Thailand. Pai. Thai BBQ, snacks, salads, beer, chess, weed. Its kind of an chess food evening. My Thai friend smokes his bong in the background, in the front the meat is sizzling, noodles, tofu, ginger flowers boiling in water and on the BBQ. A friend from Jamaica with long rastas is there, probably the toughest nut on the chessboard. He doesn’t smoke. “Yes I know, I'm a Jamaica Rasta but no weed.” But his face, his expression, radiates this pure Jamaican warm, relaxed "everything is smooth bro" energy with every word and every sentence. We play chess way too focused. “Bro, I gotta say, that was a really smart move. You’re a sharp thinker, my man’s got the chess moves.” I win twice, and only with total concentration. I also play against the Thai guy who said he has never lost a game. Long open hair, flowing colourful Thai shirts, all very stylish, well-placed tattoos and rings. He looks like a real little Thai artist. He loses every game. Like the buddy he is, he says: “Thank you, I learn through every game.” They invite me for a beer, but I don’t drink alcohol. “Yes I know, the German who doesn’t drink beer.” and my Jamaican friend replies: “Man I respect that. You know what you want. I think you’re one of these people, these people who have a light. I appreciate it. Respect man.” It feels good, being only among Thai and one Jamaican. No Germans, no tourists(except me).

Twelve hours later. Apparently there is a market here every Saturday that is really a festival in disguise. Everyone dances. Kids. Adults. Glowing faces. The who is who and everyone who heard about it is here. Everyone. Everyone except… there are almost no Thai people here. It is as if a foreign culture had been built here and is celebrated by tourists. Musicians from all over the world. Flow artists. Acrobats. Coconuts in masses. Animals. Kids playing games. DJs. Smoothies. A lot of skin. A lot of “who cares, this is us.” While the musicians and the DJs groove deeper and deeper into it together, the weather switches from sunshine to a rain shower and everyone just cheers even more. The air tastes of sweet life.

An elderly Thai man has grooved his way onto the dance floor while an American DJ plays old-school music and brings west coast vibes to north Thailand. He came to Asia eight years ago on a one-way ticket from San Francisco and stayed. Now he has a three-year-old daughter and speaks Thai. He always smiles. “This is a really good place to live.” Maybe he is right.

This area is full of new developments, built in a few years on former fields, with hip yoga, pilates, sound healing studios and smoothie cafés. Everything looks modern, everything looks American, everything looks gated-community influenced. And in the end there is truth. Thai don’t come here because they can’t afford Pai.

I go to the toilet and a sign on the wall whispers at me:

You can’t make someone else’s choices, so you shouldn’t let someone else make yours. Follow your heart.

I’m on it. Are you?

If you haven’t listened to the last episode yet, this would be a good moment.

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I am deeply inspired and moved by this conversation because it carries so many distinct qualities. At the very end, something completely new happened: he turned the tables and interviewed me. I have rarely felt such peace as I did among the monks here. Buddhism has a subtle, inconspicuous, quiet power.

Kathmandu can be a loud and overcrowded city, so the prospect of sitting on the mountain overlooking the city to record a conversation with him was attractive. And I was curious to listen to what the monk was listening to. Over a thousand monks from Tibet, Nepal, India, Thailand, Germany, Israel and across the world gathered here, alongside more than two thousand non-monks. On day one I was still curious, on day two incredulous, and after three days I extended my visa and decided to stay. I am deeply grateful to Pema. This conversation is just a fraction, the melting tip of an iceberg that cannot easily be put into words.

​When I ask him how to take these concepts out of philosophy and apply them in daily life, it leaves him briefly speechless. He explains that he became a monk precisely to focus on the theories and practices. Monks are pioneers of altruistic humanity, researching how to refine human existence, while people in daily life endure pain, suffering, frustration, hunger, greed, and mental chaos. Parallel to this, in China, the first robot monk is presented and blessed at a ceremony.

​Frequently, they recite Tibetan mantras for an hour in a devout, bassy, humming murmur. A carpet of sound and vibration weaves around me. I close my eyes, knowing that vibration might be the only form that carries information and energy, trying to tune into the frequency.

When I question why one should work toward being reborn as something better just to exit the cycle of rebirth, asking if that negates the beauty of what exists right now, making us lose the taste for life because we are only eager to exit, he humbly admits that he is still learning too. His humble nature easily brings up the thought that this might be an escape from reality, finding safety in monastery walls and routine rituals.

The enlightened person is a visitor in a prison who can walk in and walk out, while the person identified with suffering remains trapped inside, remains the prison itself. The founder of the monastery later clarified that the goal is not to step out of life, but to step out of suffering. You can break your foot and observe the pain without being trapped in suffering. It is about living, fully, but free from suffering. Well. This and much more can be witnessed, listened to, or watched on YouTube, Spotify, and every podcast platform. I am more than thrilled to hear your thoughts on the episode, so please feel free to reach out to me once you've listened to it. Thank you Tergar Monastery. Thank you Pema. Thank you life for this beautiful "coincidence.

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Last morning. Love to everyone, to all staff members at the hotel. A spontaneous last chai with a sharp, warmhearted journalist, then a taxi to the airport. I observe myself once again. There is this guy traveling, living, writing, creating.

​I am infinitely grateful to India once again. The diversity of impressions inspires me to explore my own inner diversity on a deeper level. I surprise myself every time, just as India surprises me. What do I take with me? Friendship. Less dust on my own light. More courage to be myself and to celebrate that.

​Countless ideas. From the startup founder spirit of the first barefoot shoe company in Delhi, to completely new insights into religions, philosophy, and cultures, to the fearlessness and noble devotion of the Sikhs. The direct, warmhearted, almost reckless nature of the people. How often I find myself in conversations with neighboring motorcycles and scooters in traffic jams. Boundless willingness to help, warmth, hospitality. Everyone wants to help you, show you the way, invite you for food or tea, hand you their phone to make a call, or simply give you a ride unasked. A genuine curiosity about the "you." Who are you, what moves you, let us get to know each other and talk.

​At the same time, everyone wants something from you. Money, photos, attention, winning you as a customer. Ancient customs. Cover your knees here, cover your hair there. Half-naked bathing in the river here, half-naked sleeping on the street there. The desire for connection is unique. India has no boundaries, or completely different ones. It feels as if it is everyone's right to know who you are, how you are doing, and what you are doing. Netiquette barely exists. You shout a question to someone in passing to ask for directions, and someone answers. No “thank you”, no “please”.

​Mountains, rivers, lakes, desert, jungle, tropics, snow, tigers. A world of 1,600 languages, where only 40 percent of 1.4 billion people speak Hindi. Understanding here is a massive topic that opens up an entire universe. Chaos and Inspiration. India demands everything: from you, from me, from itself, constantly. India has so much potential, and it forces me to recognize my own deeper than ever. Thank you for this time. Lots of love. See you next time.

​P.S. For the first time, I experience the privilege of having my name called out over the airport loudspeakers. I forgot the time because I was writing. I hurry to the gate.

We are human beings defined by double standards and fallibility. That fallibility is a gift, for it draws us into an eternal dance between right and wrong, black and white, and every shade of grey in between: teaching and being taught, learning and making mistakes, fear and courage, grief and joy, shadow and light. Perhaps that is our only true purpose. I walk here through the most beautiful old town streets, surrounded by the Himalaya, snow-covered peaks on the horizon. They call this place the gateway to heaven and I can feel why.

I almost interviewed the Dalai Lama. Almost. His team sent a gentle refusal: "On 6 July 2026, we celebrated His Holiness’s 91st birthday. In recent years, with careful attention to safeguarding His Holiness’s health and well-being, his schedule has been gradually reduced... Regrettably, we are unable to accommodate most of these requests."

