Chewed up purple Nepali homemade binding; I angle it out and ponder the hand painted elephant and cow atop each other on the cover. I can’t remember my exact reasoning at the time for choosing the blank pages of this particular yet-unwritten book, but feel now that purple is too chemical a color for my Dolpa memories — which are all strictly scripted in high-altitude grays and blues. And while the experience was as heavy and sacred as the beasts on the cover, at 15,000 feet these animals would be as mythical to those looking down, as we at lower-elevations consider the gods when looking up. No. The choice of journal was all wrong; saying something also of my miscalculated expectations of the journey. The latter, I’m sure, the very reason that I now remember one particular day on that trip as the most reality-quaking of my travels.

It’s for this day that the same finger that dragged across my bookshelf now searches in the tattered purple journal.

I come across a page splattered with large bleeding holes of black ink and the quip, “did you know that pens explode at 14,000 feet?!”

I laugh just as much at the comment itself as at the fact that I had correctly guessed that my future self would find this self-delivered jest, one day, funny.

I scan my thin and weak scribbles and suddenly sympathize with the exhaust evidenced by the simple bullet points that I hadn’t the energy to even expand upon.

I return to the top of the page and see in the corner that I’ve documented only:

June 7th
Santa
11 hours trekking
14,000 feet

I return to the bullet points – some so faint and foreign that I can’t remember the associations of things I clearly thought would burn in my permanent memory so deeply that I’d only need a single term or phrase of prompting. And for those lost associations, I feel a bit of sadness: does a memory cease to exist if it’s not remembered?

Then I read a note that sends my head back in a fit of laughter.

In the bullet-pointed memory, KT, also known as Sangheeta in this story, is looking at me blankly. Her cheeks are scalded red by the high altitude sun and wind. Her face is still covered in dirt from when, at the top of a 15,000 foot pass, a supposed dinn-powered whirlwind attacked her before being chased off with protection mantras and a few well-aimed stones by our Tibetan guide.

It’s with these eyes, black like the bleeding ink of my exploded pen, that KT turns to me after taking slow account of our surroundings:

A little frightened, I touch her arm and tell her, “KT, I just want you to know that this is the most culturally shocking place I have ever witnessed in my 7-years of travel.”

To this, she turns around and shows almost no reaction. Then she scans our surroundings again and comments, “No. I think I’ve seen this before.” She concludes her sentence in straight-faced shock, “on National Geographic.”

It’s the altitude and the exhaust and the absolute absurdity of where we’ve found ourselves that suddenly sends us, with this serious comment, into high-altitude hysterics. Her tears of laughter clear tiny pink streaks down her face and, in a place where there are no mirrors except for the face in front of yours, I am left forever wondering if mine have done the same.

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.

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.

(A Punjabi man helps himself to Sangeta’s song on the first of many days of adventure on our way into the Dolpa.)

<img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3068/2627228383_98a5e45731.jpg?v=0″

You know when you begin to start every sentence with, “If we survive this trip…” that you’re in the middle of a serious adventure.

Well friends. Though we sometimes doubted this day would ever come, we can now official sigh (and sing), “We’re alive!” And there is nothing like looking over the cliff of your life to make you step back and take a breath of appreciation for the simple non-cliff-hanging details of living.

I have a day-by-day account of the adventure of which I’ll soon be posting. But first we need to do things like shower for the first time in a month, gain back the weight we lost living in the clouds that hover the Himalayas, and call everyone we’ve ever known to tell them we love them. Yes. It was the dumbest, bravest and most challenging and beautiful of my seven years of adventures. And, soon, you’ll hear more about it that you ever wanted to. But first. We have things like bed sheets and toilet seats to appreciate.

The above are only two of over a thousand photos waiting to be uploaded….

Specifically, following the nomadic yak caravan tracks in the general nether-regions of Nepal known as Upper & Lower Dolpa:

Taken from Wikipedia:

The Dolpo people (or “Dhol-wa” in their own language & “Dolpo-pa” in Tibetan) live in the Himalayan range of Dhaulagiri near the Tibetan border. The Dolpo-pa have a culture closely linked to Tibetan culture.

The lives of the Dolpo-pa were portrayed in the oscar-nominated film “Himalaya -l’enfance d’un chef”[1], in 1999.

Geography and history worked hard together to raise all possible barriers around the Inner Dolpo region of Nepal. The trek east towards the once prosperous Kali Gandaki road is always dangerous, never easy and seldom open; heading south means crashing against the Dhaulagiri; the high passes heading west just go to… Dolpo, and if one decides to head north he might be either shot by the Chinese guards or die of thirst in the endless Tibetan plains.

The inhabitants of the area belong exclusively to the Tibetan stock. Indeed the area was settled by Tibetan nomads in the early centuries A.D. and the links to the vast northern realm have always been strong, especially because Dolpo’s winter are so harsh that the herds must be carried north in winter if their owner wish them to survive.

