alyson sagala

Throughout my travels I always find that the people I meet are looking for beauty. We hike pristine mountain ranges, watch picturesque sunsets from white sand beaches, enjoy the buzzing hum of busy cafés on Saturday mornings. It’s strange that people rarely go looking for beauty in themselves, and yet ironically that is where the truest form of it can be found.

It would be absolutely false of me to say that Nepal is not serenely beautiful. Nestled between the mountains of the Himalayas, the village of Takhure is by far and away one of the most perfect places I have ever been to. But it’s not the mystical sunrises, breaking over the horizon like a rosy pink smile, or the whispering trees, or the terraced hills with their weathered faces carrying hundreds of years worth of stories to tell. The beauty I’ve found is in the Nepali people, who have welcomed foreigners from a different land with unbelievably kind open arms, the purity of their smiles like gifts I didn’t think I was worthy of receiving.

Love, we tend to forget, is a universal currency. And the people who have chosen to call this place home are the richest people I know.

I have learned countless lessons during my short time in Nepal. To recount them now within the limitations of human language almost feels like a disservice, but I can still try my best.

I’ve learned to love more heartily than I have in a long time, to love the fleetingness of moments, to love strangers that quickly become family, to love the earth as much as I always should have.

You’d be astounded by your ability to gain so much by living with so little. The luxuries the world has to offer you cannot be quantified with a price. I’ve never known so purely the joy you we are rewarded with from simply living off the land, and creating tangible, useful things with your bare hands.

There are some journeys we begin, which we don’t realize until we’re part of the way through, that we can never return the way we once were. My time here has forever changed me, and I am eternally grateful for the healing it has bestowed upon me. I hope that in time, I will be able to return the favor, with whatever it is I have to offer — with intention, with my continued growing sense of inner beauty, and most of all, with love.

Thank you, and namaste.