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an orange american dot in a sky of tibetan clouds

Friday, April 24th, 2009

How can almost a year have flown while my words still stumble?

It’s a messy thing. Catching the processing of experiences down to something real, that happened, while at the same catching experience up to something, well, describable.

I hold the photo in my hand and wonder, without it, what evidence would I have?

Oh yes! A journal. Let me see here. Let’s see if this brings anything back…

In black pen I’ve squared a box that says, “18th,” supposing, at the time and wrongly, that at the very least, of this trip, I’d remember the month. Ha!

Anyway. There are bullet points:

* We stop at a goat and sheep herder’s tent, fold our legs and huddle in. We break and share Chinese military cookies, cook noodles and accept or reject, endless cups of salty butter tea.

* When we walk again, we collide like a creek into a stream heading downriver, and become part of a train of young and colorful pilgrims. Mothers with babies in baskets. Men with red ribbons on ponies. Young boys, as always, self-entertaining with sticks and stones, as they stumble along behind.

*One boy watches me carefully. I’ve fallen behind my group and I can see he’s concerned with how I’ll cross the river on my own. In a sagging, leather-belted and weathered jacket lined with animal fur, with a dangling earring of turquoise and coral, he approaches me. With childlike disregard for our obvious difference, he speaks fast and fluently in Tibetan, never doubting that I might not return the same. When I only smile in response, his world, for the first time, widens to contain more than one language. Finally, he points to my pony crew and motions for me to follow him over a carefully chosen course of river stones.


* We pop up our tiny tent. An orange American dot in a sky of Tibetan clouds.

* Children play. Adolescents flirt. Some are fighting. Some are fleeing. All in what I gather to be a rare event of permission to tumble, unsupervised, with each other. There’s a lot a grooming going on.

* We make soup on a propane burner underneath an audiences’ hushed and cross-cultural murmur of, “magic.”

* We make tea, and in answer to the pointing fingers, we dip a spoon in honey and drip a slow drool across a dozen fingers. Eyes and smiles light up to the universal language of sugar.

* I make the mistake of sharing my sweet biscuit with a small one, and as a rumor spreads of handouts, we slip underneath the zip of our tent. But it’s too late. The thumping of muddy boots ends at our door. A dozen tiny fingers and eyes start pulling at the corner of our tent. And even an arm or two manages to sneak in. Sangeetha freaks out. She yells for, “Gombu!” who is unusually talented at schooling unruly children. But he doesn’t hear or come. Instead a chorus from outside our tent picks up in the exact same tone of desperation, and in faux American accents, begins chanting…”Gombu! Gombu! Gombu!”


I try to lay down a game of Gin to secure parameters for our thoughts smaller that the walls of our tent. Thirty minutes later, we can still hear the new foreign word, in foreign intonations, being echoed off of Himalayan walls and returned with laughter….”Gombu! Gombu! Gombu!”

*The Gin score is: Kavita 546, Sangeetha 410

Posted in dolpa pilgrimage, on pilgrimage, photographic journeys | 4 Comments »

Pilgrimage of Poem & Music: Day 3, in the ring of the wind

Friday, October 31st, 2008

A shortage of ponies keeps us, with bags packed and stacked at the doorway, hesitantly stationed in the tiny trail-head town of Jomsom.

Today, Sangeetha and I follow our whim through the the alleys and to the corners of this little sand and stone town.

We also weave our way in and out of the veins that sustain this community; the food, trekking equipment and hiker miscellaneous stores touting the treats one more often wants than needs.

In a Tibetan antique shop that my curiosity, running out of corners to investigate, leads me into, I greet the two men in the entrance in Nepali.

“Oh?! You speak Nepali?” one asks with surprise.

“No. Some Hindi. Only a few words in Nepali,” I shyly correct.

He switches to English and inquires as to what I’m doing in the area. I explain that we’re trekking into the Dolpa, but are stuck for lack of ponies. When he asks for what purpose are the ponies, I explain that we decided that if we’re going into such an off-the-map area, we might as well bring needed goods; in this case, some 200 pairs of shoes and socks. I then turn the question back to him, “and what do you do here?”

To this he states, “Well I don’t live here. I’m just travelling through as well. I build schools and plant trees in Mustang.”

Mustang is an equally remote corner of Nepal and I reply, “Oh? You’re doing good work!”

