Meeting God in the Mountains: Lessons from Hiking Annapurna

In May this year, I went on a ten-day hike to the world famous Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) in Nepal, a to-do-list on my bucket list since 2017. There, I learnt many life lessons despite years of experience living in mountainous areas.

An experienced mountaineer in China and Nepal

As a child I’d not been particularly athletic and was always a “sick and weak girl”. But in my thirties, I picked up outdoor skills after being involved in disaster relief efforts in the mountains of China.

In those days, I spent years living in harsh conditions, and even formed a voluntary group called Barefoot to provide psycho-social support to students in remote ethnic areas. I also spent time in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake and volunteered with a Christian organisation to do outreach and provide mental health support.

Now, after my years of missions experience as a clinical psychologist, I decided to visit Nepal and do a hike as a proper tourist. With a new sense of curiosity and freshness, I embarked on the trek with a Nepalese guide and a hiking buddy 10 years my junior.

Left behind and slowing everyone down

But very quickly, I was left behind with my porter waiting with me. My stamina was not as it used to be as we went up steep rocky roads. If I sprinted, I needed to stop frequently and I slowed down the team. Our six-hour hike on Day One turned into eight hours, and I was filled with self-doubt and felt like a failure.

If I was already crushed on Day One, how would I make the next nine days? Suddenly, the hike became a mission impossible for me. Thankfully, the next morning, my Nepalese guide told me to slow down and take baby steps. He said, “If you walk fast, you may never reach. But if you walk slowly, you will definitely reach.”

Surrender to the process and let go of the goal

With that motto in mind, I started to surrender myself to the hiking process. I paced myself and let go of the “goal-oriented” mindset where I thought only of reaching the summit. I stopped being time-conscious and did not constantly check my watch.

Instead, I learnt to be mindful and cherish the journey. I stopped to take pictures of unique wildflowers. I admired the wilderness and the amazing creation of God; snow-capped mountain ranges, thundering waterfalls and the first golden sunray of the morning.

I thought of Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Slowly, I embraced the trip as a form of spiritual pilgrimage, as I took the opportunity during the six, seven-hour hike to converse with God. Where else could I find these long moments of silence in my busy life back in Malaysia?

Meeting God in the mountains

Honestly, the spiritual lessons were the hardest for me on this trip, as I had never been so desperate to ask and to trust God. With toe blisters, muscle aches, soreness and headaches preventing me from sleeping, I started to question: “How high can I go? How far should I go?” and, “Am I doing this for my own glory and obsession?”

In the end, we reached ABC as planned without delay or serious injuries. I was the last on the team to reach, but it didn’t matter. Personally, I learned so much about my physical limits and about God’s bottomless grace and omnipresence. This was a great lesson in humility for me.

In our comfort zones, we may boast about our achievements and abilities. But in the wilderness, we have nowhere to hide and our lives are fragile and vulnerable “like grass… the wind blows over it and it is gone” (Psalm 103:15-16).

Yet God comes to us and reveals Himself to us, just as He did to Moses in the Midian wilderness: “I am who I am… I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt… And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into… a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Exodus 3:14, 16-17)

At the end of my trip to Annapurna, I realised that it was not a matter of how high we could go to climb a mountain. Rather, it’s about how high we should go to find God, to meet Him in the quiet places and to journey with Him, so we may enter the land of rest He has prepared for us in our daily lives.

About the Author

Rachel Ting is a Malaysian from Sibu, Sarawak. She received her Master in Theology and PhD in Clinical Psychology from Fuller Theological Seminary. She has been working as an academician and clinician in China, Malaysia, and the United States for the past 18 years.

To read other Spotlight Malaysia articles, click below.