An outsider’s view of Nepal (travel journal, April 2018)

APRIL 10, 2018

This is our last day here. I’m sitting in a temple doorway, watching the flow of people walking through the square. Bells ring. Car horns, scooter engines, and shuffling footsteps join the sound soup. Crow caw, and pigeons coo. 

The less fortunate gather along the walkway below. They sit on the ground and watch people go by as they wait to receive.

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Namaste. Where are you going, friend? Where are you from? Hello, money? Money – money – money. Chocolate? Hello? Ride for a good price. Good flute, very good price. Picture? Take picture, 1000 rupees. Welcome. Taxi? You need a taxi? Taxi. One tea, one tea.

Buy ticket. 

Look, look. Good gift for sister-friend, mother-friend. Look. I make by hand, me and my daughter. Look, Nepal, China, Bhutan. Look. Only 100 rupees.

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The stains on his skin look like tears. He touches the statues, and then his forehead, and then the stomach of the statue. Down to the right foot. Left foot. The statue base. 

Pick the choicest flower as a talisman, and put it on your head, or stick it in your bag.

Stand still. Face your god, hand held over sternum. Move your lips in the recitation of a prayer, or a chant. An incantation invoking the god, calling to the god. Name the god, and ask him questions. This is a calling, a prayer. 

We stand in the shit and look up to a ruined wonder. We believe, but we don’t act. We pass through like like clouds in the mountains, a constant stream, and all the while we drift according to the will of some other thing. We make victims of ourselves. We sink comfortably into the wretchedness of routine. We embrace the banality of “it’s out of my hands”. We look to someone else. Someone else.

We are amazed when another person performs that thing, which might have been our dream, a fading thing at the edge of memory from when we imagined ourselves to be bold. 

This is the outsider’s view of Nepal. Maybe it’s also the outsider’s view of life, and the state of being human. Maybe we are all swaddled in the dense nest of dreams, always imaging what we can do instead of doing it. 

Flower petals on my head. Rain on my face.

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Roof top. Clouds the color of wood ash gather. Wind whips at the rooftops. Clothes flail and lash from the wind, but the birds ride the air currents, circling and settling and circling again. 

cooking in Kathmandu (Nepal travel journal, April 2018)

APRIL 9, 2018

This is our second to last day in Kathmandu. We’re sitting in a little shop called Bento waiting for coffee and breakfast.

Some things start very early here, and others seem to never start.  Take the magical hour of breakfast, for example. Even though some restaurants tout serving breakfast, they tend to not be open during what one may considering to be a breakfast hour. It’s actually quite a challenge to find a place for breakfast that isn’t a squatting-in-the-gutter kind of establishment. And savory things are more of an American persuasion.

But we are here, and we have the luxury of coffee and some breakfast snacks. And even more exciting is our cooking class in a few hours.

As I write this, one of the street dogs just hopped into Bento for a look about, sniffing and gazing. The other dogs are sleeping out on the brick sidewalks, all curled up into neat little fur donuts. Vendors for the street market in the square arrive, lugging their wears on their heads, porter-style. Huge boxes full of goods.

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We limped around after breakfast, biding our time until it’s time to cook.

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Let’s do this. First we went shopping.

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  the list

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  milk shop

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  vegetable stand

Then we prepped and cooked.

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The spices are the real stars of the show. I’ve read or seen somewhere that the spice tins are family heirlooms. Coveted.

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Finally, we feasted. It was amazing. Now the trick is how to recreate this at home.

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  thukpa

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  dhal

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  chocolate momos

the pyres of Pashupatinath (Nepal travel journal, April 2018)

APRIL 8, 2018

I haven’t written in a couple of days. Instead, licking my wounds and binge-reading books. We stayed in Ghandruk for two nights. On the 6th we hobbled to a bus stop and rode from Kimche to Pokhara. The ride was just as traumatic as when we first arrived for our trek in the taxi. Instead of my sensibilities and expectations, the victim this time was my cell phone. Screen cracked. The throbbing of my ankle distracted me from being more careful. Our packs ended up in the “trunk” so to speak, which had rusted through in places and collected with efficiency all the mud and muck of the road, which itself was a harrowing, rickety, rocking and rolling experience. None of this improved the condition of my ankle, but taking off my hiking boot helped with the swelling.

