Where is my mind these days? I’ve always had problems concentrating, and these days its getting worse. Maybe its an iron deficiency. I do hate broccoli after all, but I really think its because my time in Nepal is growing short.

In two months time I’ll be heading home. Where has the time gone? But in the same breath I’ll say that last November seems so long ago.

I find it hard to concentrate on things here when my mind is preparing for home. There is still so much I want to accomplish before I go home. Things I want to learn, people I want to meet, places I want to visit.

When my mind goes before my body, consequences arise. My defenses against the everyday annoyances of living abroad go down. There are certain aspects that you never get over, but you at least learn to ignore them. When I lose concentration, I lose my defenses.

Going into Kathmandu these days takes it out of me. The traffic, pollution, demonstrations, horns blaring; simply put, chaos. I had been used to it all. I had even gotten to the point of laughing at the chaos, enjoying the madness, succumbing to its intoxicating sense of freedom. Eventually, however, the exotic appeal runs dry. It saps your strength, shows the sense of freedom for what it is; an oppressing blanket of confusion and black-lung. And it doesn’t make it any easier when you go about it alone.

This city wears on you. And there’s no way around it. This is Kathmandu.

But I still have two months left. Its the final push. The summit is in sight, I can do this. Thankfully I still have a few oxygen tanks stashed along the way.