My lungs are burning and my head is pounding. Perhaps it will explode soon. I feel the coffee I drank on the ride to the Tiger Cave Temple churning in my stomach. I need to stop and catch my breath.
"We must be getting pretty close, right?" I ask between gasps of air, reaching for my water bottle for the 5th time since we started.
"Not sure..." Alex replies, trailing off in horror as we suddenly notice the step marker nearby.
431. Only 431 steps out of 1237.
"Maybe it's counting down?" I suggest hopefully, knowing that I'm wrong. We're only 1/3 of the way up and it’s possible we'll die before we get to the top of this mountain.
As I begin ascending a long flight of stairs that seem impossibly tall (who builds stairs that are over a foot high each?), I curse myself for letting my fear of missing out get the best of me. I'd read the reviews online. Many said this temple was a "can't miss" in Krabi, Thailand, and some said things like "I'm in great shape and struggled to make it to the top". Once again, I let my desire to see everything and live life to its fullest override the reality that I am a lazy person. When I'm not traveling, I'm more likely to hit snooze 7 times than I am to actually go to the gym. Alex jokingly calls me the Queen of Naps, and I can't disagree.
So what made me think climbing a steep mountain at 6:30am was a good idea?
But there are joys along the way to keep us going. We watch as a family of monkeys groom each other in the morning sunlight. We stop at the top of a particularly grueling flight, and we look out through the trees to see an expanse of tropical farmland shining in the sun. We stop more frequently the higher we go, taking longer to catch our breath as the altitude changes and our stamina fades.
What seems like an eternity later, we realize we have only 1 flight to go. We push forward, and we made it! We sit on a conveniently placed bench at the top of the stairs until we feel like we can move again, and then walk out to the platform.
My breath is gone again, but this time not from exertion. We can see for miles, the sparkling Andaman Sea in the distance, surrounded by limestone cliffs.
There is a giant golden Buddha here, the sun bouncing off its body and giving it an otherworldly glow. People built this temple, and they built those stairs we climbed, and they did it to honor a religion that is so important to their culture. I suddenly feel very humbled, and very thankful that I did not miss out on this magical place.
