Reading Week
Once every semester we get a week off, the so-called reading week. As the name suggests, I spent my reading week this semester reading academic literature and preparing for my classes in advance, as well as studying vigorously for my upcoming exams. Right? Well, wrong. Rather, I like to take my reading weeks as nature weeks – finally having the time to explore this beautiful country, because let’s be honest, apart from all the adventures it has to offer, Kathmandu is probably the least physically attractive place of the entire country of Nepal. This time, I ended up going for a trek in the Langtang valley, which had been recommended to me multiple times by several people. Langtang valley was greatly affected by the 2015 earthquake, but since a couple of years tourism there is starting to thrive again. Yet in some villages on the trek, the shock and the trauma is still almost physically tangible. And every single local person we got to talk to during our trek had a person in...