Walking through the beautiful old streets of Leh, surrounded by the Himalayas. Palatial hotels built in royal Tibetan woodwork stand beneath snow-capped peaks. A wild-looking, vagabond Sadhu asks if I’ll buy him a tea. Sure, why not. We walk to the one open chai shop in silence. Then, he sits across from me like an intervention: “so, how’s life going for you?” and we engage in a deep conversation. He explains how everything can be a teacher, if you want to see it that way, then asks: Want to see a Sikh temple? We cover our heads and walk through. Later, in the temple kitchen, free food and chai for anyone, any faith. He never needed the tea at all… He explains the Sikh are about 500 years old, welcome everyone, help with whatever you need and then suddenly, he says: I’ll clean up a bit, stay here, meditate, have another chai and starts cleaning the temple like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Street dogs get fed by animal lovers, a cracker thrown here, half a meal there. They barked at me every night and morning, fanatically, a whole pack, and I was afraid. Maybe their barking was never territory. Maybe it was: we are despairing, we are starving, we need food. Isn't it strange that only my perspective changes my emotional reaction? That is the magic. That is the art of living. That is the power of shaping.

Whatever you see, want, and think about life, I can only remind myself, you, everyone: Trust! Trust! Trust! Trust! Trust! There is nothing more beautiful than trusting.

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"I met many people at the end of their life who realized that they did not good. You young people should be aware of it. One day it might be too late."

After being woken up by loud knocking, the founder of the orphanage stands in my room. Wait. No. It is his office where I sleep. “Good morning, I want to hear your opinion and your views.” What a charming and warm way. He is in his mid-60s, open and curious like a child. He worked for a long time as a politician in India, until he realized he only wants to do good. “I like you young people. You are open. You learn. My goal is to connect the whole globe. And that every being is living in their heart.” Slightly overwhelmed, nonchalant, amused by the matter-of-factness that the first morning conversation was philosophical and theological, I get dressed to make the situation a bit more presentable. And brush my teeth during the intercultural conversation. With toothbrush and toothpaste in my mouth, I share my concerns about punishment, because I found it alienating to see how naturally it was lived out. A child at the orphanage makes a mistake, the guard punishes him for it. Not a hard punishment. My companion and I were offered to impose another one, cause one of the boys used bad words. After trying to grasp the situation, she has a brilliant idea. As a positive punishment, the boy should say to everyone in the orphanage a compliment, a positive thing. For bad words, distributing a multiple of good words. The guard, supposedly rigid in his faith, is thrilled and allows it. In a few minutes, an agitated class turns into a more loving group. “My mission is love”, says Hamed, the Founder. Love is the universal, transcendent force. All religions and beliefs can relate to it. Whether the village in Kashmir or the ashram in Varanasi. Whether Islam or Hinduism. The mission is absolutely the same. The glow in the eyes of the kids is the same. In the evening, I am embraced or held tight by four kids at the same time. When I hug the boy who arrived most recently at the orphanage to put him to bed at night, he clings to me full of love.

Gigantic, green, fog-shrouded slopes, opulent trees, graceful cliffs. Everything submerged in mist. The monsoon has left its marks. Parts of Kashmir are completely flooded. Houses collapsed from rivers. Destroyed. Shops flattened to the ground. Swallowed. 2025, In Jammu and Kashmir, an attack on tourists occurred in Pahalgam, killing minimum 26 tourists, followed by military strikes between Pakistan and India. Politically, the old Kashmir conflict intensified. The german embassy explicitly warns from traveling there. Everywhere is military, checkpoints, restrictions, official warnings. I read this after being here for five days. Having been to Pahalgam multiple times. While conflicts rage around us, my heart feels exhausted, chastened, grounded, hurt. Meanwhile the Indian education minister resigns over protests. In Europe, forests burn due to drought. The world throbs. It wants change. It aches for it. I ask myself, what is my part in it?

Standing on a hill by Wular Lake, pondering into the night, my thoughts take the shape of darkness, broken by light reflections on the horizon. “Hey, sir. You want to join us?” The hotel owner and a friend sit at the table. The friend is a police commissioner responsible for the area around the lake. He admires Karl Marx and sees himself as a prisoner of the system. Police officers in India have no comparable claim to vacation. They work. They serve. They are always available. Why not break out? “Then I go to jail.” Without bitterness and regret, it is rather a quiet, settled reality. He saw a lot, opened his mouth, was dampened by colleagues.

“We in Asia are so busy with materialism, money, and power. But you guys, you enjoy life more”.

Do we? I talk about how much the discrepancy between philosophical idea and missing real-world application irritates me. I believe in the power of thoughts and community. He does too. But if he has to go to Delhi because of the protests, his task is to end them. So he enjoys the evening with us. Free and trapped. Through terrorism, Kashmir has changed, to the regret of both, because India is such a hospitable country and Kashmir so beautiful. Whether in the pub in Berlin or at the largest lake in India. Conversations from the heart with intellect. From Rousseau, to Hegel, to Shah Rukh Khan and the question of whether we need a new era of philosophy. One that does not just set up theories that fail in practice and application, but theories that include body, mind, and soul, the reality of everyday life, and thus empower the human to unfold their potential and bundle it in the power of community. And the Muslim friend quotes Marx: "Religion is the opium of the people," making his own philosophical judgment. He is trapped in a certain, self-chosen tragedy. A man who finds his comfort in philosophy, while knowing that until retirement he is a slave to his system.

Kashmir is a special place. A well-filled bag of culture, history, conflicts, spirituality, and beautiful landscapes. One day, in the rain on a scooter, stuck in traffic in Srinagar between gigantic trucks transporting horses and chickens. All drivers turn off their engines, and light, funny conversations start with the neighboring motorcyclists. One of the drivers answers, when I ask him what his favorite place in Kashmir is: Wular Lake. And precisely because of this recommendation, four days later we sit in the car on the way to Wular Lake. There they are: two small fishing boats with giant nets, scooping something green and unidentifiable into buckets, weighing them, and loading them into cars. We watch curiously. Surprised to see two Europeans here, the locals show us how to peel these fruits and let us taste: water chestnuts, very, very delicious. One of the men asks if we want to do a boat tour. Just as I wished for it that morning, it happens. Sitting on the boat, the young Kashmiri boy asks if we want momos. He was just in town and has some left over. So we sit on the boat while his father steers, enjoying the view: momos, water chestnuts, water plants, fishing boats, everything feels like a completely different reality. We pass a small fishing village called Bangladesh. The expanse of the lake is poetic, vast and graceful. Since the clear lake constantly reflects the mountain range behind it, we drive past the exact same picture in mirrored form, broken only by the claws of an eagle catching something at the surface and effortlessly dissolving the illusions. Father and son invite us to their home. A loving, modest house: tomatoes, corn, chickens, cows, cats. We drink delicious tea and eat roasted water chestnuts. The grandfather sits on the terrace, smoking an antique-looking hookah with sweet tobacco, constantly laughing.

The Kashmir Shaivism, a form of hinduism is the realization that the whole universe, with all its beauty, pain, and material world, is not an illusion, but free, dancing consciousness itself. God is not a distant being in the sky, but the infinite liveliness experiencing itself through your own eyes, thoughts, and feelings. Human limitation is a playful hiding game of the divine that forgot itself in the density of matter. Liberation means the touching recognition that you have always been the unlimited wholeness you are searching for.

How would it be here without political tensions? But maybe that is the holistic experience. Maybe Kashmir wants to bring you into this exact polarity to realize that everything coexists simultaneously. You can have the most beautiful evening and be desperate and sad the next morning. You can experience impressive panoramas on a hike, meet locals in remote, relatively untouched villages who look at you bewildered with big eyes, and at the same time arrive home exhausted, dirty, and wet because of dusk and rain in the evening.

Beauty or its opposite are only judgments. The opulence of creation exists in all parts and dimensions simultaneously, playing with you, leading you into contrasts, inspiring you, challenging you, letting you learn only to enchant you again immediately after

It is almost as if life here challenges you a bit more to dive into it, only to show you how beautiful it can still be. Life calls out to you: “Experience!

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Yesterday, after the podcast recording, when we drove to my musician friend's concert afterwards, there was a photographer there who suggested taking photos for me. My actor existence was immediately tickled, and I went into headshot mode. When I looked at the photos today, I saw a man who looks like me and also looks like someone else. I saw someone who radiates a kind of life that surprises me, fascinates me, makes me curious, but is also on some level foreign to me. That is absurd. I look at myself and partly don't recognize myself anymore, and that is not weighted negatively at all. It is not meant to be melancholy or mournful either. I am simply facing someone!