He squints an eye and says, “but you don’t actually know that, do you….”

And I wink back, “No I don’t. But doesn’t my trusted enthusiasm make you feel more inclined to do good work, even if you’re not already?”

He laughs and claps his hand on the table, “You’re right! That’s the right kind of optimism!”

He then spies the pendant around my neck that I had silversmithed in India. As he quickly scans the Devanagari script, he poses to me, “Parvat, huh? And where is Shiva?”

While most people immediately read and interpret the scripted word to mean that which sits across from it in the dictionary, “mountain,” I have not missed his reference to the Goddess Parvati and her relationship to her consort, Lord Shiva.

I answer, “Shiva’s at home.”

To this we both laugh out loud together.  I then leave the store, as one should all good jokes, in the linger of laughing.


The Hindu Lord Ganesha, remover of obstacles and god of all good beginnings.


There is an appropriately dusty and crooked sign at the entrance of Jomsom that identifies itself, proudly, as being the capital of a windy valley. And as evidence of this claim pushes me around on the street, I muse to myself just how fitting this trailhead town trait is….

How many times have I heard a noise, turned around, and found a whiplash of footsteps haunting my own. This quick of the eye, evidenced only by the tail of a shadow ducking behind door or bush, makes my heart stutter with the question, what exactly is on my heels? Is it a guardian spirit? Or just the over-excited realizations of my immediate future rushing ahead to catch up to me? Is it deja vu running up to the door of my reality, knocking and fleeing, leaving only its ominous giggle? Questions unanswered, I conclude only that the wind is powerful. It seems to sweep our skin of any secreting soul, assuring the only state in which we are allowed to pursue this quest: naked. If uncomfortable, it still seems only right that we go through this purification ritual before our pilgrimage; it’s a gentle reminder that for all the stores touted “necessities,” and supplies with which we might stuff our sacks, nothing we can carry will protect us more against the forces of nature so much us our naked faith and trust. Yet this wind, as much as it is kind and cleansing, it is equally brave and daring. And at the same time as it purifies and prepares us, it bullies us around. Shoving our shoulders back and shouting, “Are you really tough enough? Are you?” Luckily, in our, perhaps naive, joy, all we can do is nervously laugh. And this good humor dismantles the push in the Wind’s shove as it does the power of all bullies. So we take our beating in the ring of the Wind, accepting that this practice, of cleansing, of submitting, of toughening, of trust and of good humor, will all, in the Dolpa, serve us well.


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Posted in dolpa pilgrimage, nepal, on pilgrimage | No Comments »

pilgrimage of poem & music; day 1 in the Dolpa: dilation

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

We wake and jostle our belongings together in haste; today, as we have long planned, we will begin our journey into the Dolpa.

Sacks stuffed, teeth brushed, packs on back, we descend the steep incline of wooden stairs and emerge on the lower deck of our guesthouse. Gombu, our “English speaking guide” is on the phone. He hangs up and sighs, starring at the phone like it might change its mind.

Finally, he lifts his head, but not his eyes, and carefully states,

“No porters. No ponies. Not cheap.”

Gombu speaks only in negatives; a style which tends to bump up roughly with our overly optimistic American angle on language. This is only one of the many communication challenges that we will encounter with our local guides; the first, and most glaring, being that Gombu does not understand English.

“But Gombu, we were told that there would certainly be ponies available. And that they would be cheap with your contacts. Well, we’re flexible. So how long do we have to wait? What are our options?”

To this, Gombu nods his head up and down and says, “Yes.”

When we furrow our brows in confusion, he furrows his.

Then he swings his head from left to right and says, “No.”

And the distinction between speaking and understanding English becomes clear.

Over the course of this adventure, we will come to adore Gombu with tender, constant and unconditional love. But his “yes” and “no” answers to our open ended questions will never stop testing our patience and compassion.

It’s our turn to sigh.

Sangeetha turns to me and says, “I’m convinced that everything that happens is good for us, even this.”

And I respond, “And that is why I chose to travel with you.”

We laugh and surrender ourselves to a situation in which we have no influence aside from attitude. We retreat to the roof deck where Sangeetha picks up her drawing pad and I my journal.

