I mean really, why even bother? Why spend the time, money and effort climbing up a mountain that clearly doesn’t want to be climbed? If it wanted to be climbed, why didn’t people climb it during its first 2 million years of existence rather than just the last 130 years? If people are supposed to go up there, why isn’t there enough oxygen to breath properly?

These are perfectly rational arguments and commonly held opinions by many. But you’re clearly not one of them, or you wouldn’t be here, would you?

So quite simply, you must already be a bit out there to even contemplate this, right? Well, not really. In truth, you’re no more out there than anyone else. The main difference between people like you and people who would never contemplate things like this is that you have a higher level of awareness of things around you than most other people. However you got to that point, it doesn’t matter. How old you were when you got to that point, it doesn’t matter. You’re here now, and all that matters is what are you going to do with this higher level of awareness that you have been blessed, or is it cursed with? Ignorance is bliss, as they say.

Having a deeper level of awareness of things also means having a deeper level of awareness of life, and by intimation, mortality, especially your own. As such, you know the bit in the middle is what counts.

So bucket list, maybe, but what that means is in knowing you want to do something while you still can. While you’re still here. While your legs are still functioning. While you still have your faculties. And climbing a mountain, especially this mountain, in its own way is a metaphor for life.

Why? Because from the bottom it looks like there is a long way to go, so far in fact that you don’t need to worry about what comes later or around the corner. And although it will start easy, it will get harder, imperceptibly at first, but creeping up you, little-by-little, as you keep moving forwards. Along the way there will be ups, and far more downs than you could have imagined. There will be times when you want to quit, times when you want to cry, and times you want to rejoice in the moment, the beauty, the sheer unadulterated pleasure of being alive and surrounded by the sort of beauty and intoxicating sense of achievement that you can only get from doing something so extreme.

Yes, you too, can, for a few life-changing moments be the highest person on a continent of 1.3 billion people. Yes, 1.3 billion.

However your trip goes, you can be guaranteed of two things. Firstly, that you will never forget the experience, and secondly, that the mountain will teach more about yourself than you can imagine. No one leaves the mountain without an improved level of self-awareness and an increased sense of humility. Something this grand, can have no other effect.