The flood in Nepal was fortunately thousands of kilometres away.
But had I started only one day later, maybe the flight would have got cancelled.
Delhi airport was slightly flooded.
The area where I was staying, slightly flooded.
My brother commented with the following words:
"You are such a farmer of luck." (Duslbauer)
A Bavarian pet name.
I like it.
But anyways.
...
The plane lands.
Munich.
8 PM.
I thank the truly wonderful crew.
They were outstanding.
We joke around one last time.
I exhale.
No luggage to collect...
as I wear my luggage.
Perfect.
I walk through the airport, almost out of the building already.
And then...
somebody intercepts me.
I need a couple of seconds.
I must be staring at him as if I had just walked face-first into a street pole.
Then it clicks.
Lukas.
Mom and Dad too.
Waiting.
They planned a surprise.
And they got me.
Completely.
Sneaky.
And I love it.
That's what family looks like.
You disappear into the Himalayas.
And somehow, when you come back, they are standing at the airport.
And something about that feels strangely fitting.
Throughout Ladakh, I had so often felt guided from one place to the next.
By people.
By circumstances.
By coincidences.
By whatever you want to call it.
And apparently, even on the way back, I wasn't supposed to arrive alone.
I had been guided all the way out there.
And somehow, I was being guided back in too.
Welcome Back to Europe
We go for dinner.
My first culinary welcome back to Germany:
Cheese.
Cheese.
And...
more cheese.
Less food.
Less taste.
Ten times the price.
Aaaah.
How nice it is to be back in Europe.
Anyway.
We get into the car.
Drive home.
And this time, it's my turn to deliver a surprise.
For Max.
For his birthday.
His 30th.
At exactly midnight, we ring his doorbell.
To his surprise, sleeping peacefully is apparently no longer an option.
To our surprise, the door opens almost immediately.
And to our second surprise:
He's not alone.
Doris, his girlfriend, is there too.
Apparently, they had even talked about the possibility beforehand.
“Think anyone will ring the bell at midnight?”
“Nah. We're safe.
The only person crazy enough to do something like that is still flying home from India.”
Guess what.
That was me.
We all burst out laughing.
Mom had the idea.
And we executed it beautifully.
I, however, am empty.
Properly empty.
By the time I finally reach our own front door, the journey home has taken more than three days.
Three days ago:
I chose the bus out of Ladakh because I wanted one last long goodbye to the mountains.
Around twenty-two hours.
Two days ago:
Delhi.
Heat.
Noise.
Chaos.
Survival mode.
And eventually, a club.
One last party to celebrate the expedition's full success.
One day ago:
Airports.
Delays.
Talking with Gurpreet.
Flying.
Talking with Gurpreet still.
Flying again.
And now:
Home.
I sit down at the piano.
Play.
Then bed.
Gone.
My Body Is Home
I wake up.
Way too early.
Thanks, jetlag.
I cook.
Lukas and I have a three course lunch in our garden paradise.
And I keep on thinking:
Daaang.
I went deep.
Really deep.
Deeper than I had realized while I was still there.
For a moment, I look around and expect Ladakh.
But this is Germany.
I literally see mountains where there are none.
Only plains.
No vast silence.
I couldn't easily zone out anymore.
I understand every word.
Not sure I want to understand every word.
My body has made it back.
My perception hasn't.
Even my habits are still somewhere in the Himalayas.
Seatbelts somehow stopped existing in my internal world.
Apparently, they exist again.
Jetlag is very real.
But something else feels much stronger than jetlag.
Words.
Every single word seems to have gravity.
An unusual amount of gravity.
I hear not only what people say.
I hear what seems to sit underneath it.
Intention.
Expectation.
Fear.
Belief.
Assumption.
Limitation.
Sometimes it almost feels as if I can hear the thought before I hear the words.
As if people's inner worlds have become louder.
And that is not necessarily pleasant.
Sometimes it irritates me.