Is it a goal to always be authentic?

Is that not another pressure point against myself? Fully embrace yourself also means to just lovingly embrace this struggle, to acknowledge it, to have a vision for my values and myself, and forgive myself.
Perhaps I am the person I always wanted to be. Perhaps I already am. Maybe there is nothing to do, only to enjoy. To travel the world, to write, to love, to live. I am of the opinion that one shouldn't just have one identity, fit into one box, pursue one goal, and have one dream. Life is so much more. I am for discovering ourselves anew every day. I am for diversity being the highest virtue. I am for intuition being the most sacred gift. India is a country with a diversity that would be enough for an entire planet. Everyone has their justification, their beliefs, and language. It is a country that can only be experienced, lived. I made many friends here, received invitations to weddings, birthdays, trips, cooking nights, everything fleeting and at the same time binding. What do I take with me from Bir. Dreams. Plans. Friends. The idea of coming back in autumn. Forever the best chai recipe and Malai Kofta cooking skills. Peace. Balance.

But it is also the Wild Wild East. Inner-Indian racism, 1,600 spoken languages (and only about 40% of the total population speaks Hindi) and above that the attempt to unite a country with almost 1.5 billion people. Rules are rather loose concepts. Everyone does what they want. Power stands above money. Many who preach religion and live corruption. It is a wild land. Tiger. Snakes. Monkeys, some of them dangerous. Landslides. Cities regularly flooded by monsoons or overflowing rivers. Power outages. Chaos. Cows, animals everywhere. Zara is sold on the roadside in the street dust. A donkey chases lost across the road left and right, three dogs want to play with him or hunt him, and the traffic adapts and is halfway brought to a standstill. What I experience now are AI-generated billboards. Tradition and modernity interwoven into apps and startups trying to grasp the Zeitgeist of India these days. It is exciting to see what a country like India makes of its possibilities in the times we are in. The people are partly totally smartphone-dependent and at the same time totally open to the future and modern in their heads.
There are customs that seem carved in stone. Take the village of Malani, where other Indians are not allowed to touch the locals or their property. You are punished if you touch a house, for example. Money for transactions must be placed on the floor so the local picks it up, just to avoid any touch. The struggle for survival is etched into the marrow here.

In the last weeks it was said that I have dark qualities, that I cannot be grasped, that I have many faces. I like to stay in the darkness. For me, these are alchemical processes. In the darkness I can see the light more clearly. In the darkness I can also see the darkness more clearly.

Just like a firefly sparkles tenderly, silently, harmlessly, softly glows, and the efficient mind asks: What is that for? That makes no sense at all. A total waste of energy. Exactly like that the artist writes his songs, his texts, makes his films, without asking: What makes sense? What is lucrative? That is the beauty of art. Art rejects concepts of this kind because art alone is enough for art. Art says: I live. Art says: blue. Art says: scarlet paintings on the bathroom floor. Like science, art is free. The art wants nothing, like love, art is free. It does not want to convert, convince, or lecture anyone.
When I ask my Indian friend what he thinks about love, he says exactly that: Love is everywhere. He loves everything. He is in love with everything. That is what art means, to be in love with life. To love life, to love love. Enjoy the love. Experience what there is to experience.

Go out, live, enjoy, be brave. Love life in all its facets. Live your life. Enjoy love. Write! Fall! Curse! Stand up! Learn! Give.

How do I manage to hold my parts in love, to accept them?
By letting go of who I want to be.
By being who I am.

There are so many lives in me that want to be lived. So many encounters that tickle different parts of me, so many moments that were and will be. I want to be someone who has the courage to look life deeply in the eyes, to meet its chances with a full heart, full devotion, full courage, full beauty, full intuition, and full honesty.

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The Indian boxer I’ve known for a few hours considers it briefly, then he knows immediately. “Peace of mind.” I’m surprised. “Really, that’s your biggest dream?”

“Yes bro, that’s it.” Simple. His life’s dream. He’s a boxing champion in his weight class, in this state, a giant by Indian standards, tall, solidly built, completely charming, completely loving. “My boss said I shouldn’t go into fights, because I shouldn’t show my power,” he says. About half an hour later, an argument at the party threatens to turn into a fight and I instinctively want to step in. He pulls me back. “No, no, no. We don’t have to show our power.” Completely casual about it.

Loose, cheerful, loving, relaxed, exactly what I had wanted. After many days of focused work and routine that had done me good, I had been longing for exactly this kind of evening. So I follow my intuition, go out, meet people, and the universe gives me exactly what I needed. I have experienced many moments on this journey that are magic. I feel something, I think something, and sometimes I don’t even say it out loud. Everything falls into place. I land at the monastery. Through circumstances I get to know the best paragliding pilot around, and he teaches me. I trickle into the clique of established pilots, become part of them. I end up in the most beautiful places, the most beautiful spots. Life seduces me. I meet the most incredible people, so many possibilities are put in front of me. Then comes the chance to take a film role in South India, and I start to fixate on it, imagining how beautiful it would be, building a whole universe around the anticipation. I know this well. I know how film roles seduce you. You imagine how it could be. Of course it does something to you, emotionally.

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Then, six hours later, my agent calls. “Nah, not after all.” Immediately I feel as if something were “lost.” Disappointed, this mood takes over, and I don't see much of the beauty around me. I get the news during a game night with friends. An Indian friend has cooked incredible Indian food. Later he shows me how to make masala chai, following a traditional, original, brilliant recipe. In the last weeks and months I’ve met so many friends, experienced so many people, gathered so many experiences that touch my soul deeply. Life, 24/7, and I put my energy into focusing on the loss. That’s wrong. I set out on this path because I play with life, because I dance with life, because I love life and life loves me, and none of that changes. If I don’t get a role, because it was one shooting day or two, because it’s a small role, then maybe something much better, much more beautiful is coming, something I can’t see or recognize yet. But the moment it arrives, I will notice. Thank you, life. Thank you for guiding me. Thank you for bringing me exactly where I’m supposed to go. I trust you, and I know: you trust me too. Thank you for all these experiences.

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So why not trust sooner, then. Why do we presume to know where we currently stand, as if we know what’s good for us? Why am I in India right now? Surely I didn’t spend months, armed with an encyclopedia, an atlas, and a history book, studying every country in the world, debating which one might be the ideal country for my situation. No, my intuition “suggested” it to me. And where does intuition come from? Harari says it’s like an algorithm, shaped by your experience, that suggests things accordingly. So we all have our own inner life-Netflix-recommendation of which film we want to experience now, and we can follow it or not. But do we see through what “the algorithm wants”? I doubt it. I doubt that we fundamentally see through much at all. Whether it’s financial security, starting a family, building a career, traveling the world, tinkering with phones, cooking chai, these are just infinitely many expressions of life. But do we really, I mean really, have influence over which of these we “like”? Steven Pinker says in The Blank Slate we are 50% our genes and 50% our formative childhood experiences. Which leaves no percent of “freedom” left over, because we simply follow our programming. So why stress about it so much, then. Just follow it, with enjoyment. And don´t overcomplicate it (like me. now.)

Discover. Play.

What remains?

Trust.

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Every day, we drive the mountain up. The first time, that road gave me anticipation, respect, a little fear. By now it is a habit trip. Today my intuition sent me a lot of signals and I wanted to ignore every one of them. It started with not wanting to get out of bed. After training I was in a good state, but I did not really want to fly, and I did not want to work either. So I read, and enjoyed it. A beautiful, slightly feral, white and grey husky lay down at my feet and dozed there for hours.

But, to train, I need to fly, so I´m back in the car. Driving up the mountain road. The driver has never flown. One tandem was enough for him. He loves to drive, and you can see it. I have never seen anyone take a mountain faster. On a single lane road he overtakes everything on an imaginary second one, his horn dosed just enough to warn the cars ahead that there is a madman back here who would like to pass. He drives up the mountain faster than other people drive down. As if he wanted to be as quick as the gliders. I think he manages it. For a week now, I have been learning to fly.