We overnighted in Pokhara before enjoying another bus ride back to Kathmandu. ‘Enjoying’ being more of a euphemism here.

Interlude, Pashupatinath

the surface of a ghat

We are watching a Hindu funeral ceremony.  Friends and family of the deceased gather. The body is wrapped in an assortment of cloths. Bright orange, red and fuchsia. 

The mourners circle the body for a requisite number of times, and then it’s finally the moment to transfer it to the funeral pyre. Meanwhile, a widow for a different funeral spreads her worries and grief over a shrine embedded in a nearby wall.

When the mourning men pick up the body, they circle the pyre, feet bare, three times before setting it down. They remove the robes of vibrant color until the body is stripped down to just one thing. A white shroud. Even the marigolds are taken away and hung from one of the great logs forming the pyre. 

The gifts come next. Water, white powder and fire. With each gift, the body is circled three times. Fire is the last gift, placed tenderly beneath the body by an unsure hand. The eldest member of the family, no doubt. More logs and straw are placed over the body until it starts to resemble the haystacks in the countryside.

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Pyre one is being put out. The priest and his helpers kick logs off the platform, still burning. They sizzle and smoke when they hit the water. The assistant fills bucket after bucket with water from the Bagmati to kill the cremation flames and wash everything from the ghat. The ghat itself steams. Jewels and other remnants are collected.

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I’m hung up on how it was not such a strange thing for me to see bodies on funeral pyres, the full sensorial experience including the sound of human flesh sizzling in the flames. It was not disgusting, nor did I feel confronted with my own fragile mortality. I didn’t psychologically rebel from the experience. It just was. Part of life. Maybe I’m suppressing my emotions; maybe I am overripe and oozing in them.

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We witnessed Hindu and Buddhist cremations. The ghats, or platforms, for the religions are separated by two bridges. The Hindus seem more efficient, while the Buddhists take more time with the body, to anoint it, to gather it and place it.

Aside from the ceremonies, we encountered lots of religious iconography, of course. Shrines, statues, recesses in walls.

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Brightly colored powder smeared on things as a sign of devotion and blessing. Everything sacred, even the stray dogs lounging in the temple complex and a simple brick walls.

Ghandruk through the lens (Nepal travel journal, April 2018)

APRIL 6, 2018

I neglected to journal during this day of our trip, but we did hobble around Ghandruk for a heartbeat. Here are some scenes from we beheld that day. Other activities included reading with reckless abandon. I might have been absorbed with either M.R. Carey’s THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE, or Adam Silvera’s THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END. Both are excellent books, if you’re into those sorts of genres, although you may want to hold off on THE BOY ON THE BRIDGE for a little if the pandemic has you on edge.

For now, let me present to you Old Ghandruk.

Our lodging was perched on the hill above Old Ghandruk. We got to see this charming village from a disentangled perspective.

I love the details of the construction, from stairs built into walls…

…to the hand-carved woodwork adorning the windows and doors.

And there is the stuff of living, basic necessities like some twine of animal sinew…

…and corn and hay.

There are the animals who portage building materials and the goods of life.

And those that provide pest control, fertilizer and sustenance.

There are dishes to wash, laundry to clean, and wood to stack.

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While I am a stranger here, I can see that everything has a kind of order to it. A logic.

But that doesn’t mean the realm of the spirit world goes ignored. Talismans protect…

…as do the guard dogs, arbiters of the portals between this realm and the next.

