By Scott Morley
We all want something different for holidays down south.
Snorkeling or scuba, beach blankets or surf tours, exotic animals or
elephant treks, motorcycle tours, hookers or transport boys. Others
need narcotics and full moon stupors - or the arch-opposite: new age
fasting and crash-course meditation classes.
Walking and alpine silence, after twelve months in Korea, is what I
need. Nothing softens nerves and restores thought like walks in the
woods. After five years of wondering when I'd return, I bought a ticket
back to Pokhara, the lakeside village below Annapurna Sanctuary, Nepal.
* * *
No Maoists in sight, I sit atop a hill watching black carrion kites
circle lower-caste enclaves for morsels of meat. Their gray wings shimmer,
shift to raven black; like mica mountains, or soft silk rugs magically
moving from black to blood. Like moods of people dominated by the moods
of mountains.
The roads on this hill are dotted with locals climbing in sneakers,
sandals, or barefoot. On the crest of the hill is a stupa, a great golden
nipple. A group of men and teens lounge beside it passing local homegrown.
Below farmers tend goats or buffalo. Siwks, caws and crows, and the
sound of men and women shouting from hilltop to hilltop. The resting
men call me over. They're faces are weathered, leathery and they have
light brown eyes of Arabs. Some have long noses and big Indian eyes.
Others look Mongol, with barrel chests and thin, well-muscled legs.
"Do you know what this means?" says one guy passing me a cigarette.
I light it and he begins a low-toned mantra. Then he stops. "It
means, smoke up Johnny! Ha Hah!"
Women circle the stupa. Some have tikas and rice on their foreheads.
This stupa is Buddhist. One woman had four kids. Two have big eyes and
wide nostrils and seem Indian. The other two look Tibetan.
Later I ask my host Lalit Scott about the genetic mixtures, whether
Mongol type and Indian type are separated by caste. He says in most
of Nepal, and the Indian Himalayan, middle castes are a mixture of Mongolian
and Indian blood. The religions mix as well.
"We all worship at each others' temples and pray to the same gods.
Siddhartha was a Brahman, an upper-caste Hindu prince. So Indian Buddhism,
the original Buddhism, is really similar to Hinduism. Some don't really
separate it. Some do. No matter the religion, we are all in caste anyways.
Even Nepalese Christians and Muslims are caste. For example, those who
perform sky burials in Tibet and Nepal are lower caste. High Caste Buddhists
can't kill or handle flesh."
I ask him, "but Tibetans don't eat meat?"
He says, "You're joking? Tibetans don't eat anything but meat.
And yak butter. Those mountains are too high to grow much, except barley
and potatoes. Mostly they eat yak and drink yak butter."
* * *
Lalit was my guide through Nepal. Originally I didn't want a guide.
But I liked Lalit. He offered the lowest prices, far less than half
what other hotels offered. He never pushed a sale. When I told him I
wanted no guide, he gave me a map. Then he showed m
Our first night in the sanctuary we stayed in Ghandruk with a Gurung
family. An eighteen year-old boy named Santos, grinning, looking like
a Mongolian pit bull, offered me some tea. His shoulders and neck were
knotted like a wrestler's, an Asian version of corn-fed country boys
back home. I pinched his waist and found him fatless, nothing but muscle.
"Are you training for the Gurkha regimen?" I asked.
Gurkhas are Nepali tribesmen and British soldiers, most famous for defeating
Argentines in the Falklands without ever fighting. The Argentines saw
them and ran. The Gurkhas originally won their position as British infantry
after defeating British troops. The Brits came into Gurkha territory
on horseback with guns and sabers. First the Gurkhas disemboweled the
Brits' horses. Then they disemboweled the Brits.
Yes sir, Santo said, his father and uncles, Gurkha infantry. Then he
left into a Himalayan hail storm for daily training - sprinting up the
mountain in sandals, lugging sacks of stone on his back with a head
strap. Santos' little three year-old sister sidled up to me, dimpled
and grinning, nose lined with green crust and eyes sparkling. "Hey
jolay (hippy), gimme candy please? Pencils? Gum? Please jolay! Hah hah
hah! Jolay!" I wanted to bring her home for my son Alex. I pulled
out my pictures. Lalit told them my wife was Nepalese. I asked about
babies with the blue spot on their bums, the Mongol Spot. Nepalese babies
have them too.
The mountains outside rose slow and steep, wave after wave swallowing
sky. On a clear day the brilliance of sunlight on the highest icy peaks
seemed to magnify clarity, causing the clear blue to sparkle, buzz and
pop. The rumbling rush of so many snowy rivers tumbling over boulders
the size of doublewide trailer homes made it that much more electric.