In the manual I am studying for the licence, there is a list of syndromes a pilot has to watch for. One of them is the Icarus syndrome. Up there it means something very literal. Do not fly too high. I know why. Gliders get sucked into clouds. The canopy collapses. As the story goes, one pilot fell from five thousand metres and survived only because his glider caught in the trees and tore itself open, and the lines, which are genuinely strong, held him. I do not want to live that. Yesterday I had two moments where I was close enough to a cloud to feel it start to pull me in. And the strange thing is how distorted it all is. You have no other visual reference. How do you know how big a cloud is? There is no direct physical mass. Just an enormous event in front of you, and it could be five metres away, or fifty, or five hundred, and behind it, endless sky. Anyone who has stood in a stadium knows how the dimensions warp, how you only get a sense of the scale from the size of the players. Now picture that inside a cloud. Up top, I unpack my gear, get ready to fly, and the moment everything is inspected and prepared, the first thunderclaps crash over me. So I pack up again. Wait. Drink chai. A quarter of an hour later the driver waves me back into the car, and we go down. Up. Down. That has been the rhythm of these days. Bir has turned into a kind of Indian Neukölln and Prenzlauer Berg, loud, en vogue, party-open, kids coming up to smoke and celebrate, every bar with its live music night. And the gliding scene long ago understood how valuable this place is for its natural conditions.

Back to Ikarus. That day, a lot of people wanted a lot of things from me. I could feel it tearing my head apart. A learning pilot asked me for course material and I sent it absent-mindedly while answering another email, while someone beside me asked a question out loud, while two dogs started fighting half a metre away, snarling, wrecking themselves. My system was over-stimulated from the last days. Lost in thought and irritated, I tried to push the two of them away with my foot. A small, dosed shove, nothing more, so they would take it somewhere else and I could have some quiet in my head. The second my foot moved, the beautiful husky bit down. Its fur seemed too beautiful to be wild. And I went, in an instant, from a scattered head to clear focus. A wave of pain shot through me. I screamed, shook the dog off with a kick, sat down, tried to digest it. The friend I had been talking to said “do you not want to take your shoe and sock off and see what is going on?” He was right. I went to my room, took everything off, and watched the blood begin to well out. I washed it in the shower, disinfected, put on wound cream and acted as if it was nothing, until the same friend said “DUDE, that might be a wild dog, do you not want to get it checked.” He was right again.

A little later I am sitting in the Tibetan hospital. A petite doctor, with a highly interested look. She inspects, and there it is. The fangs had dug through shoe and sock into the flesh and left two beautifully shaped furrows. Blood welled out of the wound, indifferent, like a gentle Himalayan brook that flows without will and without pressure.

Why do I write about this in such detail? To open a contrast. To play with your expectation. Because it was maybe the most important and the most beautiful experience of these last days. Not the bite. What the bite provoked.

I digested it, sat down, and right away I fell in with a group of Indians, and for a week we became something like family, classmates, fellow travellers who suddenly did everything together. We argued about Indian philosophy, religion, spirituality, values, East and West. We strolled around, I limped behind, drank chai wherever we felt like it, and laughed a surprising amount. The group was completely thrown together, and exactly because of that it fit. We drove at night to remote viewpoints, watched the stars glow, caught shooting stars. As if it had never been any other way. One evening, after the daily ritual of watching the sun go down behind the wide gorges of the Himalaya, we heard music. We went. We made friends with almost everyone, got drinks bought for us, and at some point I was in the middle of a group dancing deep, traditional Indian dances, who were wildly thrilled that I joined in. The dance, fittingly, has you hopping mostly on one leg, with the other stretched up into the air, the arms moving wild. The leg, in my case, worked fine.

The last days I had been deep in it. Working, becoming a pilot, sport. All of it fine. The dog just wanted me to have a different experience. Coincidence? I do not think so. Coincidence that after a week my foot is strong enough again to start and to land, exactly as the group dissolves and moves on?

It is always like this. Man makes a plan and the universe laughs about it. The plan was never the goal. The goal is not the goal, and no, I am not going to tell you it is the journey. But the goal has a function. To get you moving. And once you are moving, stay open. Stay curious. Stay free. My German head does not always like that. I had made myself a plan.

All the things the world tells you are inefficiencies are where life actually happens.

High up, at two and a half thousand metres, in the silence of the night, watching the stars, one thought came to me. The stars are a gift from the universe, to remind us every day of our own infinity, our own timelessness.

Nothing is worth losing my peace, right? You remember? Sadhu Ji was maybe right. In case you didn’t listen, here is the last episode or read the last article about him.

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Ceremonies from early until late, every day. Harmonic ones. Wild ones. Funny ones. Creepy ones. All of it veiled in drifting smoke. Sometimes a shallow, stuffy air, sometimes sharp, intense clouds from the ghats, where corpses burn forever, day and night. Ceremonies that affirm life, ceremonies that worship the darkness. I’ll never forget how the sun fights its way blood-red through the smog over Varanasi, to mirror itself in a sublime, shining gold on the holy river Ganges.

Whoever was born and grew up in a city like this must have had a special and intense start into life.

Listen to the episode

There, in the ashram of the Aghor Foundation, I meet the guru who lives there. Sadhu Ji. Someone who left family and the worldly behind to… serve the world, the community, the city. As a test from his own guru he lived for several years on the street, with no possessions or any wealth at all. He wasn’t allowed to beg, only to accept gifts. Sleeping outside. How he sees the world. How he sees humanity. Why, and how, a life feels when you no longer fear death. That’s what we talked about. And out of one conversation came an invitation, and afterwards I stayed two more days.

If there’s one thing I’m beginning to understand more and more, it’s why we humans are here on earth. Rebirth happens because we haven’t fully realized our human potential yet. What does it mean to realize your human potential?It’s as if we humans really have only two tasks. First: recognize your boundless, unfiltered, pure essence. Second: find a form in which you want to serve humanity with all your being, with all your heart, with all your devotion. Sadhana, from Sanskrit, translates as “personal practice.” It should be a daily ritual. It should be so simple that you can do it every day. Meditation, breath work, yoga, whatever. The only task is to lay yourself open, and make your own possibilities experienceable. Because we nourish ourselves, at some point we can be so nourished that our own pot is full, full of love, full of life, and then it overflows. Like a river so flooded that it has more than enough for itself and spills over the surrounding banks, nourishing them, watering them. That is called Seva. Seva means selfless service. And serving here shouldn’t be taken too literally. It can be art, it can be accounting, it can be cleaning. It can be any conceivable form of serving. I know a theater director in Berlin who is selflessly available every day and solves every issue the theater has. He serves that theater. It can be a devoted bus driver who always drives the same route and makes sure he takes every passenger along, that everyone is okay. It can be, and I’ve seen this a few times on the Deutsche Bahn, a good-humored conductor who gives every person who boards the feeling of being welcome, of being right. It can be a street musician who stands out there every day and makes music for everyone, whether he earns money from it or not. The examples could go on endlessly.

Idealism lives here.

Full Conversation

Listen to the full conversation with Sadhu Ji, recorded in the ashram. Thank you for the time. Thank you for the moments. Thank you for reading, and thank you for listening. Thank you, Sadhu Ji, Akshit, the Aghor Foundation, Varun, and the boat driver in Varanasi.

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He was born in this city and started his spiritual path at an early age, renouncing society and living on the streets for years to detach from everything

In this episode:

• What an Aghori actually is and how life can be like.

• What he believes happens when we die, and why he is not afraid of it

• The teaching he lives by and his daily routine that

Support the work: https://paypal.com/paypalme/robsili

LINKS Sadhu Ji / Aghor Foundation: https://aghorfoundation.org/

More from Robin: https://substack.com/@robinlehoff

Follow: https://instagram.com/robinlehoff https://instagram.com/stillhuman_podcast

Thank you to the Agor Foundation for making this possible.