Everywhere we look, magic and order dance.

the ebb and flow of Chhomrong (Nepal travel journal, April 2018)

APRIL 3, 2018

The foam of a cappuccino bursts at my upper lip. It’s an indulgence, for sure. Especially because I intend to have more than one. But we are stationary for the day, and that kind of indulgence is infectious, so two cappucini it is.

I am sitting on the patio of a place billed as the German Bakery. It has an espresso machine and a steady stream of local visitors stopping in to say hi. Being right next to the main stairs, the clang of bells has been near constant as the mules go up and down with their deliveries of kerosene tanks, beer, toilet paper, and other odds and ends. 

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For a long time, mules stood captive on the stairs, their hooves poised and their hides sweaty, as their drivers popped into the bakery for a steaming cup of coffee or tea. The water guy, carrying three huge containers of full water jugs on his head, did the same.

All of Chhomrong, particularly the youth, are passing through, and the lady of the house is running everything. She glows from the inside and showers everyone with genuine smiles. I think the boys of the village are enamored. 

Crows caw from their perches on the hillside behind me. Every once in a while they make a sound like speech. It’s strange to hear, and I have to wonder if what I’m really witnessing is the evolution of this creature.

Sitting beside the main stairs has revealed more than the locals and the mule traffic. The trekker traffic passes through, too, and that is a shocking insight. These people are mostly traveling without weight, often times without a day pack or even a bottle of water. And then we see the porters go by and they are over burdened with the stuff of other people. It has been the topic of endless conversation to us. The complexity of the economy and the trash all along the trail and the preservation of such delicate resources and people’s ability / inability to care, social classes and so-called karmic classes. It is all a jumbled complicated mess. 

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We took lunch at Chhomrong Cottage—a small flat pizza, which took forever to come out. I think it might have tasted moderately above average, but it was otherwise the same pizza we have been having this whole time.  (Pizza in the Himalaya. I know. Atrocious. But honestly, my stomach has been screwed for pretty much the whole trip so far, and having something that is somewhat reliable is so very very welcome.)

We returned to Kalpana (the guest house where we stayed for 2 nights) for more food and a long rest in bed.

One roll of thunder, and then rain on the roof. There is something special about this moment. Something forever about it.

Now we are on a quest to find a quiet space in which to do a little art time. A little reading time in some relative peace. How difficult it is for people to sit in silence. To embrace the quietude. To be without stimulation. We have talked about this on the trail, too. The way modern society is all about sugar, fat and salt. Shows, sex, and social media. Constant stimulation. Without it, we are nothing.

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A storm has been hovering over us, but just now, a cloud has rolled in. We are in the clouds, which have swallowed the mountain, leaving us wrapped in a canvas of grey.

of beasts and burdens (Nepal travel journal, April 2018)

APRIL 2, 2018

Today was a huge push from Himalaya to Chhomrong. To say that it was a difficult day is an understatement. Stairs. And more stairs and more of them. Up and down. 

stairs of chhomrong

I knew the descent to the bridge just outside of Chhomrong was going to be a challenge, but it was, in fact, a slog. An endless staircase descending. I tried to be as strategic as possible with my hiking sticks, read: distributing as much weight as possible into them. But that is only half the story, for as we all know, what goes down must come up. Thus, we had to conquer the stairs up the slope on the other side of the ravine. 

these guys presented a bit of an obstacle on the trail. I had the honor of being whipped by the muddy poopy tail of one of these gentle beasts.

[Right now: The rain cascading off the roof sounds like food frying.] 

Himalaya to Dogan. Dogan to Bamboo. Bamboo to Sinuwa, which was a much longer and more involved affair than I remember. 

i completely forgot to mention, we became trash warriors on the trail.

We lunched at this rad little place that I wish we would have stayed during our first time through Sinuwa. It was much more hospitable and chill than the place we slept at. Plus they sold medicinal honey. They called it Mad Psychedlic Honey, likely to catch the attention of the Westerners.

