Fort William, Scotland

I was told that Ben Nevis (the highest peak in the whole of UK) was supposed to be an easy walking trek, and at the end of the day, i got an alpine trek. Cold in the first section climb, occassional rain and hail on the middle climb, and snow storm at the top.

Well, I must say that scenery was indeed very nice, even though it wasn't the best weather, nonetheless, it is still as charming. :) I went to the climb with 2 other french guys from my bunkhouse, one of them grew up in the alps, so they taught me quite a few things during the climb.

But I think I did something that is very stupid. I thought because it was an easy climb (some said), I wore sandles up, and guess what? It was so cold that my hands and my foot were numb and it was so pain. I thought for a second that I'm gonna get frostbites all over my limbs. The feeling was like your blood being frozen and when u descend, you can literally feel that the blood in you slowly start to defrost.

As I went up and came down, I met many hikers, all of them give me the stare (thinking why the hell did i come up here in sandles). Some even asked me if I really did the climb with the sandles, and one group of students even think that I just went to the mid range and came down because it was impossible for me to do it with sandles. And so I did what I was supposed to do, it took me 3hrs 45mins to go up and 2 hours 15mins to come down, so a total of 6 hours, pretty average for normal people.

The climb was easy, but the weather definitely made it very challenging, with people all wearing very professional hiking gear, instead of being a cock like me. I learnt from it, and I think if you were to climb a mountain in a tmperate region, you should not forget to...

-bring gloves
-bring headgear
-wear a waterproof shoe
-wear thick jacket
-bring food and water
-get a buff


These are the least of the things that you should bring, the rest really doesn't matter at all. I mean there is a reason why people get lost up in this mountain (I have just seen a helicopter searching for somebody for the entire day and still couldn't find no one). Well, I even get to experienced a rainbow from the Mt. as the rain comes on and off, the rainbow comes out naturally.
With this, it marks my final destination in Scotland and having learnt so much history, culture and the way of life of all the Scots, I just feel that I'm starting to like what I'm doing.

In the past, I feel ashamed telling people that I'm just bagpacking for a week or two, now I feel that I have the complete freedom to travel as much as I want and do not really need to care about corporate race back at home. What is yours, will be yours, you do not have to search/fight so hard for it. But if it is your dream to do something, believe in it, go on and live it. You live your life only once....