As early as 559 AD, the Chinese prince Yuan Huangtou of Ye became one of the pioneers of flight, against his will. The conqueror Gao Yang, who was hunting down the old ruling family, had captured Yuan Huangtou and others. All prisoners were “used” for a deadly experiment, in an act of punishment and execution. From the Tower of the Phoenix (33 meters high) they were to fly, tied to a large kite, called a paper owl, to the Purple Way, about 2.5 kilometers away. All of them died, only prince Yuan Huangtou of Ye survives the flight, only to be killed shortly after anyway. What he must have experienced inside during that flight? Whether he was aware of his pioneering work?

Then there was the scholar Abbas ibn Firnas, in Córdoba in Islamic Al-Andalus, who built himself a flying apparatus out of wood and bamboo, covered with silk and eagle feathers. Around 875 AD he is said to have flown with it for minutes, so the story goes, but crashed hard on landing, and the back injury that came out of it seems to be the reason he never experimented further. And then, finally there was the german Otto Lilienthal, who also made his first jumps and flights with his own gliders near Potsdam. He is said to have flown 2000 flights with his gliders, wooden frames covered with cotton, over distances of 15 to 250 meters. In 1896 one of those flights killed him. His last sentence, allegedly: Sacrifices must be made.

And almost 1,500 years after the Chinese prince, I am flying high up at 3,200 meters and get rolled over, regularly, by and waves of fear, of Lust for life, of absolute exhilaration keep crashing over me, paired with gasping breaths, exhilaration. Above me, a paraglider, around me, the most stunning vastness you can have at that altitude over Himachal, India. An eagle accompanies me for a part of my route and flies majestically beside me.

Down at 1,400 meters stands Mr Arvind Paul, one of the best pilots in India and in the world. He is considered the best teacher in Bir Billing, a mecca for paragliders, and lets me know, relaxed, through the walkie-talkies:

“Robin, don’t worry, I see you, I watch you.”

Alright then. However. His eyes must be similar to those of an eagle… And so I am in the air for almost two hours, flying from mountain to mountain, enjoying the spectacular, movie-ready view over Himachal. Since the birth hour of humanity it has been a primal deep wish to conquer the skies, to fly. And I live in the time where I simply get to learn it, in a foreign country.

(The image was taken at a height of 2,200 meters.)

What a gift. I would be lying if I say that I have no fear. And I have to smile pretty hard, just recently in Nepal a Buddhist teaching, the inner heights explored, and now the whole thing in the physical world.

Life is good.

P.S. Technically I made it, a new podcast episode is in its final stretch and will be published soon soon.

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My final hours are numbered. At least here in Nepal. The last ceremony takes hours. The Guru blesses every single person, three thousand of them, one by one. It takes hours. Nobody leaves early. So I don't either.

Then the monsoon breaks. The path down the mountain has turned into a river. The guard who greets me every morning just laughs. He knows that its not going to change this evening. Five motorbikes appear from somewhere. One has a poncho big enough for two. We ride through streets that have become canals, water up to the wheels, past the Monkey Temple, like a motorboat through a narrow channel. He stays completely calm the whole way. We talk about his bike. Indian brand. Very proud of it. I arrive soaked to the last hair, shower hot, fall into bed. Somehow free. It's remarkable how quickly you can feel at home somewhere. I know the shortcuts, the side streets, the chai shop owners greet me, barbershops smile, the fruit vendor. I know this street like some neighborhoods in Berlin.

Why am I writing all this down, I wonder sometimes. Is this a book? Is this my karma- being a voice, a mediator? Going where the light is and making it available in different forms. I give the encounters. I get encounters that go deep, right in the middle of it. You can't get deeper in than this. That's the exchange. That's what this is. On an abstract level I feel like a character in a film, watching the main character, gripped, wanting to know what happens next.

I run into the Bulgarian woman again, and somehow it feels like a circle closing. She tells me about a stray dog she recently rescued. She took him to the vet, cared for him, and will soon bring him to Bulgaria, where people are ready to take him in.Every evening, she cooks kilos of chicken and rice, packs it into small portions, and feeds the dogs along the road leading up to the monastery. That’s why I see her almost every day, standing by the roadside surrounded by a pack of stray dogs. Since she was young, almost all of her time, energy, and money have gone into helping animals. She has ten dogs at home. Over the years, she has fed, cared for, vaccinated, rescued, and rehomed dozens of dogs and cats, even a pigeon once, in different countries and in Bulgaria itself. Some she adopted herself. Others she found loving homes for. When I tell her about a Buddhist monk and saint known for his devotion to the welfare of animals, the hairs on her arms stand up. Her eyes fill with tears again. She can’t explain it. There’s just something there, a deep connection she feels immediately.

“People should spend more time with animals and stop being so afraid of them. Ninety-nine percent of the time they don’t attack. Actually, they almost never do. And when they do, it’s usually a reaction to something. But of course, rabies is something you have to take seriously.”

The monks sang a song after every meditation and there was one line which impressed me deeply:

As they also say. May I be happy, may I be well, may I be free from suffering. May you be happy, may you be well, may you be free from suffering. May all beings everywhere be happy, may all beings be well, may all beings be free.

Is this why I ended up here?

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And somehow I end up in a twenty-day teaching about Mahamudra, the great seal. Three thousand people. In front of His Holiness, a reincarnation of one of the oldest Tibetan lineages. Three meals a day, tea, snacks, water, all free. Not once does anyone try to sell me a subscription. I guess that's the beauty if you trust the flow. It surprises you. Or to phrase it differently: when I told fellow meditators how I got here, they said

you're lucky! You have good karma.

Day one I am curious-skeptical. Years ago someone already asked me whether I wanted to be enlightened. I said: I don't know. What then? Do I become a monk? I don't recite the mantras. What am I supposed to do with syllables that carry no emotional or intellectual meaning for me, pronouncing them right like a good student on his first day of Tibetan class? That misses the whole point. So I close my eyes and tune into the frequency instead. Endless rows of monks, bassy, humming, a carpet of vibration around me, and I try to swing into it. Analytical Meditation, Breathwork, Visualization. I didn't know it would go this deep. That's the beautiful thing here: nothing is dogmatic, everything is an offer. Almost as if they say: we've seen and understood the light. If you want, we'll show you. If not, also fine. And if you sit here and just listen and scroll your phone, that's also ok.

·

A week in, maybe ten days. Mid-chant, the power goes out. The speakers die, light goes off. And three thousand people just keep singing. Minutes long. Without light, without electricity, voices alone carry the whole thing. On the road one evening, I see a woman doing prostrations in the street dust. Barefoot. Full Feierabend traffic all around her. Devout, in complete focus, one prostration at a time. In minutes she covers maybe ten meters. Back in the monastery, Guru Vajradhara, His Holiness the 12th Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa, teaches for hours and then cracks one joke after another into the microphone, so fast the English translators bend over laughing and forget to translate. A child a few rows ahead boxes and tumbles under the screen showing the Guru in close-up, like the two of them are having a wild boxing match. Loud, quiet, holy, profane, joke, seriousness, all of it coexisting peacefully.

·

I hang out with the monks, and honestly, it's like hanging out with bros. Nothing enlightened about it. But between the lines a quality shimmers. No one makes jokes at anyone else's expense, only at their own. It's a peaceful, very very funny togetherness. Everything can be laughed at. When I ask what their names mean, they explain. Pema, lotus, the one who walks through the dark and the dirty without being stained. Chimed, chi-med, deathless, the one who cannot die. One is named Present Awareness. And one, Wednesday. I laugh in disbelief. Yes, he says. Tibetan parents sometimes name their kids after the weekday they were born on.

One afternoon my body is done. Eight hours cross-legged, hips and knees on strike. I could ignore the pain, it's a sensation(right?), breathe through it, play the ultra-yogi. But I don't feel like it. I'm not a monk. I'm not a yogi-master. And right then the carousel starts. You can't meditate. You're doing it all wrong. Go home. And I catch it. In its original form, where the thought is born. I see it arising. I understand I should just move. So I stand up. Walk around. Do the rest of the meditation standing, walking. And… My mind, my essence, absolutely peaceful. Purrs. Hums. I can walk a month through the Himalaya with twelve kilos on my back, but eight hours cross-legged and my whole lower body files for divorce. So I find my own way. Who cares how you sit. And the Guru himself says it: don't get lost in meditation. Don't get lost in the world. Don't get lost in the spiritual path either. If you' sit in a cave for decades and call it enlightenment, you've missed the point.