“Divots carved in the sandstone walls string together like the chunky coral strands that the Tibetan women tie around their necks. Lower teeth jut from caves, which, with squinted eyes, I am surprised to recognize as stupas: the Buddhist crosses of the Christian world; shaped monuments marking sacred sites. My eyes, adjusted and attuned to stupa spotting, suddenly spy dozens. But then, when my eyes relax, I realize that I’ve misidentified a natural pile of rocks for the sacred stupa shape. Confused, I realize my eyes are lost; confronted with that wall and question I’ve encountered in the midst of lucid dreaming: But which part of this is real? And which a symbol? And is this state, of un-focus, the intention? To blur the line between the sacred and profane; that one may become the other, not physically by shape shifting, but rather in the dilation of the witnessing eye? Is this exercise in the bardo, between the physical and metaphysical, an unnamed medium of every religion? A task in which we may further practice, aside from our nightly REM cross training, in preparation for the navigation our final traverse of life between lives? Is that the goal of all our sacred symbols? Well if the intention is confusion, then I am there. Pinching my understanding along with my leg.”

We put our pens down and wander into the streets on a mission. We have one map of our destination, but figure an additional pictorial perspective could do no harm. We weave our way through the street stores, but are consistently spit out of shops, short of our objective: “No map of Dolpa.” “Sorry. No map.” “We don’t have any.” “Of the Dolpa? No. Not that.”



Funny that the trail head for the Dolpa hasn’t a single print of its own mugshot. We’d note it as fair warning, if we weren’t so wrapped up in the cozy blanket of our own naivety. But at least we got out of that bed. The preceding day, as our bare-boned bus teetered over beckoning mountain cliff ledges, Sangeetha and I decided to define the word, “precarious.”

“likely to fall”

“dependent on chance”

“insecure positioning”

“teetering on trouble”

“bound for natural disaster”

“on the edge”

We take dibs on the things that we will grab should we plummet. She calls the seat in front of her. I call her. She’s envious of my window. I remind her of the things that could jut through it as we roll. She says that if we die, our disappearance might make a great movie. She claims Carrie Russel. I, Wynona Ryder.

And so, acutely aware of the precarious state of our lives on this pilgrimage, we are perhaps more accurately labeled stupid than naive.

And there is fear. Great fear, of which we speak little. Sometimes we poke a little fun and nervously laugh, but we’ve chosen each other for a serious reason; that in our moments of self-doubt and true fear, we may ride freely on the other person’s (presumed) faith and (assumed) sense of security. Afterall, isn’t that the most common function of couple-dom?

Ironically, or not, that night I have a lucid dream: In the commotion of typical non-sense, I turn and face a wind and hear myself say in my head, “I’m dreaming.” My perceptive centers itself. And I wake up. But into another dream. Where I can hear my voice but am not speaking. The voice I hear is story telling. It’s speaking of this very adventure in the Dolpa, but in the past tense. Talking in the future of a tale all but done. Then the voice becomes my own and I AM the story teller, speaking with confidence of events long experienced and gone. I wake up. This time, not into another dream, but into my twisted sheets. And when I awake, the taste of certainty is still so strong in my mouth, that I have to shuffle through a timeline of events to convince myself that I haven’t yet finished this trip.

And only then do I realize the severity of my unspoken fear.

That my subconscious felt it necessary to provide me this favorable omen means, indeed, a fear was brewing into a less-laughable and quite formidable threat. It’s as if a third person has joined us, in whose past tense story of our present tale and in the voice of timeless and all-knowing perspective, presents a faith upon which we feel confident placing our bets.

Sangeetha awakes. I tell her my dream. We confess the most formidable of fears. We laugh a little. And sigh more.

We will return. We’ll live to tell our story in the past tense. And to this faith, we suddenly cling.


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Posted in dolpa pilgrimage, nepal, on fear, on pilgrimage, on spirituality & religion | 2 Comments »

sponsor shout out: Jetboil

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

We had a number of amazing sponsors who spiked our gear with the best equipment in the field. Here’s my testimonial for Jetboil, who equipped us with our entire kitchen for our month in the Dolpa. I’ll be back with another Dolpa post asap. The problem is I’m broke and have had to refocus my energies and prioritize those projects that, you know, pay. ;)

I’m actually shocked that in eight years of off-the-beaten-path international travels, it is only now that I have packed my first set of Jetboil gear. As it is in the nature of most explorers to shun instruction pamphlets, I considered it an auspicious sign that it took us only minutes to assemble our entire, “kitchen,” on the tiny porch of our guesthouse in Kathmandu. And it really was only a few minutes later that we were clinking metal cups full of wine and celebrating, not only the success of our Jetboil trial run, but the pad thai we had just whipped up wherein.