According the host /bookkeeper/cook at the lunch spot, it’s harvested from white bees, which only feast on poisonous plants. They live on the easterly slopes of the mountains along the Modi Khola, and their honey is harvested in the traditional (read: dangerous) method.

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I yelled at a few people today. Perhaps this behavior was predictable and its absence up to this point could be put in the category of miracle.  The first recipients were some kids who did not yield to uphill traffic. I know rationally that my yelling won’t change anyone’s behavior. Maybe one day I’ll learn how to process and control the anger that gets triggered when people disrespect others, or take away from the experience of others because they’re too fixated on their own.

Currently, I’m not yelling at anyone. We’re inside a hut of some sort. Four walls. Two short and two long.

inside

A— wanted to have a fire, and there happens to be a fire ring in here, and firewood. He is drifting between celebrating the fire, and running outside to celebrate the rain, shirt stripped off and arms raised to the sky. Part of me admires him for it, for embracing the elements. 

The family who runs the lodge keeps drifting in and out to warm themselves by the fire. The boy, with the word “Boy” written on his hat. The plump lady who wears more traditional gard. The young woman with long dark hair who’s wearing a blue track suit. The massage guy. My guess is that he runs the place. His slightly younger brother (another unsubstantiated guess) co-runs the lodge.

We ate dinner squatting on the dirt floor, snuggled up to the fire. Veg Biriyani and a Tibetan soup called Veg Thanthi, I think. It was delicious and, as it turns out, one of those things that was irreproducible. Which is annoying when you discover something you really enjoy. All the while, the rain hammered on the corrugated metal roof.

lusterless stars (Nepal travel journal, April 2018)

APRIL 1, 2018

magic night

Last night, I had to run out into the cold. The stars were out. The night sky was out. It had to be photographed. I had to capture the stark beauty of the mountain glazed in snow and dipped in moonlight. To see them that way was singular. Stars hovered in the sky, as if they were insignificant next to the Annapurna. It was thus when we woke up at 4 a.m. to go to the bathroom. It was as if the mountains lent the stars the ability to glow. 

moonrise

she gathers her veils

This morning was starkly clear after days of clouds forming, veiling the mountains and hiding the slopes from sight and revealing them only a little bit. But this morning there was nothing between us and the mountains. We stood together gazing, seeing, trying to understand. It is baffling, it is sublime this is the action of he earth. The steady drive of a thick mantle of crust. This is the timescale of the earth. When we are gone, our outer layer will be a thin swath of plastics and trash, crushed cars and stripped landscapes. It will be a char of irradiated junk. But the earth will keep moving and reshaping. It will be.

layers

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We slept with three strangers. One, Jackie from Hong Kong, became less strange to us. We talked with her through last night about travel, dreams, and education. One person was a punk. Discourteous and lacking a caring soul, he dressed head to toe in denim with gold littering his ears and fingers. A wispy mustached shadowed his upper lip, and his black trucker had seemed to levitate off his head. He had the kind of smile in which you expected to see the flash of a gold tooth. He had the kind of smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He is rank with mischief and the getting away with things.

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Us, with Annapurna, and the sunrise

Today we descended. After one night at M.B.C., and nearly one full day and night at A.B.C., we started to make our descent.

the trail revealed

It’s so strange that out of the 10 days this trek will take us, only a fraction of it was spent at the whole impetus for the trek. The return, however, has made me appreciate how difficult and strenuous the journey has been. With weight. I did this with 35 pounds of gear on my back. Day after day, in inclement weather. We are on an adventure.

