Miles Away Hola, I'm Miles. Often Miles away from home. Here are some of my tales and photographs.

I cannot say that I had ever felt completely alone. There was always some other presence: noises, people or at least signs of humankind. As I walked higher and higher into the mountains I moved closer to isolation and unfamiliarity. I was trekking toward the 5700 metre peak of Kala Pattar in the Everest region of Nepal, immersed in these mountains until I was saturated by them. I was consumed. I felt isolated, but not lonely. I felt the immense power of these giants who represented the colossal might of nature and earth. I felt inconspicuous, a negligible mark on the Earth's surface. It felt liberating, but simultaneously, I was humbled by my own insignificance. For weeks I had been walking a journey through the foothills of Nepal in the mountains’ shadows. Though Everest Base Camp was my destination, the pleasures of the journey were far greater than the satisfaction of reaching my destination. What I saw, who I met and what I learned all matted together in the fabric of the environment I had come through. It had clothed me, something I didn’t realise until days later. I arrived at the motley city of rip-stop nylon with a population of some 2000 people. I discovered that some of them had little climbing ability and who only wanted to fulfill a lifelong dream of straddling the roof of the world. Some were paying to be guided to the top. They were task-based voyagers. Tourists. They wanted only one thing: to achieve and to acclaim their trophy. I met these people on my cognitive journey where I was beginning to understand the supremacy, the continuity and the primacy of this land. Unlike them, I felt content learning from a distance. I was simply there to try and be entirely present and to engage, but these climbers wanted completely the opposite: to conquer. What I saw was a beautiful natural mountain, a teacher and they saw a challenge that had to be tamed. They wanted to tick their spurious dream off their list. In that moment, I felt alone for the first time.