Of course, what defines success on a guesthouse deck is entirely different from the test of what will survive in the tiny and ancient villages perched at 15,000 feet, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, in the Dolpa of rural Nepal. And perhaps more importantly, what would ultimately survive the three 17,000 foot passes and weeks of walking that we would have to travel to get there. As we were also carrying 200 pairs of shoes to deliver to the remote communities (often isolated by the Himalayas from aid) we had employed four ponies to help us with our load; a load that was significantly lightened by the missing full stove, kitchen and fuel of which I’ve seen expeditions accustomed to carrying. Not only our bags, but our moods, were notably higher for the simple stats of the modest, compact and ultralight set of jetboil gear that packed down into the corner of a single bag. With multiple 10-hour days, the ease of our Jetboil tools not only made coffee fast, soup hot, and dinner easy, but these adjectives earned us some of the most precious minutes of our day: an earlier start, a hot lunch on a cold day, a longer break for a priceless view, a second evening hot drink, less time between getting out of our boots and into our sleeping bags. The tools served not only practical, but entertainment, purposes, as word would quickly spread and a modest crowd of local villagers would accumulate to witness the, “magic fire,” upon which we produced their same staple of life, “dhal bhat,” or, “lentils and rice,” without a single patty of yak manure or log of high altitude desert brush.

Few people venture into the Dolpa; we never, in all of upper Dolpa, saw another foreigner. As two young females with limited high-altitude trekking experience, we were probably in a little over our heads. But thanks to exceptional gear, we know little of the great problems that COULD have befallen us. Thank you, Jetboil, for sponsoring our outrageous expedition and helping us to safely and easily navigate a host of potential problems to assure a totally seamless, light, safe and tasty adventure. The next time we head again to where few have gone, along with our curiosity and courage, we will not forget to pack our Jetboil gear.

With enormous appreciation,

sol & kt


In the Picture: We come to the end of the road, quite literally: it ended in a cliff of rock. On the other side, we waited patiently for our next unknown form of transportation, but not before climbing on top of the bus and searching through bags until we found the coffee press and a bag of organic Nepali roasted beans. I swear we’re not high maintenance. We didn’t bathe for a month after this day. We all choose our treats. Mine happens to be french pressed. :)


Posted in dolpa pilgrimage, sponsors, travel tips | No Comments »

pilgrimage of poem & music
(an intimidating book to open)

Monday, September 22nd, 2008


Opening the book on our adventures in the Dolpa (rural Nepal) is as intimidating as the 17,000 foot passes we crossed to get there. Just look at a single page of my notes!

So instead of hesitating any longer, I’m just going to open and type.

Scared, exhausted, breathless, hungry, sore, cold and wet, on the first week of our pilgrimage in the Dolpa, I woke up early and as Sangeetha took to her morning ritual of flicking at the beads of water that accumulated into breaking dams on the low roof of our tiny tent, I scribbled into my journal the following:

THESE are the adventures of Kavita and Sangeetha in the Dolpa of rural Nepal.

Names, dates, times, heights, distances and places cannot be confirmed as such numerals and characters have little value when that to which they are respective does not exist. Let it suffice that such measures, here, change with the wind, waning moon and a timeless culture’s mood.

My name is Kavita. Kavita means, “poem” in Hindi. The name was given to me by a man born a shepherd of the Ladakhi North Indian plateau, at the summit of a pass in the Himalayas as a gift to crown the acceptance of the path of adventures that would ultimately lead to this one. On that same cliff of life crossroads, I, curiously, kicked not one, but two, copper horseshoes.

Upon finding my first phone, weeks later, I called my best friend and told her of my decision to follow my open-ended whim in South Asia. She replied, “then I’m coming too” and so I sent to her, by way of messenger, the second copper horseshoe.

Fall, winter and spring pass before we find ourselves reunited in the smooth clay underground room of an attending Tibetan family in a tiny and ancient village in rural Nepal. My friend is sitting cross-legged and wide-eyed at the underground world of which she has so suddenly entered. She keeps trying to bow lower than the dark, wrinkled man holding a prayer mala (rosary) and chanting mantras (Buddhist prayers) beneath his smile, for whom she has an unnamed source of reverent respect.

