Ocean of Milk 5

                      “In the longing that starts one on the path is a kind of homesickness,
                        and some way, on this journey, I have started home.”
                                                                   Peter Mattiessen, The Snow Leopard


It was all downhill from there, and more than a metaphor. The trail headed west, descending high above the Jhong Khola to Jharkot, a little Tibetan settlement with peach trees. The villagers made oil out of the pits. Peach kernels contain cyanide, just in case they got too comfortable with their oxygen levels.
Our feet took us under elemental desert colors- blue sky contrasting against white clouds, striking yellow bare hillsides, splashes of green where streams allowed cultivation, and the blinding white peaks of Dhauligiri and Niligiri. We were in the same geographical and climatic zone as Tibet.
Just past Khingar village, the trail began its steep descent into the world’s deepest gorge, and the Kali Gandaki valley floor. The winds that howled through our space between Dhauligiri and the Annapurna peaks carried us a little off the main trail, on a side trip to the fortified medieval Mustang village of Kagbeni. We climbed down past hundreds of small piles of rocks made by pilgrims to honor their departed ancestors, beside white rapids rushing over the river alluvium, and into a green oasis of Mongol women and young girls, winnowing wheat within stone wall-enclosed fields.
A large ochre-colored gompa perched high above imposing chortens and exotic mud houses. We hiked by shamanistic statues and prayer wheels made from old Caltex tins. Small children accompanied us through dark narrow alleyways, trying to extort candy along the way.
We escaped them through orthogonal carved windows, onto the open rooftop of the New Annapurna Lodge, a precious sunlit little place for three rupees a night. Robyn washed clothes and innocently poured the dirty water over the dahlia box and onto Dan. The wind howled its approval. After a plate of fried freeze-dried yak cheese, we ventured back out to watch the threshers. Migrating flocks of Eastern Great egrets flew overhead, before the Israelis put in a similar appearance. I was surprised to see they had made it over the Thorong La. They told us they saw Julie being escorted back to Manang by our porters, and asked where we were staying.
“That’s where we were going to sleep.” The shortest one said. “Many are called but few are Chosen.” Said Bert. They stared suspiciously.
“New Testament.” I said. Shoulders shrugged and separated. That night our Tibetan hostess baked us an apple pie. In order to make it from scratch, she had to first create the universe. Later that night, after Destiny went to bed, Dan and John and Bert and I sat directly under it, and talked about it. We decided it was infinite.
The Company got off to a late start next morning. At the time we blamed the slow breakfast, but in retrospect, I don’t think we wanted to leave. There was nothing outside Kagbeni that anyone should have wanted. And much that was there that had been lost or never existed elsewhere.
We left sadly, down the stone alluvium bed, past an old woman selling apples, and up and down into Jomson. Originally Dzongsam, New Fort, it owed its existence to the trade from the pink salt lakes in Tibet, until a decade and a half before we arrived, when imported Indian salt put the route out of business. The iodine in the southern salt also eliminated the large goiters that had previously distinguished Nepalese throats. A visible form of invisible grace, it constituted a mixed salt blessing.
The bank guard let me hold his rifle, while he posed for a photo. When Dan and Bert entered the scene behind me, he looked a little nervous, until I gave him back his gun.
The Company stopped in a sunny courtyard, drinking lemon tea, and eating apple pie and 5 star bars. Revived, we hiked south out of Jomson, passing trains of ornamented horses, blinding white peaks, brown and yellow cliffs, and bright green irrigated fields.
We had to rub our eyes on entering Marpha. Huddled behind a ridge for protection from the burning winds, it seemed at first that we had been transported to somewhere in the Mediterranean. The proud Thakalis lived in tightly packed whitewashed houses, rock walls and red window lintels plumbed perfectly straight, curving along flagstone streets, immaculately spotless, with an extensive system of subterranean drainage. Grains and vegetables dried on the flat rooftops. The narrow passageways were paved. Herds of goats and caravans of plumed horses moved efficiently down the main street. It was absolutely beautiful.
“Look. There’s John.” Robyn said. And it was. And we checked into a four-rupee double at the Baba Lodge, and ate two rostis with some Marpha apple rakshi, under the high snow pinnacles. Later that afternoon we crossed a suspension bridge to visit the Tibetan refugee camp. The women weaving carpets at their looms bent back and forth like they were praying to a wailing wall. No matter how many carpets they wove, it was never going to become a door.
The ablution block at Baba Lodge was on the roof, Tibetan-style. After our rosti and muesli breakfast, Robyn told me our toilet roll was missing. I remembered a Dutch guy entering, as I left, earlier that morning. I knocked on the Dutchman’s door. His roommate opened it and, sitting on their back shelf, was our loo roll. No words were spoken. I pointed. They retrieved, like duck hunting with hounds.
“What kind of man steals another man’s toilet paper?” I asked, leaving them with the answer they already had.
Robyn and I left with Bert and Dan, climbing to Sokung village around convoys of loaded donkeys. For a moment, I shuddered at the thought that, if one of them panicked, I could be hurled off the mountain path we were sharing.