·

English carries the word inside it. Light. Enlightened. When I have doubts, fears, uncertainties, and someone comes and helps me, I'm a little enlightened afterwards. Because I'm a little lighter. Freedom of the mind doesn't mean being free of thoughts. It means being free from the enslavement by the mind. The thoughts still think, only in service of your own being. Einstein said it beautifully:

The mind is a god-given tool, and used as a tool, intuition becomes the divine guidance. He couldn't understand why we made the mind our master instead of our servant. Why we push the intuition away.

English carries the word inside it. Light. Enlightened. When I have doubts, fears, uncertainties, and someone comes and helps me, I'm a little enlightened afterwards. Because I'm a little lighter. Freedom of the mind doesn't mean being free of thoughts. It means being free from the enslavement by the mind. The thoughts still think, only in service of your own being. Maybe enlightenment just means what the word says. Lighter of worries, of concepts, of supposed life-visions that are illusions anyway, because whatever we do, we die. So why all the stress?

Life is my your best friend.

And I… just wanted to record a podcast.

Three Primal Fears - Read the last article

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Tomorrow I am going to bungee jump from one of the highest places in the world. A part of me has hell of a fear. In the evening I think: I will cancel it. There are no witnesses anyway. Nobody but me knows. Which is exactly why I should do it.

I think we are asking the wrong questions. Why is “are you happy” important? Why not ask “what makes you happy?” Why do we ask “what do you do(for living) ” instead of “how do you want to live?” or "what makes you feel alive? Why do we so rarely ask how we want to spend our life, how we want to have an impact? We are looking for an explanation for why we live. We are looking for a validation for who we are. We are screaming for it:

Please give me a reason why I am here!

But what if that is the wrong question too? Not “why are you here,” but “how do you want to live?” Isn't it about balance. It is about growing, experiencing, learning. And how do you grow and learn? By facing your fears. Every day. Do one thing every day that scares you. That sentence alone makes me nervous. I mean, there is no rational explanation for throwing yourself off a 228-meter bridge over a gorge. Head first. I am doing it to look the fear of heights, the fear of the abyss, the fear of falling, straight in the eye. I want to move through the fear. So I go one step further. If I am already doing a bungee jump, why not do it with style? I ask the people who work there how to jump properly, and they explain it to me. I rehearse it in my head once or twice, because the last thing I want is to fall like a wet sack. I want to do it actively. I want to jump actively. Said and done. But am I afraid? 100%. But I just breathe into it.

When I am asked whether I am ready, I find the question irritating, because I think I am as ready as it is somehow possible to be without being ready. I walk to the edge of the cliff. The countdown begins. I look down once. Everything is surreal. I am with myself and with my feelings. And then it says, bungee. I let myself fall and jump forward, like jumping from the edge of a pool into the water. That first second is indescribable, and never has that word made more sense. You do not know what is happening. And after a second the body realizes: okay, we are going down now. My body turns left, then right. I barely perceive it. What I perceive is the river rushing toward me, the movement turning again, me flying back up, and then this feeling of boundless freedom. I just have to laugh. I laugh so long that the blood rushing into my head slowly begins to press down on my head.

When other people ask me how it was, I often cannot really say it, because I jumped with my fears. I meditated during it. I jumped consciously. I felt the fear and told myself this is the feeling of freedom. The beauty of life is that contradictions are the beauty of life. And at the same time the curse and at the same time the blessing. I know that I will soon die and that I could be 100 years old soon, or dead in a day. I know that I do not know that. I assume that I will grow old. I assume that I can build something, but why? Why is that so important?

Days later, I am standing at the Buddha Stupa in Kathmandu, waiting for my monk friend Pema for a pre-interview for our podcast episode. We begin walking clockwise around the statue. I cannot even say how many times we walked around it. When I ask him, he says one should do it at least three times, but it feels like we went around it a hundred times. We talk about being a monk, about being human, about why he is a monk. A homeless man asks whether he can get money to buy something to eat, and I do not know whether the monk gives him something because I am there or because it is part of his identity. When I ask him about it, he says that this is actually a factor. He does not like giving when many people are watching, because then people think he is only doing it to fulfill his image as a monk in public. I ask him whether it is not more important to help than to prioritize what other people might think. And he says, of course, but he is also only human, and sometimes the thoughts are simply stronger. I ask him: you meditate for twenty years and have been a monk for twenty years, and still this is a topic for you? And he says yes. That is why he learns. That is why he wants to grow. He says Buddha teaches that you should help everyone if they ask you for help. And if you cannot help, then at least pray. That you can always do. Whether the homeless man used the money for food, for drugs, or for something else is not your responsibility to check. That is not part of helping. Only through kindness, through unconditional compassion, can you soften and illuminate the darkest and most hardened hearts.

And so he invites me to the teaching that he is now going to attend for 20 days. And he offers that to the homeless man too. For free. Food. Drink. The teachings of His Holiness the 12th Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa.

Maybe we keep asking the wrong questions. So. How was the jump, then?

Endless gorges. Long, narrow, eternal steel suspension bridges, always decorated with prayer flags at the railings. Clear, sparkling streams from glacier water. Cables strung recklessly across brutal heights, supplying even the most remote villages with electricity, leading into places that look like they don't exist.

Every five to ten minutes I stop. Deep fresh snow. Breathe. Breathwork. Ascending to the cave of Milarepa. A saint who mastered dark, occult magic. Who meditated and lived mainly in this cave, at around 4.200 meters. Breath gets shallow. Lungs pulse. The mind starts playing tricks. A tingling in the head. Limbs get heavy. The body feels like after an hour of workout.

A few days later on the ascent of the Thorong La Pass, 5.416 meters above sea level, a white Mustang horse passes slowly by. On its back: artfully decorated traditional Nepali blankets as a saddle replacement. On those blankets sits proudly a Nepali in his mid-thirties, completely relaxed, a cigarette in his mouth. This image meets me more than once out here. Here you don't take the bus or ride the motorcycle. You ride the horse to work, to friends, to the puja. And if you smoke, you have a cigarette in your mouth. What else.

·

The rhododendron forests above 2.500 meters are blossoming in their prettiest colour's. Often on the trail, I feel like stepping through a gate like in Narnia into stunning, timeless landscapes. I could have walked here 100 years ago, or 200. The trees are immeasurably tall, 40, 50 meters or more. All around: differently colored patchy moss. The sun throws individual spots of light through the canopy and the leaves. Bamboo in saturated green. Everywhere gigantic stones, half overgrown by small rhododendron plants, covered in moss, partially buried in leaves. Almost entirely green and brown. Where some stone slabs remain uncovered, they shimmer in silver light, reflecting the sun, partially crumbling, so that those silver particles line every one of my steps for kilometers like silver dust between leaves on the stones. The violet, thick, opulent rhododendron blossoms. Liana-knotted branches. Individual plants that have grown themselves up along tree trunks. I can't do anything but stop regularly. Because nature is incomprehensibly beautiful and I want to absorb it.

Time doesn't seem to exist here. Only beauty.

In the last days I've seen the most beautiful sunrises of my life. High above the clouds, sunrays slowly creep past gigantic, awe-inspiring peaks (Annapurna South) and dip the opposite mountain tips (Dhaulagiri) into an opulent, noble gold, while a reddish glow spreads around everything. It's more than 270 degrees of mountain peaks around me and where no mountains are, the dawn blurs seamlessly into the horizon — sky and earth appear harmoniously merged. Every day you look over the hills of the Himalayas at the proud mountains, majestically and undeterred standing here since the beginning of time, conveying the feeling that they will also never pass away.