I enter the smoke-filled room and Sonam Tashi, our Tibetan ponyman, looks up with his perennial smile, just as he snaps a set of new batteries into an aged radio (and only medium of this otherwise communication-less world).

“SANGEET!” he shouts, as his arms, inflated by enthusiasm, rise into the air.

As I cross the room to my seat on the richly carpeted clay bench, I do a little line dance in my best impersonation of traditional Tibetan dance as I have seen it. Our small audience laughs in surprise, claps to the beat, and, finally, applauds my short act. Finding my seat next to my friend, she asks of me, “What did Sonam Tashi shout?”

“Sangeet. It’s Hindi and Nepali for, “music.” That’s it! That’s your name! Sangeetha!”

For it was only a day ago that my friend charmed an entire bus of local passengers waiting on a cliff ledge (for a secret amount of time) with the guitar she had struggled to bring half way around the globe to this moment. As she sang and strummed on the muddy step of the bus, a beautiful Punjabi boy in a pink turban snapped his fingers, gyrated his hips and thrust his arms about in animated poses of what he claimed to be his culture’s traditional dance.


The name is perfect, and thus are born the adventures of Kavita and Sangeetha.


Posted in daily life on the road, dolpa pilgrimage, magic & alchemy, story time | 4 Comments »

feeling how human we are

Thursday, August 28th, 2008


(My apologies; I’ve been on a bit of a road trip and typing is difficult from passenger seats. The following “continuation” is only another contraction but it IS also two terms closer to the final push of this, “detox dictionary”…)

Large intestine: The function of the large intestine is to maintain fluid balance of the body, absorb certain vitamins, process undigested material and store waste before it is eliminated. Where is it? Well, if you’re anything like I was before my detox, you’re probably looking down at your general belly region and thinking, “Well, I know it’s inside there somewhere…” Post-detox and post twice-daily intestinal self-massages, I now smack myself in the head in astonished embarrassment and wonder if anyone besides me finds it alarming that we modern human beings know so little of that which we consist? Personally, I know I’m more familiar with the insides of a vacuum cleaner than my gut and I would bet most men know the mechanics of their car far more intimately than their own body’s engine. Does this fact suddenly strike anyone as stupidly as it’s struck me? No use in beating ourselves up but we can press further. And I know there’s something terribly scary about feeling (literally) how human we are, but take your hand and, using moderate pressure and looking at the following diagram, start pressing around your abdomen. After you follow the path of your large intestine (the colon being the u-shaped portion), and since you’re in the neighborhood, find your small intestine (in the middle), stomach (above), liver (above as well) and kidneys (side & back) as well. Heck, just for kicks, put your hand over your chest and feel your heart beat. Yes. There is GOOD stuff in there. Shake hands with your insides; the friendship is long overdue.

Bentonite: The definition of Bentonite sounds like a riddle:

What clarifies wine, seals the disposal system of spent nuclear fuel, is used in making professional sand castles, clears the funk from cat litter, is used in drilling mud for oil, can be found in rocket nozzels, is an important ingredient of face masks used to eliminate acne, is the main active ingredient of man’s first industrial cleaning agent, lines landfills, forms from the weathering of volcanic ash, absorbs several times its dry mass in water and safely aids in the removal of long-lodged toxins from the human body?

Well I’ve already given away the answer. But the question, Alex, is:

What is bentonite?

Or at least that’s a selection of the list of attributes and uses of Bentonize stacked by Wikipedia.

Bentonite, perhaps more practically and from the perspective of a detox faster, is simply sludgy spoonfuls of gray clay. It’s pretty tasteless and easy to swallow except for a grittiness in texture that makes every slurper grimace. On this particular detox plan, we slam our bentonite with water, psyllium husk and a little fresh watermelon juice. Once you learn not to “chew” your bentonite “shake” (and thus avoiding the grit by avoiding the grind), the shakes are actually eagerly anticipated, and even — to a few of us — considered tasty. But we are fasting. So even dirt might taste good and being a form of volcanic ash, bentonite is, after all, a close cousin of earth. But in all likelihood, it’s probably less bentonite’s enchanting affect on our palette that gets us fasters excited for our fourth shake of the day and more the fact that the psyllium husk expands in our stomachs and extinguishes the squeezes, pangs, grumbles and all other evidence and feelings of hunger. The bentonite is also functionally appetizing in that it quickly works to absorb and eliminate the toxins broken down and released into the body during the process of fasting. Toxins, being rather nasty in nature as their name would imply, are responsible for the headaches, nausea, rashes, light-headedness, etc. that are typical of a long fast. All these uncomfortable side effects of detoxification get a free and rapid ride out of the body with the help of the bentonite. And thus the friendly combo of psyllium and bentonite gives us fasters something concrete (of which bentonite is ALSO an ingredient) to cheer our sludge shakes over.

