Mountains!

When I was a 6 years old, my parents took me on a trip to Sofia by car. We lived in Varna, at the seaside, back then, which is 420 km away, so that we had to cross the entire country to get to the capital. In Bulgaria, this means traveling all along the mountain Stara Planina (meaning Old Mountain). I was not in school yet, but traveling through the beautiful, wild and lonely countryside made me feel older. I dreamt about visiting those places with my future schoolmates, on my own, without my parents. This is my first memory about the mountains. And this is how I fell in love with them.

Later on, when I joined school we used to travel to the mountains at least once a year, usually in wintertime. Those journeys definitely inspired me for the rest of the year. Even back then, as a child. I love the way I get lost in the mountains wildness, its shadow greenness, how little and unimportant I become among endless hills, how gratuitous language and speech get on the narrow paths. Since that time, I have dreamt to visit the Himalaya. To breath in its dry odour, and look out from the roof of the World.

The first time I had the chance to fulfil this wish of mine, was last November. In the last two weeks of my thirtiest year...