·

Drenched in sweat after 800 meters of ascent in the early morning sun, I arrive at a small village and find a teahouse. An older man sits completely calm in a chair, seemingly sunning himself. The moment he sees me, he starts laughing. Out of his full heart. Simply because the sight of me delights him. He stands up, comes to me, grabs my upper arms, grips my shoulders, my biceps, my thighs and laughs only louder. He tries to lift my backpack, realizes how heavy it is, and laughs and laughs and laughs. Like he's thinking "why so much effort" but I'll never find out. A moment later. Four generations on one bench, as if it were nothing foreign to the world. And I find out: the man is 95 years old and lives in peace with his family, son, grandson, great-grandson. Connected in laughter.

A typical Sunday in Nepal.

·

Two days I've been walking with a Norwegian woman to do a side track to the Annapurna Base Camp. After a very long day, where we descended the whole mountain in one day (3.000 meters descent), we pass a single idyllic house in an untouristic village. On the porch: big, gigantic, partly wild flower pots. The facade blue-white tiled, very simple and very romantic at the same time. A woman looks at us warmly. Her husband comes out and says:

"We have a room, we have a bed, please stay with us."

There is a melancholic request in his voice but we feel right away like we're at our Nepali grandparents' from another dimension. Within minutes we're sitting on the porch shelling freshly harvested, self-grown peas. Above us the charged spring air throws one gigantic lightning bolt after another across the sky as far as the eye can see. A small puppy, still young but somehow already part of everything, runs between our legs. The woman cooks. The thunder thunders. We keep shelling peas.

Their hotel burned down at the top of the Base Camp. No money, no perspective right now. And yet he grins, he radiates, he gives us everything he has. She serves and refills and refills again, like a loving grandmother, always checking in, happy we're there. We are the only ones. Nobody else walked this far.

·

On the way to Mardihimal I meet a guide. How do you deal with the danger, I ask. With the remaining risk.

"That's just how it is. When you go into the mountains, you never know what happens."

In 2014, 46 people died crossing the Thorong La Pass. The same pass I crossed a few weeks ago. He was there himself that day. People ran past him screaming and crying, begging for gloves, for hats. Completely unprepared for this icy, cutting wind. Frostbite. Hands frozen. Feet frozen. The wind gusts strong enough to blow people off the path into the valleys. A whiteout. You couldn't see more than a few meters.

Reinhold Messner lost his brother crossing an eight-thousander. And kept climbing. Messner once said: every step is a decision for life, because with every step you are confronted with life and death. And it is totally life-affirming to decide for life, step by step. I agree. This is the absolute affirmation of life.

They say you need guides. But your biggest guide is yourself.

And when I asked the guide about that day, he says you can only prepare for every possible outcome.

Every problem in life can be a mountain. You can look at it and say: man, that's high, that's big. Or you look at the mountain, are grateful for its beauty, and start walking, curiously. The mountain is the mountain. It doesn't move. It makes no effort. It is simply the mountain. It is always our own interpretation, our own perspective, that changes everything.

·

What makes this trail what it is: different realities of life meeting each other. A Russian group with a guitar by the fire, laughing, because they don't have to plan tomorrow. Monks on pilgrimage to the caves of Milarepa. A Sadhu in Muktinath, doesn't blink the entire ceremony, his gaze directed into the sky, to tears overcome, in complete humility and devotion. A friend, sitting in his bed next to mine after an apocalyptic night walk through the rain. Both of us meditating in silence. People here live spirituality. And the spirituality grounds them. We are born alone and we die alone. But on the path of life we have companions who accompany us for a small piece. And whom we may accompany.

·

On my last days, it rains in torrents. The sky darkens. As if the Himalayas are crying that I'm leaving. Somehow the energy of my father still drifts through these forests. Maybe he fell in love with Nepal at my age. As if the same thing is now passing over to me. My hair is wet from the fog. My clothes are damp. I go on this path with myself, my father, my grandfather and all the ancestors in my family tree. Probably with all people, all pilgrims, all adventurers.

·

Around 500 kilometers. 26.000 meters of elevation. 26 days.

They say you can change in 21 days, new habits, new behavioral patterns, completely restructure your biochemistry. What does 26 days wandering in the Himalayas do to you then?

I guess it's time to find out.

I went into these mountains as a boy without a father. And I'm coming out as a man who has anchored the feeling of home in himself deeper than ever before. My home is the world. My home is the mountains, when I'm in the mountains. And my home will be wherever I go next.

Thank you, Himalaya. Thank you, Nepal.

More from Nepal — Salt, Sugar and Oi

Thank you, Dad, for giving me life. For passing on your longings, your wishes, your way of being.

You died ten years ago today. In Nepal, Kathmandu. And here I am, exactly ten years later.

We didn't have much time together. But I am deeply proud. Proud of who I've become. Of the invisible initiations you passed on without knowing it. My third given name is Chimed, here in Nepal it means immortal.

I watch the prayer flags move in the wind, whispering their ancient words into the world and I can feel the peace you were always looking for. The peace you came to Nepal searching for.

Thank you for the freedom you gave me. Thank you for the depth. Thank you for being a seeker. I hope you found what you were looking for. I hope you are at peace. I hope you are free.

Thank you for existing. And therefore for me.

“We have everything here. Rice, potatoes, garlic, tomatoes, fruits, vegetables, water from the Himalaya.” He gestures around like he’s showing me a kingdom. Which, in a way, he is.

“Everything?” I ask. “Like, everything?” He nods. “We only need to buy salt, sugar and oil.” What a life. He laughs. We laugh a lot. His name is Pancha, which means five in Nepali. That's just his name. Five. We laugh again. Loud. Unrestrained.

 “Laughing is good. Do it all day. It’s healthy for your mind.” 

He lets us sleep here for free. We pay for dinner and breakfast, three to five euros a meal. “But just for you, ’cause I like you, and you look like Balen.” Balen Shah: rapper, 35, Nepal's brand new Prime Minister since March 2026, the guy who started rapping about corruption and ended up running the country. (I wonder if Pancha senses that I used to be a rapper. My name was Chimed.) I'll take it.

Pancha works his fields, grows everything himself, has a dog, enjoys his life. He is at peace. As if that's the most natural thing in the world.

·

"This is too cold. I'm not gonna do it." The guy who sat next to me on the bus the day before — we became friends. Now he stands beside me at the edge of the pool. Above us: a 140 meter waterfall. I stay. Water crashes down, roaring, wild, relentless. I scream into it. The pool gets deeper the further you wade in, and at some point the current is strong enough that I can barely stand. Every fibre pulses. Then he suddenly jumps in, reaches the fall. I follow. We howl like wolves. After nearly 30 kilometers and 1,000 meters of ascent, this is the crowning moment of the day. Water hammers our shoulders like a force that resets the body after carrying the backpacks.

On the way back we cross hanging steel bridges that bend and bounce, probably from the last century. Everything here could have looked exactly like this a hundred years ago. Men, women, children working rice and corn fields. We walk on silver-shimmering stones, slightly porous, leaving a glimmering trace on the ground and the leaves.

·

Snow at 2,700 meters. Thick flakes that almost settle. Three days ago I was sweating in shorts at 30 degrees; now almost every layer I packed is on my body, and the backpack is considerably lighter for it.

A young man from Kathmandu, who grew up in the village I'm passing through and came back to take care of his mother, walks with me for a while. He wants to go to Europe. Most of his friends are already in France. Maybe open a business, maybe a clothing shop. His goals, his worries, his conversations about mental health — all the same as anywhere. This village is where he played football, cut trees, grew up. Now there's almost nobody left. I know that story. I know people who stayed in their German village and I know people who say "it used to be something, here." Both carry a kind of longing. Here or somewhere else — we seem to be looking for the same thing everywhere.

At 3,700 meters I sit in one of the most beautiful traditional houses I've ever seen, the kind that looks like a small monastery. Around the fire: everyone on their phones, full volume. Instagram, YouTube Shorts, TikTok.

Even here. Surrounded by some of the most magnificent mountains on earth, and still the screen wins.

Breath becomes visible in the cold air. Wooden floors that feel older than memory. A thin wall that barely separates inside from outside. Three blankets. Tonight it drops to minus five or seven.

The Thorong La Pass — 5,416 meters, one of the highest trekking passes in the world — is waiting.

Soon.