Here is what stood out from the day (and night):

• Waking up with fire in my skin and empty lungs. The door locked from the outside, but I have to get out. I have to cool down before I incinerate. Adam hopping out the window to free me. His worry. My worry, and my knowing most of it is in my head. The healing power of freezing air, snow, and starlight.
• Rhododendron roots snake through the path.

these may or may not be rhododendron roots, but you get the point

• Stone stairs, slabs of stone, chunks of it sticking up out of the dirt, surrounded by stone soaring up out of the earth. Stones washed smooth by water and time.

stone and water

• Ginger lemon tea in huge thermoses. pizza at 13-thousand feet.
• The distant rumble of snow sloughing off from the mountainside of Annapurna 1. Plumes of it racing down the hillside and coming to stop in a haze of unbound snow.

morning avalanche

• The groaning and creaking of the glacier. The red-headed dog, shrewd and near-wild, following us down the mountain, guiding us, standing guard without seeming to care about our presence.

spirit guide

in the lap of the mountains (Nepal travel journal, March 2018)

MARCH 31, 2018

Today we hiked from M.B.C. to the final stop. Well, not the final one. Maybe better to say the ultimate stop—the reason we came here. Annapurna Base Camp. 

in the morning

Today was just as, if not more difficult than yesterday, even though it was a fraction of the distance. Again, I had to make many many stops to get here. It wasn’t necessarily the pack weight, although I did feel it in my legs a few times. Mostly it was just an ever-present fatigue as I tried to trudge up any kind of incline. 

wee people trudging up the trail

Focusing on my breathing ruled me. Resting pose consisted of this: using my hiking sticks as props for my body, wedged right there under my clavicle. Bent over myself looking at the snow, white, while I was breathing, breathing and breathing. Meanwhile, surrounding us, the mountains, and the clouds dancing  around them. Snow fields following the contours of the land, and ragged dark rocks rising up out of the white, the sun soaked blinding white. 

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Everywhere—all around are the mountains. We are in the lap of the mother and she sings to us. She sways us. She conquers us in ways we can feel, and ways we can’t even as we (the entire human mass on the mountain) rage against the slopes, shouting in voices full of bravado, screaming out that we exist because it’s the only way we feel we can be see. And the only way we can be known, as something significant.

There are as many ways to be here in Her presence as there are people in the world.

Climbing to the craggy top of the moraine. Listening to the glacier creak and crack. The sudden breaking down of the structure. The sudden breaking down. Vertical flutes of snow, variegated, full of lines and texture. Animal tracks in the snow. The black dog of the mountain, a mouse in his mouth, more interested in playing than eating it. But it was too late to play, sun leaking out of the sky.

Later, I roused myself to join A— in the common room. We chatted about travel and the trail with the South Africans, with whom we had been hopscotching since Himalaya, and talking with Jackie, the adventurous teacher from Hong Kong who lives to travel.

And here, where you can almost touch the stars, we listened to cellphones ring and bling and chirp and talk to their people. It sounds like a casino in the lodge. People stare blankly at their screens. Even here. They all blind their seeing eyes.

Rock and snow (Nepal travel journal, March 2018)

MARCH 30, 2018

Rather than being in the present, I seem to be in the habit of writing about the previous day by the time I get to the page. Here we are, then. At yesterday. 

the way to Himalaya

It was another short day, but A— was having an out of body experience and when doing something like this it’s best to be in your body. I think his exact words were, “It’s like I’m hovering above myself,” and later, something along the lines of, “I can’t feel my own body.”

The bridge of no bodies

We trekked to Himalaya, which was very loud, and had a lot of traffic going through, but the next lodgings would have taken another couple of hours to reach in our current state. The inn keeper at Himalaya (the lower one) was rather irked to give 2 people traveling without porters a room, but we still ended up in a cozy affair with terrifying bed covers.

While A— rested, I found a little hillside on which to hang out. Again, near a helipad. I read, watched the porters breeze through with their loads, watched the stream far below, working the stones and boulders smooth. The sound of water is ever present. It is the Modi Khola. It is tributaries. It is the rainstorms rolling through each afternoon, and the hail they become. 

My grandmother was heavy on my mind. One of the treats I have tucked away in my pack like some precious treasure, even more so than dry socks, is a cadbury cream egg. There are better things in the world to eat, but there are few foods that remind me so vividly of my grandmother, who passed away years ago. I’m not sure when the right moment to eat the egg will be.

