The next morning we rose early. Well Hannah rose early and woke me up in the usual fashion.

“Time to teach that mountain a lesson.” She said with far to much excitement for the earliness of the morning.

“What mountain? What lesson?”

“The one mocking us last night.”

I instantly regretted accepting the challenge laid down by the mountain. “Ok Ok I am getting up.” Like I had any other choice.

As usual there was no path to get to this mountain and we had to rely on map boy to direct us to get there. As usual Hannah figured her warped set of directions were more correct. I have seen that kid confidently tell me which way to go when it was the complete opposite direction. Her plan was to take a ‘short cut’ through this farmers field. My plan was to calmly walk around it along the footpath seeing as this farmers field was full of 6ft high fences with barbed wire fences and dotted with rotting bit of machinery all sorts of troublesome items.

“Hannah listen to reason just come my way.”

“Nope.” She said stubbornly. She is so stubborn that if she has made her mind up and you show her the fallacy of it she will still do it just to prove to everyone that she was right.

So she stubbornly attempted the first hurdle. She struggled a bit and got caught a few times.

“Need a hand Hannah.” I said supportively.

“Piss off Mika. If your way is going to be quicker you better be on your way now to meet me there at the end before me.”

She had a point there so I casually strolled of kicking a few stones and admiring the view until she was out of site. Now some may claim that I was running but they would be totally wrong. If you want to get technical running is where you lift both feet of the group, walking is where at least one foot is on the ground and I was quite careful about not lifting both feet off the group at any one time. More than I could bet Hannah was doing.

At one stage we could see each other again.

Hannah panted out, “See no worries and I am not even going fast.”

“Me either!”

On the way I met up with a monkey nut seller and procured some nuts to feed the monkeys later.

We finally converged and I looked on in wonder at how someone could possibly have gotten so much grass through her hair and clothes, have mud on her knees and a few shreds in her shirt and still look so calm and in total breath.

“Hannah I have so much energy lets race.” I challenged.

“Well it would be unfair because I got her before you and so have had more rest than you.”

I gaped. “BEFORE ME!”

The way I saw things I had gotten there way before her and my way had been the best by far. I had no rips in my clothes and mud and grass all over me. By the time we got it sorted we both had our breath and had equal face. Very important saving face.

About 20m up the hill.

“Who’s stupid idea was it to climb this hill anyway?”

“I think it was the hill’s”

We stopped often to watch the monkeys and were quite disheartened to see a couple about 80 passing up on the way up.

“Hannah now the old people are mocking us.”

We had another challenge and nearly killed ourselves trying to overtake the old couple. Just as we were overtaking the old couple we noticed an Indian carrying a massive load of bottles and food on his back setting a cracking pace up the hill.

“He is young Hannah so he probably is fit.”

“Yes, he does probably do this every day.”

“I mean it would be silly to try and outpace him”

“Absolutely, I mean I bet he trains all the time.”

“He does look particularly fit.”

“Probably has a good healthy diet as well.”

So we unanimously decided not to try and beat him to the top and just make sure we got to the top before the 80 year olds.

We reached the top about 1 minute before the super grandparents.

“You know the grandparents probably eat well as well.”

“I bet they are super fit.”

“Absolutely, probably travel all the time.”

“Yeah I bet they climb mountains for a living or something.”

“You know we have just beaten to the top of this mountain a couple who obviously are professional mountain climbers.”

“High five!”

So we walked/stumbled away content in the knowledge of how fit we were.