Goodbye snow and hello green sums up day 4 trekking from the Nepali villages of Ghopte to Kutsmsang.
The world seems to blossom and breathe a thawed life, leaving the bleached snowy Himalayan heights behind.
Plots of corn and other crops begin to cover the few gentle slopes and places where human hands and tools have chiseled the landscape into steps.
Terraced mountains strike my heart with a sense of humbling wonder. Starting with day 4 and continuing for the rest of the trek where altitudes are lower and mostly snow-free, lush terraces carve the steep mountainsides.
Many Asian and South American farmers use terraced fields for agricultural production. Terraced fields even cascade down the mountains surrounding Peru’s Machu Picchu temple, which was built by the Incans in the mid 1400s.
I am perpetually amazed by human ingenuity. Traveling exposes you to so many people, places and randomness and each discovery is like an epiphany of human possibility (both good and bad) and how ceaseless innovation has paralleled human development since the beginning of time.
Sure they’re just steps carved into the side of a mountain, but at some point someone developed the idea, the tools and executed the idea. Just like travel: taking a dream or a passion and making it tangible.