After sleeping for a few hours, A— felt better. The rooms are really only for sleeping. There’s no heat, just stone walls, a wooden door and a window. The roof is functional, but not insulated. Which all makes sense. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to carry crap up here. 

how to build things

Once the evening comes on, the only real place to gather is the communal space where food is served. We collected our entertainment, and drifted into the most warm and cozy room in the place. We traded stories with Maeve and Elsa, two Canadians also traveling without porter. It took a while to learn that one of them had sprained her ankle. We later gave her one of our Ace bandages to try to help while trying to figure out how the hell she was going to hike back down.

As we talked and read and made art, thunder and lightening came, and the sky let loose. Hail the size of pencil erasers, the size of pebbles littered the walkways and tables. Later, in the room, we listened to the sound of it pounding on the corrugated metal rooftop. Unrelenting. Waking in the middle of the night, you can’t tell if it’s the river or if it’s the rain making all that steady, incessant noise.

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the last blue

We made another early start of the trek this morning. Today our goal was M.B.C. (Machapuchare Base Camp). The weather pattern up to now has been this: clear morning, clouds by noon, and rain by 2 p.m. Today did not follow that pattern. It started with snow and hail before 9 a.m. 

As we ate breakfast, a dark grey smear in the sky traveled up the valley. When it released, I called it snow, but really it was small hail. 

The trail had more stairs.  It had relentless climb up and up and up the river valley with mountains towering about us.

This part of the trek was a struggle for me. I had to stop more often, and more and more often. Every time I came over a rise, I thought M.B.C. would surely be perched there, awaiting our arrival. But it took a long time for the place to finally appear. Return of the canyon mile. 

Aside from trash and fellow trekkers, the distance between Deurali and M.B.C. felt wild and remote. The spirits of the mountains lived here, vibrant in every rush of rock, in each bit of ice.

Our host at Himalaya House called ahead for us and reserved a room. #5. It’s a good thing he did, otherwise we would have had to continue trekking to one of the lodges further on. I’m not sure I would have reacted well to that.

Towards the end of the day, snow fell onto the path, making it icy, and uncertain. Visibility narrowed to about 40-feet in front of us. It crept up on me since I was so focused on my foot placement. I had to remind myself to look up from time to time.

To say it’s a relief to be here, in dry clothes with a guaranteed bed to sleep in, drinking cup after cup of hot lemon ginger tea, is the absolute truth.

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  Inside

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  Outside

Bamboo, the fairy place (Nepal travel journal, March 2018)

MARCH 28, 2018

This is a bit of a cheat. In reality, I did not journal on this day during our trip. What I remember is that we left Sinuwa before the sunshine cut into the valley, the air cold and blue. The previous night, we got one of the last rooms available at the hut, and we did not want a repeat of that distress.

I felt out of sorts, but the surroundings still entranced me. This place was magic, dripping moss and green, and ancient looking paths created by hand. The forest breathed and watched as it had done for ages.

We arrived at our destination early in the day, before the deluge of tour groups and while Buddha Guesthouse was still and serene.

I was so grateful to have landed at this magical place. I ended up coming down with a fever a few hours later, and spent an utterly miserable evening in a place where the only access to medical care was through the helipad on the property.

The forest, the proprietress, the bamboo and moss and greenery, the quiet and the ornery horse all soothed any anxiety rolling through me. They all anchored me.

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Buddha Guesthouse was the perfect place to convalesce. I wandered around the nooks and slopes before the worst of the symptoms sequestered me to bed.

It was like being in a place of fairies and magic and doorways into other worlds, more so than the other villages we traveled though.

There was an area in the nearby forest populated by pitcher plants. When we first started dating, A— had a dream about me. I was dressed like Kwan Yin and surrounded by pitcher plants. As soon as he shared the dream with me, the plants became our thing.

I delighted to find a congregation of them so close by.