When I think about how to explain India, I fail every time. The closest I've gotten: imagine waking up as a character inside a Bollywood GTA. You're in it. You're walking around the streets. And nothing, absolutely nothing, follows any logic you've ever picked up anywhere: Motorcycles squeeze through alleys barely wider than the motorcycle itself. Ahead of them: a crowd carrying a body to the Ganges to burn. On the motorcycle: driver, woman and child, all three, back seat included. And around: tourists trying to survive, cows, donkeys, chicken, goats and locals just walking in the non-existing space in-between. Nobody complains. Because of course.

One afternoon I drank a delicious chai from a small clay cup and looked around for a bin. The guy I'd been drinking with watched me for a second, took the cup out of my hand, threw it on the ground and said laughingly: "This is India." I laughed. What else do you do. It's like... people love and worship their homes and cities and at the same time throw trash everywhere or spit on the ground. Varanasi happens to you step after step, layer after layer, Lassi after Lassi. Overwhelmed, inspired, annoyed, beseelt — there's no English word for beseelt, which is maybe the point — amused, speechless. Not one after the other. Simultaneously. Sometimes within a single hour.

Garbage next to a shrine. Silence inside noise. A perfume shop wedged between two piles of things you don't want to name. A street kid playing and a meditating guru, sometimes naked, sharing the same ghat like it's the most natural thing in the world. Because it is. Every morning the sun peels itself out of the smog on the horizon. Fire-red, saturated orange, a touch of yellow. Like someone turned the color saturation up twenty percent. You've never seen a sunrise like this. And yet it happens here every single day.

I've never thought and felt "what the hell" and "I love this place" at the same time as often as I have here.

An incredibly deep encounter happens in a silk shop I wasn't looking for.

Somewhere in the back alleys, a smell like incense and something older than incense, I stumble in. Within a few minutes it's clear: I'm not buying anything today. He's fine with that. We sit together for almost two hours anyway.

He talks about Shiva. About the Ganges, which rushes through almost every city it passes through, but through Varanasi it moves slowly, almost crawling. He tells me you don't decide to come to Varanasi. Shiva decides that. Two strangers, two worlds, one tiny room full of silk and suddenly we're talking about the beginning and end of everything.

Another guy I meet at the quaint stairs next to the river, Varun, helps me find what I'm looking for: an Aghori. He recommends reaching out to the Aghor Foundation. An ashram on the edge of the city, run by a man everyone calls Sadhuji. What I found was one of the clearest human beings I've ever met.

The ashram pulls kids off the street. Gives them food, a bed, a school. Builds ecological garden systems so well thought-through that even cow dung becomes fertiliser and oil. Everything they eat they grow themselves, rice, spices, vegetables, all of it. Sadhuji works the fields himself. Teaches and organises. Leads rituals in the morning and evening, open to anyone who wants to come, tourists, locals alike, for free, no membership form, no strings attached.

I watched him once correct a kid who had lied. No shame or lecture. Just a quiet moral clarity that made the kid actually think. A few minutes later he was laughing and playing with the same kid like nothing had happened, because nothing bad had. Just a small thing set right. He never seemed tired. Just in pure acceptance of everything.

Maybe that's the meaning of being awakened, you don't need much sleep anymore?

His friend and Aghori in training, Akshit, also only sleeps two to four hours a night. Runs an NGO on the side that gives kids across India free education. When I ask how that's even possible, he talks about potential energy and how most people never really unleash it, and if they do, they don't know how to use it properly. Many visitors of the ashram get restless because the energy here is strong and they don't know what to do with it. He smiles like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

I believe him immediately. And myself, I've slept an average of four to five hours a night my whole week here. As if Varanasi makes more energy available to you in mysterious ways you can't quite explain

These two men have something I don't have a clean word for in any language. Like they've cleared enough space inside themselves that life can move through them without getting stuck anywhere. First you purely focus on yourself, your Sadhana, and once you have more energy and love than you need, you share, spread, serve in the most altruistic way. Seva. Varanasi. Shiva City, where you sleep less and flow more, to serve the greater good.

Morning: their own practice, whatever that is. Rest of the day: give from what overflows. Simple as that.

I do a podcast interview with Sadhuji that lasts about an hour. I go in with a list of questions. Somewhere in the middle I notice the list is gone. By the end I have no questions left. They dissolved. Akshit tells me that evening: the task of a guru is to take away your doubts. He did exactly that. Probably without even trying.

Last morning. Akshit and I leave at the same time. The hug is slightly awkward. Spiritual depth and intercultural emotional intelligence, I've learned, are two completely different subjects.

The kids of the ashram come to say goodbye. Can I stay for yoga? I can't. But I'll be back. That's decided.

Sadhuji is the last one. He looks at me and says:

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

Service. Even in the goodbye.

"This is your home. Remember this. You can always come back."

·

Sadhuji waves. The kids wave. The taxi goes.

Tears of relief, rearrangement, gratitude and Berührung (whatever that means in English) run down my cheeks.

They exist. Idealistic places. An ashram is one of them.

And I carry Varanasi with me like a frequency that doesn't switch off.

Lassi by lassi, step by step, encounter by encounter. The ghats along the Ganges have no end, you can keep going deeper as long as you're willing to take the next step.

I took as many as I could.

Next time more.

Nepal is next. And a podcast episode is coming with me. Stay tuned.

And as always, let me know what you think about this 🙏

There is something mildly humbling about being in a city where half the population seems alive at 4:30am to welcome the day with rituals, ceremony and yoga. By the way, all for free and available for everyone.

Chai is already being poured, tiny shops are open, the smell of roasted street food in the air, and half of Varanasi seems to be moving toward Assi Ghat. “Check, hello, check.” Surprisingly often, they check the speakers (!). People find their places, sit down, stand around, wait for the morning ceremony like this is the most normal thing in the world.

Maybe that is exactly the point and the beauty of this place. Ritual is not an exception here. Almost with an ease that makes you realize how far the modern mind has drifted from that kind of devotion. Life and much more here gets celebrated every single day.

Then fire, singing, movement, yoga by the Ganges, which I join, of course, all of it in Hindi, with me understanding only the names of postures and breathing exercises. Thanks again, Sonja (my yoga teacher)

And as the sun slowly pushes through the smog and turns the Ganges gold, it feels hard not to think that faith may begin exactly like this: showing up for these kind of rituals.

A photo can never hold the whole thing. Not the air, not the sounds, not the strange and somehow natural feeling of being there. But maybe it can hold the trace of a moment that touched us. And where does that happen for you — when does a passing moment become one you want to keep?

Die Monate des Laufenlernens — im direkten wie im übertragenen Sinn — waren für mich als Mensch unsagbar lehrreich. Umso schöner ist es, dass ein Quäntchen davon in dieser Podcastfolge mit dem Achtsamkeitscoach Volker Tepp mitschwingt.

Ich hätte zehn Stunden mit ihm sprechen können. Volker hat das Talent, alles, was ich frage, in einen tieferen, ganzheitlicheren Kontext zu bringen — und genau von dort aus zu beantworten. Das mag ich sehr. Weil man bei ihm spürt, dass Achtsamkeit nicht nur ein Konzept ist, sondern etwas, das ins echte Leben reicht.

Gleichzeitig bin ich der Finca Argayall sehr dankbar. Ich durfte dort eine wichtige Zeit meines Lebens verbringen, spannende Menschen wie Volker kennenlernen und dieses Gespräch überhaupt in so einem besonderen Rahmen führen. Die Finca und die Crew haben die Aufnahme so gut unterstützt, wie man es sich nur wünschen kann. Und ganz praktisch auch mich mit meinem gebrochenen Fuß: beim Tragen von Kameras, Stativen, Requisiten und all dem, was sonst eben im Hintergrund mitgeschleppt werden muss.

Ich würde sagen: Hört einfach selbst.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6XIeizChaDxxGj7xCAu3fK?si=NZIFu3jSSMus7PbRl2a97w&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A68WgOYAd6C0RUZXz7oRfeI&t=0

Wenn euch die Folge etwas gibt, teilt sie gern mit jemandem, für den sie gerade genau richtig sein könnte.

Bis zum nächsten Mal.