“On a Mish” #419 This Time Last Year (Part Three). Te Waipounamu / South Island to Ganesh Himal Charity Trek 2023. Aotearoa New Zealand & Nepal. 27.10.2023. Giving someone something is one of the best feelings you can have. Giving someone who has very little something is even better. Considering people pay big bucks to climb the tallest peak on the planet, the country they visit to tick off that goal remains one of the world’s poorest. Once you get away from the well-known places you realise that many need assistance and assisting as many of those people as possible is the goal of the Active Hearts Foundation. Helping the Hearts Team gets me out of bed in the morning, and it was around this time last year (2023) that it helped me out of my tent as I limped my way around the foothills of the Himalaya…
It was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to carry very much, so a helping hand had been assigned me to me to help when needed. Simply known to us as ‘Ba’ (like a father or granddad), my new best friend was by my side (with all of my gear and his own) for all of the 90 odd kilometres we trekked while on this very important mish. I had come all this way to help and now I was the one needing the help!
Having my parents hiking with me was a dream come true. Along with all of their help to get me and heaps of clothing and aid to Nepal, they had also generously donated a large amount of money to a library in a little village called Khule. I had been to this school a couple of times and had praise thrown at me which really should have gone to them. Now, for the first time they would see the library they created and the school which had benefited from their generosity. However, before we could see the school we needed to take many, many steps.
The toll of each day started to add up, and each night I went to bed sorer than the night before. At one particular place I couldn’t even muster the energy to have dinner with the team, so while they ate I did my best to rest my weary bones. It was on this night around this time last year (2023) that that trip took a tragic and very unexpected turn.
As the team attempted to get some sleep at Salme School deep in the hills of the Himalaya, a local dog had other ideas. I didn’t realise a dog could bark non-stop for around ten hours, but I guess even the dogs have superpowers – just like the humans of Nepal. This dog wouldn’t shut up, even after our normally calm expedition leader Dan Dai throw a rock at it! What we didn’t realise was that, at around the same time, my little mission helper Ernie had met his fate back in Aotearoa. It would be partway through the next day’s trek before we got to hear this devastating news.
A big driving force behind completing this mish was going back to Aotearoa to hang out and go on missions with my little dog Ernest. The idea of returning to a world without him never crossed my mind, and now what I thought was going to be the thing that got me through this adventure was gone. Just when I thought the difficulty had reached its peak, the challenge just got a little bit harder…
