Chapter 1

There was a new travelling hotspot in the world for students, mostly college and university students. Well, it really isn't much of a hotspot in a literal sense, because it's stuck in the middle of the Himalayas.

A couple years ago (I can't exactly remember when), there was a news story blasted across all the national papers. 3 university students who went missing 4 years ago on a trip to Nepal have finally arrived home. They were unharmed and happy to be home. There wasn't something right about their sudden re-appearance though and it was rather unsettling to their families, the media and the whole country really. They were very healthy looking, two of them with dark brown tans and the other was more sunburnt. Although they lost weight, friends and family would have agreed, they lost the weight they were allowed to lose. They didn't really speak of great tales of survival, nor did they really go into great detail on how or where they actually went. They addressed the media in the 'Return of the Century' press conference and just made note of how glad they were to be home and how they were too tired to make any further comments.

Since their brave return, there has been a 'hush, hush' underground movement for kids in college and university to plan trips out to Nepal to see what the big deal was. The internet was just filling up with web pages about theories of where they went, what they did or even who they met. Online travel companies were slowly catching on and creating deals for these students to capitalize on the huge wave of big business that this buzz has generated.

Unfortunately, for many of these young travellers they didn't seem to find what the big deal was. Most of the travellers boosted the local economy of Nepal, had their pictures taken in beautiful remote places and brought back a lot of trinkets that will remind them of their wasted trip. A fair majority of the travellers thought there would be mystery and intrigue with the chance of being swept away to some paradise, only to leave when they were good and ready. In the end, thousands upon thousands of return tickets home in fact those these travellers that they were ready to go home.

The phenomenon was never re-visited again. People spoke out on the internet and de-bunked all the theories of paradise in the Himalayas. Online travel companies shuttered at the halt in sales to Nepal and we never heard from the travellers ever again. The secret was lost to what actually happened and so it stood.