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Posted in on health, thailand | 2 Comments »

defining detox

Sunday, August 17th, 2008

So originally I thought to document a day-by-day account of my rollercoaster ride on the detox train. But as anyone who ventures on an extended cleanse quickly discovers: this is hardly a log ride on Splash Mountain were the participants all experience the same dips, soaks and screams at the same time. Quite the contrary and much more like a marathon, each is on her own individual adventure of fasting highs and lows, hills and dips, all of which are easily empathized but never identically experienced by the faster running in front, behind or next to her.

So instead, I’m going to tackle the mysterious lingo of which I, initially, eavesdropped upon and eventually added to my own dictionary through the process of direct experience. That way I’m not presenting a recipe, but only the ingredients, allowing each to himself to sort out his own way of putting it all together.

Let’s get to it.

Detox Camp Dictionary

Detox: Now anyone who has walked through an airport terminal or supermarket checkout counter has probably noticed this word making regular appearances on the faces and front pages of our nations least reputable reporting network; the tabloids. So let us first DISPEL the myth propelled by our favorite socialite and celebrity icons that a detox is:

1. An easy ticket for anorexics to legitimize eating disorders.

2. A weekend vacation from a regular scene and schedule of party drugs.

3. Proof for the judge that one is, “cleaning up,” and doesn’t need to serve time.

4. A standard stop, before the tailor, on the way to the Emmy’s.

Yes. It IS a “secret of the (skinny) stars” to check into a five-star California-based detox center. But while the staff at such a center may assist with, and even clean up after, colonics (which, please, any earth-grounded human being should be quite capable of doing him/herself), they can never assure the “right intention” of the guest, which may be why just as often/quickly as we hear headlines of celebrities checking INTO a detox center, we hear news of them, “breaking out.”

Let’s return to Thailand.

Back in my days of irrationally fearing colonics, I asked of the Wellness Centers’ staff, “but what is natural about pushing 5 gallons of coffee through the end of your body that is made only for exits?”

And the answer, I had to admit, was good:

“It’s not natural. But neither is the diet of modern man. If we humans ate as our bodies intended, a diet comprised of mostly raw and organic vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and even, moderately, meats, then there would be no need for cleansing. But what is natural about the pesticides, medicines, hormones, preservatives and the other chemicals that the 21st century human being ingests, thrice-plus, daily? Nothing. And what the human body cannot process, it stores by lodging itself, conveniently, in the crevasses of our bodies, particularly in our intestines. What a colonic is doing is nothing more than helping to clean out the dump of unnatural toxins we have already accumulated in our bodies. Cleansing is how we get our bodies BACK to a “natural” state.”

Yes. That’s a good answer. But even better is their final disclaimer:

“Listen. We don’t want to tell you anything. We want you to both question and figure it out for yourself. And there’s only one way to do that.”

Ah. A direct hit on the nail-head of one of my favorite life mantras: “learn through direct experience.”

Detoxification, ultimately, is a word directly linked and respective to what a person has already ingested; it’s a personal interpretation. And for that reason I have to leave the definition of “detox” up to each individual and his/her direct experience of it.

Don’t worry. The rest of the terms have a lot less outlets than the intersection that the word, “detox” just ran me in. :)

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Posted in on health, thailand | No Comments »

reservation for 1

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

It’s not the first time I’ve sunk my feet into the warm white sand of Haad Tien beach on the Thai island of Koh Phangan. Three years ago, at the tail end of an extended adventure in India, I found my breath as shallow and cramped as Delhi’s traffic and, sucking the last of my air in, I high tailed it for the nearest island on a rumor of the existence of a tropical heath & yoga center where I could feast on organic goods in a bamboo bungalow perched on a cliff over the Gulf of Thailand.

The rumors all proved true; I quickly found my breath again, mostly in the form of heavy hammock-wrapped sighs, sunset gasps of awe and a snorkel mask’s air tube.