Through an arid desert of scattered pine, cypress and junipers, we crossed a suspension bridge into conifer forest. The Israelis had left earlier, but we overtook them in Lete, dropping to a stream, and a further descent from mountain pine and birch to subtropical trees and shrubs, and our old friends, stinging nettles and cannabis.
We met a French Indian couple in their late sixties. He was a nuclear engineer, and she was an artist. They were a joy to hike with, still in love with life and each other. We weren’t so sure about a plodding American hiker, who was talking into a box as we passed him.
“It’s getting harder now...” He said. Huffing and puffing and panting, he was so self-absorbed, as to be missing all the precious beauty around him. Robyn and I looked at each other.
“Galah.” She said.
“Galah.” He replied, returning what he obviously thought was a local greeting.
Ghasa was the last southernmost Lama Buddhist village we would encounter and, after a seven-hour trek, the hot bath in the cold dark toilet was restorative. We found roasted peanuts and hot chocolate and warm sleeping bags and sleep.
The descent continued at a slower pace next morning, but another twelve hundred meters would fall away in just a few hours. Down through the chickens, mule dung, bloated smiles and bellies, women washing aluminum pans from back polyethylene conduits, and along slate flagstones, we paused in front of our next suspension bridge.
“Slowly slowly, Baba.” He said.
I turned to find Jesus in a saffron robe, and a string of gauri-shankar rudraksh beads, strolling barefoot beside me. The sadhu seemed to have levitated over the steepest and narrowest part of the canyon, cut through the solid rock and a short three-sided tunnel. He dematerialized in almost the same instant. In his place was a quiet young Tibetan, named Tenzing, who asked if we had seen a missing German, and invited Robyn and I to the Kumari festival in Kathmandu, nine days later. I asked him what the celebration was for.
“It is for the Living Goddess.” He said. I asked him how he knew the living goddess.
“The same way I know you.” He said. And as I turned to Robyn and back again, and he was gone too. I suddenly noticed the lizards, sunning themselves on every rock.
“Should be a unicorn along any minute now.” I said to Robyn. We crossed the lizards and a bridge to catch up with Bert and Dan, over lemon teas in Kopchepani. They had witnessed a helicopter evacuation of two Kiwi girls and an Irishman from Ghasa. They hadn’t seen my magical sadhu and Tibetan.
“Imaginary friends are as good as real ones.” Dan offered.
“Sometimes better.” I said. A mule train shuffled by.
We dropped to cross a wooden bridge over the steep canyon river, and climbed steeply to Rukse Chhara, and the foot of a spectacular waterfall, tumbling into a series of cataracts along the trail. Our descent continued, via the elaborately carved windows and balconies of Dani, through a small tunnel carved out of the precipitous rocky hillside, and finally, into Tatopani.
We were not prepared. For over three weeks we had slept hard, eaten rice and lentils, and our world had been constructed of earth and sky and water. The lemon meringue fault line had found us again, as we crossed the threshold of the Paris Café at Namaste Lodge.
A kerosene-powered refrigerator bulged with cold beer and coke and orange soda. A radio was tuned to Hindi nyah-nyah songs. A Frenchman was writing in his diary at a corner table. A Frenchman in the Paris Café. We were on our way back. We left to meet John at the Snow Tree Lodge. I told him of the sadhu and Tibetan imaginary friends.
“Just a little situation that happened.” He said, drawing on an imaginary cigarette. We all went to the springs for a long hot mud bath and short sock wash.
The Paris Café was empty at dinner, except for the Company and the Frenchman. He was still writing in his diary when we arrived. Robyn ordered the tree tomato soup. The Frenchman ordered the tree tomato soup. Robyn ordered egg fried rice. The Frenchman ordered the egg fried rice. Robyn ordered curry veg and boiled beans, a lemon tea and a black tea. So did the Frenchman. He was still writing in his diary when we left.
We had decided to spend an extra day in Tatopani, for the ambience and the amenities. I sat in the sun with John and the boys, losing a day and winning in chess. After a trip to the hot springs, we attended the opening ceremony of the first Bank of Nepal branch in town.
Barefoot children piggybacked each other, carrying bouquets of handpicked flowers for two thin cheroot-smoking officials, almost identical in their Dhaka topi hats, V necked sweaters, and running shoes. Robyn and I left the Company for lunch at the Paris Café.
Sitting where the Frenchman had been the night before, was my sadhu. I sat across the room, and pulled out a cigarette. He pointed at it furiously, and I thought, at first, he was offended at my intention to indulge. I had been under the impression that sadhus were renouncers, and had left all material attachments, to focus on the spiritual attainment of moksha. Apparently we were in Marlboro country.
I handed one over, and offered a box of matches. He waved me away and from within his saffron robes, produced a Bic lighter which, with the largest blue flame, just about burned my nose off. He ignited his own cigarette, drew in a long breath, and exhaled a final plume of ascetic exultation, through a vortex of spinning smoke rings, and the open ceiling.
His name was Arumgumam. His thin weathered stone-worn feet had carried him from the Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in Rishikesh to the temple in Muktinath, up his own personal stairway to heaven.
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees, And the voices of those who standing looking.
Ooh, it makes me wonder.