Sometimes it hurts.
Because suddenly I notice how much we communicate without realizing it.
How many silent things we communicate although we seemingly only use words.
How casually we throw ideas, judgments, fears and expectations at each other.
If we don't realize it, maybe it simply means we've been immersed in the same way of being for so long that it has become automatic.
It's only when we step outside of ourselves—
and then step back in—
that we can recognize our way of being for what it was.
Because it is automatic, we seem to have forgotten how powerful communication is.
There is an incredible amount happening beneath the surface.
Our inner world flows through the words.
Not noticing it doesn't mean it isn't there.
On the plane, ordinary conversations had already started sounding unbelievably superficial to me.
But maybe the people weren't superficial.
Maybe I was just somewhere else.
They were simply living inside the world I had temporarily stepped away from.
The serious world.
The normal world.
The one where matter matters enormously.
Schedules.
Jobs.
Money.
Status.
Plans.
Problems.
Opinions.
Identity.
And then a word that had increasingly gained weight in Ladakh returns once more.
Maya
Maya.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Almost every person I had a truly deep conversation with in Ladakh somehow brought me back to it.
Different people.
Different places.
Different monasteries.
Different situations.
Yet the same idea kept resurfacing.
Maya.
At first, it was philosophy.
An ancient concept.
Something people had spoken about for thousands of years.
I had come to understand it as:
The illusion.
The veil.
The world of appearances.
Matter.
Physical existence.
Something I could read about and talk about intellectually.
Interesting.
Profound.
Sure.
But still:
A concept.
And...
not mine.
It was what others had discovered for themselves.
But for me?
Still only a concept.
Somewhere along the journey, that changed.
It stopped being something I merely understood.
I began to see it.
And coming home made something click even deeper.
The entire physical existence is Maya.
The material world is real.
Obviously.
I can touch it.
I can walk through it.
I can hurt myself in it.
I can enjoy it.
I can love people inside it.
I can create in it.
But it is not everything.
The visible world is not the whole of reality.
There is something before matter.
Light.
Without body.
And suddenly, something that people had been trying to communicate for millennia no longer felt philosophical to me.
It felt obvious.
Almost absurdly obvious.
Matter is not everything.
This world is not everything.
What we see, own, fear, chase, defend and take so incredibly seriously...
is not the whole thing.
Incredible.
For me, this is enormous.
One of the biggest realizations of the entire journey.
And perhaps the strangest gift of coming home is that now I can almost watch Maya rebuild itself around me.
It's one Maya.
And somehow, it isn't.
Because every person seems to build their own version of it.
Their beliefs.
Their fears.
Their expectations.
Their rules.
Forming culture.
And now I can feel those worlds beginning to rebuild themselves inside me too.
Conversation by conversation.
Expectation by expectation.
Role by role.
Obligation by obligation.
Thought by thought.
Germany becoming Germany again.
Home becoming home again.
And me becoming “me” again.
The familiar world slowly turns solid.
The rules return.
The assumptions return.
The identity returns.
And I can feel myself being pulled back into it.
Into matter.
Into Maya.
Into the illusion.
Not because it is bad.
Not because I need to escape it.
But because I was once more reminded what it feels like when its grip loosens.
Maybe that is part of the lesson.
Not simply how to escape Maya.
But how to watch it rebuild itself.
And perhaps, if I can learn to watch it rebuild...
I can also learn to build it differently.
And maybe help others do the same.
To create a better one.
Ladakh taught me to see beyond matter.
Germany makes me feel how powerful matter can become again.
Cool, isn't it?
Another Jump
Something changed.
Another jump.
Another layer.
Whatever words I use for it will probably sound insufficient.
Consciousness.
Awareness.
Perspective.
Depth.
Call it what you want.
I experienced something I had previously only thought about through the eyes of someone else.
And suddenly enlightenment doesn't feel like some mythological state reserved for ancient masters sitting in caves.
It feels possible.