As I continued to explore the hills of the jungle surrounding my “island-on-a-island” (after all, the neighbor of THIS beach is none other than Haad Rin, home of the legendary and monthly, Full Moon Party)…

… my curiosity eventually led me to the subject of much of the vegetarian restaurant chatter: the “Wellness Center,” located discretely and quietly across a bridge from the Sanctuary Resort.

Barefoot and relaxed, I crossed the bridge from my “resort world” and let my whim take a lead in wandering me in. Immediately, I felt myself an outsider to the unusually calm and skinny crowd sucking on identical and strange-colored sludge drinks that I suspected came from the posted menu of fasting cocktails.

I picked up a leather bound information book, walked under a sign that read, “Out of respect for our fasters, please do not eat here,” and took a cushioned seat near a place where I could conveniently overhear this strange community in conversation. There I overheard a mix of the standard traveller lingo and questions, yet interspersed with some especially foreign terms, like, “bentonite,” “colonic,” “mucloid plaque,” “healing crisis” and “Bali body wrap.” And as I flipped through the pages of information, I also noted the curious spelling of, “disease” as, “dis-ease.” Yes. These were all interesting clues of an unsolved mystery and, interest piqued, I took my questions to the fasters’ bar manned by a staff of this supposed, “wellness retreat.”

“So you don’t eat anything of substance for 7 entire days? And you say that the colonics are really a necessary part of the fast? And this — this not-eating — it would cost a person how much?”

Far from being persuaded, I walked out with some sort of self-rationale that the human body should be quite capable of cleansing itself; after all, it has done so for millennia, without the aid of organic coffee colonics and clay shakes, no? But my health motivation WAS reinvigorated and I did spend the rest of my week eating only from the special pre- and post-fasting raw food menu of the resort restaurant. I retired to my hammock with a book where I spend most of the rest of my week, going only a little out of my way to respectfully keep myself, as an eater, out of the fasters’ club’s way.

Now. Fast forward three years.

Life being oddly inclined to spin us humans in such circles, I find myself, AGAIN, at the tail end of a year of adventures in India and desperately in need of a similar dose of the good health, fresh perspective and renewed balance that the sea’s infusion has proved its ingredients of consistently delivering.

This time I save myself the clumsy and wet entrance of my 3-year-prior arrival by holding my shoes and rolling my pants up to my thighs before jumping out of the longtail boat.

I don’t know why I did it. All I know is that I didn’t hesitate for a minute. I just looked up the website (http://www.thesanctuarythailand.com/) and sent an email asking to confirm my, 7-day “master cleanse” booking and 11-day stay (including my pre- and post-fasting).

As I heavy-step my way across the hot, white sand, I fondly note my favorite hammock where I read a half dozen books during my last visit.

And then I walk right past it, past the resort, and past the restaurant. I follow the sculpted path, carefully inlaid with seashells, and cross over the bridge.

I enter the bamboo thatched roof hut underneath the hanging painted sign of the, “Wellness Center” and drop my bags;

“Yep. I’m here. Reservation for 1.”

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

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Posted in on health, thailand | No Comments »

alchemy

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

IMG_8843, originally uploaded by seekingsol.

(The problem is that my blog is a mass of congested intestines in need of its own colonic! Again, I have daily notes on the entirely of my 7-day “master clense”; a story I will type out and post just as soon as I have the chance to sit in a proper chair with a cup of coffee and do it. But for now, out of guilt for lack of live action on this site, I post another clip from an email to another beloved friend of mine. Don’t worry. I’ll try to stop this nasty habit soon.)

