I love so many things about travelling. One of my favourites is meeting amazing human beings with the most incredible stories… some that make you reflect on your life, others that inspire you, and some that just make your experience a thousand times more fun.
When Mel left Kathmandu to learn to commando roll in grade three rapids in a kayak, I booked myself into a more sedate activity, a Nepalese cooking class. It was here that I met Hagit, a 57 year old women from Israel. We spent the afternoon shopping in the local market for our ingredients, before getting our aprons on and cooking Aloo Paratha (flatbread stuffed with a spiced mixture of mashed potato, with salsa, mint and yogurt sauces).
It was over lunch where we almost inhaled the delicious food we had just cooked, that I learnt how Hagit came to travel in Nepal.
It was all due to a conversation she had with her son, who had just experienced his own adventure. He thought his mum needed an adventure of her own, and to take a break from being a wife, a mother to her grown children and a nurse. It just so happened that her sons friends mother was going to Nepal for seven weeks and then India for a further six weeks. With a little coaxing, a week later Hagit met this women, asked the hospital for three months off, had her travel injections and was flying to Nepal - and all within the month.
Her first adventure was landing in Nepal with this women she’d only met once. The plane didn’t land on the runway but on the grass next to it! The wheel didn’t come down, so the pilot made an emergency landing without telling passengers to ‘brace brace’! Oxygen masks came down, but there was no hysteria… everyone was in too much shock she said, as the wing was smashed into the grass, and passengers exiting the plane from the emergency slides. Hagit was on the Israeli news that night!
And then her second unexpected adventure. Three weeks later, her new friend told her she wanted to continue this journey on her own and then left Hagit. On a whim Hagit had taken three months off work for a journey she didn’t plan on taking, with a person she expected to travel with for three months and felt scared about what to do next. When I met Hagit three weeks later, she was positively glowing and her smile was infectious. She fell in love with the adventure of travelling on her own… becoming more confident with her english, learning to use the internet in a way she’d never needed it before, deciding what fun she wanted to experience day to day, and more importantly meeting people, sharing stories and adventures with others from all over the world.
Hagit was due to leave for India the Wednesday after the first earthquake. I don’t know where she is now or if she is ok. I have emailed her, but I am still yet to receive a reply. Hagit is an inspiring women who showed me and all those she met along her travels, that you are never too old to start your adventure. I just hope she is now having an amazing time in India.