Best Face Forward?

I have a really conflicted relationship with makeup.

It’s not that I don’t wear it.

You wouldn’t see me dead in a posh bar without makeup; I applied slap daily for a blogging conference I went to; and, of course, I did my damnedest for this travel blogging calendar thing.

But my application skills are more Krusty the Clown than Bobbi Brown, and, whether cause or effect, this makes cosmetics a very occasional thing for me.

It’s also hassle. Ya know?

You need to take it off at the end of the day.

Although… Now that we’re back in the kind of climate that leaves one tending towards the pale and interesting (read: blotchy and purplish), I’m seriously contemplating reintroducing a bit of slap.

If only to lose the zombie look around the eyes.

That said, there are contexts in which I simply don’t get wearing makeup.

The beach, for example…

Wearing makeup with a bikini is like wearing heels with a bikini.

It just seems, well, wrong.

Unless you’re a video ho on a hip-hop shoot in Miami, a Victoria’s Secret model on board P Diddy’s yacht, or, ya know, Courtney Stodden – I have a cold! I’ve been on an intellectual diet of internet famous people, YouTube fail videos, Cheezburger and social media! — a bikini is for swimming in, no?

You don’t swim in high heels.

And unless you’re a synchronised swimmer or RuPaul, you don’t swim in makeup, either.

Ergo: bikini plus heels, or bikini plus makeup, equals wrong.

Not, however, as wrong as makeup plus trekking gear.

Yep. Trekking in makeup.

The boy and I were in one of our posher local Pokhara eateries t’other day, where an all-female group were celebrating completing the Annapurna Circuit that morning, still in their hiking boots and Annapurna 2012 fleeces.

Now, that’s a bitch of a trek, no question of it.

Well worth the celebration.

Which made it all the more surprising that at least two-thirds of the women in that (I repeat) all-female group were trekking in makeup. And full makeup, at that — foundation, lippie, blusher, eye couture, the works.

How DOES that work?

You get up at 5am for breakfast at 6am before your 6.30am start, allowing an extra half hour to apply makeup…

You crawl into your teahouse’s unheated bathroom…

Nah. You don’t, surely?!

You MUST, surely, stay in bed with your makeup bag beside you and a mirror balanced on your lap, grabbing that last half hour of warmth as you work on finetuning the stuff around the eyes?

Do you?

Or do they have, like, centrally heated teahouses with elaborate bathrooms at every night’s stop now?

And, further… why?

You’re not going to be meeting many mirrors on your thigh-straining series of ascents and descents. You’re still less likely, I would venture, to meet the man (or woman) of your dreams.

And, does it really, really matter what you look like in those temperatures?

Or is it just that you feel so vile anyway that it’s worth carrying a full makeup bag up to 5000-odd metres just to improve your mood?

Still, gentle readers, if any one of you has successfully applied makeup while negotiating high altitude trekking, I’d love to hear.

Truly, I would.

We head off for Everest Base Camp on Monday.

And I’m seriously considering bringing my lipstick.