He is tall, smart, a total gentleman, and terrible at saying 'Penguins'. Benedict Cumberbatch AKA Sherlock Holmes AKA Doctor Strange, does not only live an interesting life on-screen, he has spent his youth trotting across the globe. In an interview earlier this year, Benedict recounted how he took a trip to the Himalayas at 19, and found himself lost.
He spent his pre-university gap year with Tibetan Buddhist monks at a Buddhist monastery in Darjeeling. “I'd always been fascinated by the idea of meditation and what it meant. In India, I went on a retreat with a lama, several days of incantation to clear and purify the mind, along with a dozen other people. It was incredible, and I kind of floated out of there after two weeks. When you've been that still and contemplative, your sensory awareness is heightened and more sharply focused. You're taking in detail to the point where you have to pause a little bit. It was amazing.”
Later the actor and three other friends decided to catch bus to Kathmandu, Nepal and soon enough altitude sickness began to disintegrate the group, with just two making it to the final destination. He reveals he had “really weird f****d up dreams and felt things were happening in his sleep. I wasn't sure if he was conscious or awake.” He recounted days filled with drinking water squeezed out of moss, sleeping in abandoned barns, and more nightmares. They soon arrived in a village with leeches stuck to their ankles, where they ate the “best-tasting meal they'd ever had- unwashed greens and a bowl of eggs' after which our Sherlock got dysentery.
