed the most pre-trip anxiety bounced through the day like they were on a Sunday stroll. Your body decides. You just turn up.

That evening I sat outside my tent as the sun went down over the plateau and the sky turned colours I don't have adequate words for, deep orange bleeding into purple bleeding into a darkness so thick with stars it seemed almost artificial, and the headache faded, quietly, without fanfare.

I wrote in my notebook: harder than I expected. More beautiful than I imagined. Still here. That felt like enough.

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