For me.
For you.
Because it's Human.
Maybe temporary.
Maybe misunderstood.
Maybe completely different from how we imagine it.
But possible.
And somewhere in the middle of all of this, another thought appears:
Was the prophecy—that I'm one of thirty-seven and a half—about this?
Who knows.
I don't.
But I have a feeling that one day, I will.
One thing's for sure.
Now.
I am experiencing something I knew from the Camino de Santiago.
That strange magic.
That simplicity.
That feeling that life suddenly becomes incredibly transparent.
Timeless.
Beyond time.
Beyond space.
Beyond the limits I had placed around my own energy.
I pushed my body a little bit too far.
I pushed my mind even further.
How beautiful.
And then?
Very spiritual.
Very enlightened.
Very profound.
My body has a slightly less philosophical interpretation.
Food.
I'm constantly hungry.
I crave sweets.
I crave salt.
I eat.
And shortly afterwards, I could eat again.
I'm constantly tired.
I sleep.
Wake up.
And could sleep again.
Apparently, while my mind is busy reconsidering the nature of reality, my body has entered one very simple state:
Recovery mode.
Eat.
Sleep.
Occasionally:
Party.
Max's birthday is today.
The next iteration of the Œuhs:
My brother's birthday follows three days later.
And then there are the presents.
T-shirts.
Prayer flags.
And katas—
ceremonial shawls blessed by His Holiness.
I wanted people at home to have something physical.
Something they could touch.
Something that would remind them:
This journey wasn't only mine.
I may have been the one walking those roads.
Sleeping in monasteries.
Crossing valleys.
Meeting monks.
But I never really traveled alone.
You were there.
In thoughts.
In messages.
In the moments when I saw something and immediately knew:
This is for you.
So I brought pieces of Ladakh home.
Something colorful.
Something sacred.
A physical reminder:
In some strange way,
we had all been there together.
I carried the journey.
But it was never only mine.
Isolation
Apart from the birthdays and slowly handing out those little pieces of Ladakh, I isolate myself as much as possible.
Carefully.
I am strangely selective about whose thoughts, words and energy I expose myself to.
I need time.
To process.
To integrate.
To let whatever happened settle.
A holy process.
Because this was not a normal trip.
It was an expedition.
My body might be present.
My mind, however, is still on its way back.
Filling the Space
I was emptied in Zongkhul.
Now comes the opposite movement.
The days begin filling again.
Family.
Friends.
Work.
Our gardens.
German.
German is definitely waiting.
And while I quietly—
or, knowing me, probably somewhat less quietly—
get back to revolutionizing German language education...
you have another job.
Read.
Because there are more stories waiting.
A lot of them.
Stories that haven't been written yet.
As the days in Germany slowly become more and more like everyday days again, I keep looking backwards.
At Ladakh.
At everything that happened.
At all those moments that already feel impossibly far away and yet strangely close.
And then I realize something funny.
I'm home.
But you aren't.
I'm already back in Germany.
You?
You're still in Zongkhul.
Still somewhere between the monastery walls, the caves, the construction workers, the rice crisis and that impossible valley.
Still standing out there in the sand.
Still looking at faces in the rocks.
Almost half of this journey hasn't been written yet.
There are roads you haven't walked.
People you haven't met.
Conversations you haven't heard.
Places you haven't seen.
Questions you don't know were asked.
Answers you don't know I received.
Moments you don't even know happened.
And over the coming days, while everyday life slowly takes hold of me again, I'll return to them.
One by one.
I'll write them down.
So you'll get to keep traveling.
Because that's the strange thing about stories.
For the person who lived them, they may already be over.
For the person reading them...
they haven't even happened yet.
So no.
Ladakh does not end in Zongkhul.
Zongkhul was where I reached fulfillment.
It is not where you stop traveling.
There is more to discover.
I made it home.
You didn't.
You're still in Zongkhul.
So now, let me come back for you.
