Maybe it seems as if one should be able to re-adapt immediately when coming back from an expedition. It is not the case for Xav and I. It is a huge change to be surrounded by people, cars, noise, green nature, having running water, being warm at all times. It is overwhelming for our senses. The smell of nature, of our bodies, of the village, of food everywhere. After weeks in the mountain, in a -10 to -40 environment I experience a partial loss of smells and senses. And suddenly, this changes upon landing in Talkeetna.

We wake up at the Swiss Alaska Inn on the 26th, shower – again – and we make our way to our favourite place in town for breakfast: The Roadhouse. For us, this feels like the HQ of Talkeetna, where things happen, people and friends have coffee and breakfast all day, mingle, talk about climbing and the number of summit successes this year so far.

We take our time, eat our ‘hotcakes’, the Roadhouse’s version of gigantic thin pancakes. We down our 3 cups of coffee, we reconnect with our WhatsApp, emails, strava, Garmin, instagram, WordPress and all the other apps that are useless on the mountain and suddenly crowd our supposedly normal lives again.

It is the middle of the night in Hong Kong so I have to wait until this afternoon to catch a glimpse of my loved ones, Sarah my darling and Oscar my little bunny having breakfast before heading to the office.

We have lunch at the Talkeetna Pizza Pie, the best pizza place in Talkeetna – also the only one.

We grab delicious Expresso and Vanilla Malt milkshakes at Conscious Coffee across from the pizza place. Then buy our souvenirs, write a few old-school postcards to family, have dinner with our guide friends and have one last drink at the Fairview.

On the 27th, we make our way to Talkeetna with Kai who drives a huge GMC white van, all our duffles fit inside like small carry-ons. We see some moose during the drive back and share memories of the expedition. We joke about the USA where everything is huge, big, bigger, better and Kai yells ‘America’ each time he sees us commenting on something unusual.