Nepal

“Meanwhile, unrecorded impressions, sayings, old friends, and good books vanish without warning or trace. Some read and write to win eternal life; I would be happy enough just to keep a hold of this one.”

Sun rays on the Annapurna Cirque

First the heat, then the cacophonies of horns, livestock and Hindi film music and finally night with its relative and merciful quiet; my first impressions of Nepal were unmistakably and unavoidably physical.  It was like waking up in the middle of a crowd and not knowing why people were shouting and shoving and if you should go with the flow or get the hell out of there.  By the time I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, I found myself on a week-long walk into the hills to visit Chandra’s village.

Bouhda Stupa

Am I getting ahead of myself?  Makes sense I suppose.  Ever since I got the offer from the Rassias Foundation to go to Nepal, I felt like I was playing catch up.  The Himalaya, like Patagonia, seemed like a place that I had to wait for; wait until I was older, or richer, or a better mountaineer.  But the opportunity fell into my lap, and I could not turn down a paid trip to Nepal.  So I went a few weeks early to do some exploring before I taug

The chariot of Rato Machhendra Nath

ht a Teacher’s Workshop for the Tibetan teachers of the Rangeyeshe Institute.  What follows is some sort of selective record of those experiences.  I finally bought a camera, as I still remember hiking through the most beautiful landscape I had ever seen in the Torres del Paine and not being able to record it after Jonny’s batteries died.  So I’ve shared photographs that will surely be more eloquent than any words of mine.

My trip and my work would not have been possible without the help of Greg, a Jesuit preist and Dartmouth alumnus, who helped organize the teacher’s workshop and introduced me to Chandra, his assistant.  Chandra was my companion in my travels through Nepal.  He took me into the homes of his family and into his own village as we hiked through countryside that has never seen a road.  All of his relatives and friends and acquaintances were wonderfully gracious hosts, sharing whatever they had: including raksi, a rather potent homemade hooch that I eventually learned to decline lest I spend all day sweating out moonshine.  Chandra told me that I was the fourth foreign guest to ever pass through most of the villages we saw.  Indeed, people seemed genuinely excited to meet me and hear the few sentences in Nepali that I managed to learn.  Later when I joined the tourist beat, I realized how remarkable was my experience in the hills.

Rest on the way to Chandra's village

The first night in the hills

Rea and me, she is the daughter of Raphael who runs the Learning Center of Kathmandu

My brief stay in Nepal felt like life with the filter removed, closer to the marrow.  Colors were brighter, noises were louder, poverty was poorer and people were incredibly generous.

Chandra's father

I saw a goat being born, and people who were not long for this world.  The generations, from the cradle approaching the grave, were present in almost every home.  I was also sicker, and I struggled physically more than I have in a long time.  By the end of my time hiking into the Annapurna Sanctuary, I had lost almost 20 lbs.  I spent days and nights alternating between appreciation of the tearfully beautiful scenery and a losing endeavor to keep nourishment inside my body.

A little work in the fields

Traditional Nepali rifle and funny-looking American

Of course, I couldn’t go to Nepal without getting as close as possible to the mountains that have filled my imagination since my uncle, Frank, first gave me Maurice Herzog’s account of the first ascent of Annapurna.  So Chandra and I hiked into the Annapurna Sanctuary where our companions included the inimitable peaks, a stray dog, a few fellow travelers, a group of young Nepali communists and the memories of fallen mountaineers.

There was much, in the village schools and children and in the faces of the teachers I met, that I was unable to photograph.  And of course, there is even more for which I have yet to find the words.  A Nepali named Dawa Tenzing once said, “Many people come, looking, looking…some people come, see.” I am not so foolish as to claim that I came to some great understanding about Nepal or the developing world or mountains that pillar the sky, but I hope that I saw something.

My final words written in Nepal:

Today is my last day in Nepal.  Facts are nice to hold onto when interpretation and reaction are slipping and sliding through my fingers.  It will be memorable certainly, but already my memories are becoming postcards.  I’ve already lost the desperation I felt a few weeks ago.  I guess it’s good that discomfort and loneliness fade, but I worry about the loss of intensity and immediacy.

Have I changed?  I’m always changing, I suppose, but I no longer am sure about sudden transformations; seems more like gradual accretion; or inertia and drift, pushing and pulling into tomorrow.

You can get used to almost anything, and you do.  It becomes part of you as soon as you are no longer part of it.  I will carry a little bit of Nepal with me.  And as I tell the stories and show the photos, it will become solid and passed and past; another memento.  Unless I return.

“He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy.
He who kisses the joy as it flies,
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”

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