*****

…and I’ll end with a story and token. A real token. Maybe a trinket. But a trinket that I will transform, by the very act of alchemy (!), into a magic amulet! (That sentence is meant to be read in the ridiculous voice of a circus ring master). So I had your name on my mind like a mantra. And I happened to walk into a Tibetan shop where I met a beautiful woman covered in turquoise with a fall-colored striped smock who proceeded to pull out the contents of everything on the velvet underneath her glass case. And so my eye is pulled in the direction of one particularly unnotable and cheap looking trinket which she holds up and says…”Tibetan medicine! Made of many metals. To ward off evil spirits and inspire good healing and health. You can hold on your wrist or put under your pillow.” And so I buy it. At the exaggerated price that I allow all Tibetans to charge me. And then we sit and talk and as I proceed to tell her the story of my pilgrimage in Dolpa, she says, “I can’t believe you’ve been to Dolpa! I was there! When I was 8 years old. My father and many family were killed by Chinese and so we ran away from Tibet and crossed the mountains and reached to Dolpa. Oh. Such beautiful wild flowers like I’ve never seen! Only in Dolpa. Did you see the yellow ones? Near the rivers? You did! So beautiful! And have you seen the women there, how big their gold and turquoise earrings are? Oh, how beautiful I thought they were! I used to run down to the river, and pick those big yellow flowers by the stream, and stick them behind both my ears, and wave my head back and forth and look into the stream and pretend like those yellow flowers were big golden rings…”

As she tells me this story, she puts her hands to her head and tucks the imaginary gold flowers behind her ears, and then she closes her eyes and swings her head back and forth, laughing like an 8-year old.

And I suddenly am SO happy for the Amchi and Alchemist that has given me this amulet; for the 8-year old girl that found flowers and gold in the midst of death, danger and exile and for the same power that, in her touch of this amulet, she transpires to you. I imagine all the people that I will ask to hold and put their good energy and prayers into this for you, but I know it is her hand, and her story, that transformed this trinket, by her alchemy, into an amulet.

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Posted in letters (my craft), tibet | 2 Comments »

through my window

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

Internet on this island costs a much as a small island, so instead of a proper update, here’s a simple clip from a letter to a dear friend:

Hello Love!

I hope you are well, I feel father away now that I’m on an island with distanced communication and also immersed into this friendly little fasting community.

I come to you from my “fasters dorm”, which is an air-conditioned, partitioned and Zen little place with dim and sunlit lighting. I’ve been eating only raw foods the last two days and passed something called a “PH test” yesterday which cleared me for my “masters phase” 7-day fast which I started this morning by swallowing a clay and bentonite “shake” at 7am (stuff that absorbs the toxins in your body that you release during fasting so that you avoid all those nasty symptoms of detoxing like headaches, hunger, etc.)

I spent the last two days flipping through piles of pages of books on whole food health, the medicinal benefits of fasting/detoxing, the corruption of the medical industry, and learning, in detail, the geography and functions of my body: intestines, liver, colon, stomach, etc. None of this is totally new to me, which is good less I thought myself entered a cult, but it is the first time I’ve really just SAT in a hammock for hours and looked closely at the information, and it’s REALLY refreshing to see that there is solid backing and science behind a lot of things I knew intuitively or through experience, already, about my body.

It’s all women here, mostly older. And it’s nice to be surrounded by their wisdom, life stories, and support. It’s a relief for ME to be the younger one who gets the guidance, mentorship and elder advice!

The “Wellness Center” does a really good job making sure your days are TOTALLY full here, knowing well that one of the hardest parts of fasting is the boredom left in the absence of eating. So they have a pretty strict schedule that keeps you hopping from one place to another. My day starts with waking at 7am and making myself my first of three daily clay shakes. Then there’s a stop at the, “fasters bar,” for my first set of vitamins and glass of tea (with a whole ginger root in it!), then one of two daily organic coffee colonics (which, yes, does involve a tube, your butt, and 5 gallons of water cycling through your body; I’m definitely a little nervous about that). I have an hour and half session of yoga today, one hour at the spa getting a body scrub/massage and wrap, and then an hour in the steam room, which smells like cinnamon coffee cake. I like to plunge between the. “coffee cake room,” and the, “fresh river water pool” – which creates the most amazing sensation on my skin that might have ever felt. Yesterday I spent two hours simply sighing between the two.

The rest of my time I just swing in a hammock, swapping my hours between serious literature, health books, and metaphysical books. I’ve, thankfully, already read half the metaphysical books on the shelf and am happy to have finally exhausted myself, mostly, of the subject. But also happy that the my metaphysical life interest survived, and has renewed itself in something calmer, something less ambitious, something more experiential, and something…of a middle path. This must be the new phase of my life. The one that also wants to plant gardens, have a dog, and practice making really nice meals to share with my family, friends and loved ones…

Anyway. That’s probably enough from me today as I don’t want to bore you with more of my bathroom details (the subject of every table in this place), but just give you a glance into my window.

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

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Posted in letters (my craft), on health, thailand | No Comments »

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