In the golden ages of Lamaism Dolpo was administered by Tibet, Mustang (Lo) and Dolpo itself, and being a place ‘across no route from anywhere to anywhere else’, the area remained unbothered. The struggles between the more powerful chieftains controlling the surrounding trading routes hardly reached such a barren and godforsaken land. But such places are a magnet for hermits, pilgrims and would-be saints, of which Tibet was opulent. The area entered his ‘Renaissance’ between 1530 and 1700: scholars and famous lamas loved the place and founded small but famous monasteries like Shey, Samling, Margom and Yang-tsher, the locals were free and willing to engage trading expeditions north and south and were unmolested by administrators as long as they bartered donations for social control (read religion). This was the glorious period when the ‘Four Lamas of Dolpo’ lived, obviously ignorant of the fame they would have acquired four centuries afterward thanks to the passion of the British scholar David Snellgrove. Their names, Merit Intellect, Religious Protector, Glorious and Good and Glorious Intellect, are sufficient to create a magical atmosphere. It could not get much better than that, and indeed did not last long. In slow but nonetheless effective succession, secularization all around Tibet weakened both the quantity and the quality of the local Lamas; Mustang was conquered by Ghurkas, that in turn was soon absorbed by Nepal, the Britishs and so on, and basically everyone forgot about Dolpo; then the Chinese invaded Tibet and the border remained open just to small groups of adventurous herders and merchants, when even the important Gandaki valley closed. The population, where intermarriage was already ‘not infrequent’, remained more and more isolated, the authorities were non existent, the religious lamas lost the contact with their leaders and masters, and Nepal found it cheaper to declare the place ‘closed’ rather than helping it out.

If one is in favour of autarchy, he should visit Dolpo. With no material, spiritual and social exchange with the rest of the world, the only way is down. As a further disadvantage, the Dolpo society was not, and still isn’t, organized feudally around a master, or chief. The authority and social control functions are held by village elders whose ancestral authority is acknowledge by the community, and simple lamas. Being there no resources to plunder, Dolpo slowly fell into oblivion. Villages are small and far apart, isolated in deserted valleys, small bunches of stone houses with occasional wood-carved windows and flat roofs where juniper is left to dry, surrounded by barley and buckwheat fields and dry pastureland. Two months of greenery and flowers at the beginning of the monsoon season, fine months of ochre and five of white. Electricity is unknown, telephones a dream, plumbing non existent, metal almost revered, hospital unheard-of, schools absent, glass unfamiliar, medicines alien, gas outlandish. Energy comes either from dried yak dung or from occasional juniper. Young people can barely afford to sit still in winter and is forced away in small, shy trading ventures, where wool and barley is exchanged for whatever these cheap commodities can buy. Here the concept of per capita income is totally useless, because most of the economy is still based on simple barter. The poorest African village is more developed that any place in Dolpo.

A trek from Kathmandu to Dolpo is portrayed in the book “The Snow Leopard” by Peter Matthiessen.

“High Frontiers: Dolpo and the Changing World of Himalayan Pastoralists” by Ken Bauer was published by Columbia University Press in 2004.

(Uh. Whoa. Hadn’t read that till now. Guess it is a good thing that we’re bringing a few hundred extra pairs of shoes/socks and bags of extra medical supplies. So, hey, spin some physical/mental prayer wheels for our safe journey?!)

It still took me hours to upload, but at least we finally have something to show for it…

The *new* Nepal Photo Album is now open.

———————————————
*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.

*****

Journal Entry
March 23rd, 2005
Kathmandu, Nepal
Pashupatinath Temple
The Burning (Cremation) Ghats along the Bagmati River

In insatiable appetite, a greedy fire spits out the flames of a violent hunger. Riding a wave of wind, a whipping tornado of smoke takes a turn back towards the ground and the heavy breath of burning flesh engulfs its circle of male mourners.

They do not flinch.

On the deck of the burning ghat, tearless faces await shaved scalps; A sacrifice to symbolize their new un-chosen un-attachment to the body that burns. A single, small and circular black patch on their heads is all that is left kept, seeming to me like an X marking and respecting the last line of connection, and a path we will all one day walk, between this world and the next.

In the fire, a human thigh, blackened beyond recognition, falls from its bone. Immediately, a bamboo pole is thrust into the pyre and the thigh is pushed like a log deeper into the coals. The fire rages; As if it too longs for and appreciates the consumption of that considered rare and sacred. The men sit squatted, flat feet, arms crossed, watching without word of protest, as Immortality burns.

The mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts and nieces are not here; Their tears thought too likely to lure the eye of a soul caught in the bardo (between worlds) back to a reality where their vessel is no longer capable of the carry. So once again, the men and women are pushed to their separate corners of the dance floor, women to the corner of birthing and life and men to that of dying and death.

The men sit in silence. This is the first place I have ever noticed where the swinging doors of conversation on politics, business and sport are solemnly shut. Instead the men stick their fingers into the warmer crevices of their bodies and, without word or commentary, watch the silent captions that scroll in their minds underlining the scene.

And the fire burns.

Without discrimination it burns all our accomplished and failed dreams, all our material gains and losses, all our relations of love and hate, all our deeds of both good and evil intention, and all else that ever once, positively or negatively affected our formations of earthly ego.

The wind blows again and the heavy breath of burning flesh engulfs its circle of male mourners.

They do not flinch.

What does it take for death to become an unflinching matter?

Custom? Numbness? Aloofness?

Enlightenment? Unattachment? Understanding?

Torture? Habit? Pain?

Respect? Courage? Love?

A one-eyed money sits on a perch beside me, watching with curiously human-like gestures, and less blind than I, as the fire continues to dance under death.

*****

Just want to say thank you, again, to WorldNomads for renewing their sponsorship and continuing to insure that my travels are safe and worry-free. Having been in regular contact with their staff and in use of their super-internet-friendly and overall excellent service, I feel fully confident putting my name on theirs. So if you’re planning travels and in the market for travel insurance, there’s a trustworthy and practical contact for you.

*****

I’m entering a meditation retreat at the Kopan Monastery, so I will be offline and unable to respond to emails for awhile. In the meantime, there are a few new pictures in the *new* Nepal photo album to browse through.

*****

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