Paint jobs and mountains

Our apartment building just received a fresh coat of paint, right after the monsoons. These are the remains at the corner of the terrace.

I was talking to a friend today who had trekked to the Everest base camp eralier this year. He had also scaled Mt. Kalapathar, a peak close to 6000 metres in altitude. Reminded me so acutely of what it means to be in the hills. I have an option to relocate to Delhi (while staying with the job), from where the Himalayas are so easily accessible. Wondering whether I should avail this option by this year. Numerous other more important factors are involved and this is a big decision.

Here's an extract from something I've been reading:

The more improbable the situation and the greater the demands made on [the climber], the more sweetly the blood flows later in release from all that tension. The possibility of danger serves merely to sharpen his awareness and control. And perhaps this is the rationale of all risky sports: You deliberately raise the ante of effort and concentration in order, as it were, to clear your mind of trivialities. It's a small scale model for living, but with a difference: Unlike your routine life where mistakes can be recouped and some kind of compromise patched up, your actions, for however brief a period, are deadly serious.

~ A. Alvarez (from A Savage God: A Study of Suicide)