Adam's Peak, or Sri Pada as the locals call it, was 2230 meters high. It was revered as a holy site by Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians. The large boulder at the peak contains an indentation resembling a footprint….possibly Adam's?

The entry into Sri Pada was a large brick archway. There were monks there to bless you and tie prayer strings to your right wrist. They were also quick to demand a donation. One monk handled me a book filled with names of other donors and the amounts of their donations: one thousand rupees, five thousand rupees, even one ten thousand rupee donation. Oddly, the names changed but the handwriting stayed the same. I changed that, and wrote "Jim" in all CAPS and next to that 100 rupees. They still made a massive profit on the string.

The first fifteen minutes of the three hour hike to the top was spent with Hoài Anh and Thắng. The rest was a solo accent, one stair at a time. The path up was well lit and there were vendors along the way to offer encouragement and to sell you water, tea, food or souvenirs. We were well advised on not to eat the food as there was limited/ no water on the mountain. Well that was not entirely true there was a lot of bottle water. How they carried all that water up the steep mountainside I cloud only guess. It would have to be by hand. For good measure I bought a bottle. As I was climbing up the mountainside were local pilgrims climbing down having been at the top to witness the moonrise a couple hours earlier. I watched them pass me and they were struggling to get down the steep steps. When I looked down the hill from which I came, the lights of the pathway snaked along the mountainside toward the bottom. Near the top, the last 200 steps or so, the trail narrowed and became more steep, each step about a foot high and required focus giving me thought as to why I was there. Why was I there?

On my journey up the stone steps I had passed barefoot pilgrims chanting almost wailing Buddhist phrases. The signature of the pilgrimage showed on their sweaty faces. My walk began at the Slightly Chilled Guest House. Their journey could have started miles from there. They knew why they were here. I also passed foreigners trekking bota bags, talking loudly and pushing their way passed the pious. For them Sri Pada was a break from surfing the Sri Lankan coastline. Why was I there? It certainly felt for selfish reasons as Sri Lanka was another stamp in the passport, another destination off the bucket list. Suddenly as I climbed further up the mountain toward the temple a pressing loneliness set in. I was sharing this amazing experience with all these other people yet experiencing it totally alone. No longer was I the young tourist moving with the hostel collective nor was I the pilgrim completing a spiritual journey. The last steps toward the temple felt so self-serving and rudderless moving one foot in front of the other in near darkness. It mirror the days of my life lately.

At the top of Sri Pada, inside the temple, I removed my flip flops and joined the hundreds already inside. I found a mixed crowd of tourists and pilgrims and huddled around them for warmth until the sun began to rise. At first, when you looked out beyond the temple walls the surrounding area below was black. You could just make out the faint glow of the lights that lit the path way below and then, after about thirty minutes later, a faint blue line began to form along the mountainous horizon. Since we arrived to Delhousie after dark, I had no idea the landscape of the area other than we were in the mountains. As the sky turned from black, to purple with a ribbon of orange at its base, the tops of mountains formed then the foothills and finally a lake at its base.

Not only were mechanics of Mother Nature spectacular, it was the display of cross cultures and religions together in one place experiencing the same moment in time that struck me the most. All of us were trying to capture the magic seen through our eyes on cellphones and cameras. Some of my best pictures of the morning were not of the sunrise but of other people taking pictures or taking in the moment. I saw some of the poorest people, many of whom had slept in the dark at the peak, dressed in the only warm clothes the owned yet they all had cellphones and they all were taking pictures.

Once the sun came into full view above the horizon the air warmed and my mood lifted. If I were rudderless, and if I were just putting one foot in front of the other, moving though each day with the same monotony of the last day, then why was I sitting up at the top of a mountain, watching the sunrise with a glorious mix of humanity halfway around the world from which I came. This journey if anything, made the monotonous days worthwhile. I could not call it a midlife crisis but a shakeup may flow, a shuffling of perspective or maybe a slide back into monotony until another shake up is required. Isn't that just life? The changeable times and unique experiences punctuated by moments good or bad and the other stuff are just the gray matter in between. We can only shape as much as we can when we can so that the day to day wont slowly shapes us. That is the losing battle. When traveling, when vacationing, I am not the day-to-day me, I am different, maybe an idealized version of myself, or the dreamer, or the younger me, before the age of mounting responsibility, mortgage and risk adverse behavior.

With the sun in the sky, prayers were said before people began the long descent toward the bottom. The climb down though shorter in time than the climb up, was more difficult, each step pounded on my knees. I was rewarded at the base with a great breakfast of eggs, toast with fresh fruit and papaya juice.