I first started backpacking through Girl Scouts. After that, the next major trip that got me into it was when I spent a week backpacking the Himalayan Mountains the summer before my freshman year. 

I spent a week there, and it was a guided trip with my family and 14 other people. It was really fun, and there was even a flood, so we ended up getting evacuated from our top post. We hiked up the mountain when it started raining. We kept going up, and the bridges ahead of and behind us broke, so we were trapped. The locals who live in nearby mountain huts set up a zipline for us, and we got evacuated. The area that we evacuated to had more people than it was supposed to, so my group went to one of the local huts. There were 20 of us sleeping on a platform of 10 by 10 feet. That was my favorite backpacking trip. 

I love the fact that I don’t have access to the Internet, so I’m not thinking about the work I have to do and relaxing instead. I also like that I can get away from social media. Something I dislike is having to haul my trash around while backpacking. I really love everything else about it, though. 

I would love to go to the Himalayan Mountains again. I read this book called Wild by Cheryl Strayed, where she backpacked the Pacific Coast Trail in California on a 100-day trip. That’s also something I really want to do in the future. 

To someone who is interested in trying this out, I would say if you’re willing to survive without clean supplies for a day, definitely do it.