The next morning I awoke at six. Cocks were crowing, bells from a mule
train clanked through thin air. Outside my door a black and tan Tibetan
Mastiff stood watch. He smiled up at me, sniffed, wagged, yawned, and
flopped down in the dust at my feet for a morning belly rub. The mule
train passed, more than thirty buckskin mules. Behind this was a train
of shaggy ass, heads no higher than my hip, smaller than the mastiff
on my foot.
Breakfast was fried flat bread, eggs and milk tea. We began the ascent,
stopping every twenty minutes at a fig, or banyan tree. Banyans line
every street and mountain trail. Their roots cling to stones and their
twisting branches work as a shelter. Hindus and Buddhists worship the
banyan as a manifestation of god. It's ill omen to cut them. At these
stops I met the migrating mountain people. Salesman, pilgrims, porters
and neighbors, all slowly made their way up the mountains by the only
available means, foot.
Later we parked on the edge of a rainforest of old growth rhododendrons.
Their roots seemed to hold the hills together, spreading out, creating
miniature terraces, moss-lined stairways. Their bearded branches reached
down, and sitting between the roots I searched for fairies, elves or
hobbits. Lalit mentioned the old saddhus, holy men written about in
Kipling's stories. Men that sat still, meditating in a forest so long
that moss grew over them and birds nested in their hair.
On the third morning we climbed up to watch the sunrise against Annapurna's
enormous iced peaks. The sun's rays broke out of the clouds, beaming
over hilltops and making the rolling forests glow golden green. This
was Ghorepani. We were on Poon Hill. I explained to Lalit the American
slang meaning of "poon." He told me "Colorado" means
"black dick" in Nepalese.
Next we headed down to Tatapani Hot Springs, a six-hour walk down. This
is a popular tourist stop known for its variety of citrus fruits and
excellent local food. I sampled six types of fresh squeezed citrus drinks
that night. When the sun was out the weather was warm. A t-shirt and
slacks was enough. We traveled through green leafy forests wet with
dew. Passed stone rooftops covered with orange blossoms, terraces full
of spinach, cabbage, mustard, and spices; cardamom, dill and fenugreek;
mace, mint and massang; saffron and sesame; timur and turmeric. Later
we kicked through piles of autumn leaves. In the afternoon clouds might
bring snow. My shirt was lined with salt from sweating and in the morning
my socks were frozen.
Ahead of us was a man slowly climbing the stairways. He carried a load
of fifteen-foot long metal poles, using only a head strap and a stick
to hold himself semi-erect. Sometimes porters say I am donkey you are
monkey, in sadness or jest, fatalistic resignation of a tough life.
The Nepalese are master stair builders. They mine mica, a sparkly stone
that breaks into flat, square tablets perfect for building homes, roofs,
irrigation ditches, walls and the ubiquitous, unending stairways that
wind up every hill. These same stones might bust off a cliff and flatten
houses, or villages. dslide. Lalit said, "I sat here with Nip and
Bub, my friends you met. We watched that mountainside cover a village.
No one was uncovered. All dead. Some of the villages here have one trail
in and out. If you were hurt over there," He pointed to a small
village balancing on a 100-foot precipice. " A broken leg or bad
fever for example, you'd die before you made it to a hospital. It'd
take a week to town. Infection would kill you first.
It's no wonder the mountain tribes prefer sky burial to burial in the
earth. Being let loose into the infinite blue, instead of suffocating
under mountains that have taken cousins, uncles, sisters or lovers,
and might take you. They cannot dominate these mo-tourism than birth
control or cholera, which kills so many Nepalese babies. Unfortunately
the recent fear of Maoist rebels whose only goal is to rid the country
of king and caste, the mountains were almost empty of foreigners. For
me Nepal was far better without tourists, but I wished them back for
the people's sake.
This was our last day on the trail, almost all flatland. No more shaking
knees and gravitational pull. Tonight we'd be at Lalit's with his wife
Anju (short for Angela) and their little Lhasa Apsa pup, Lukshie.
Lalit talked with other porters and an old Tibetan grandfather, a pilgrim
with a huge orange tika and one dreadlock on top of his shaved head.
Nepalese language mixed freely with English. They began a porter's mantra
of sorts, everyone adding to it as theyon the subject and mood.
I rapped Ice Cube and EPMD. Nobody knew the lyrics, so Lalit suggested
Bob Marley. Four porters, a Tibetan pilgrim, a Japanese college kid,
Lalit and myself exhausted every popular Marley song and switched to
Doors, then Beatles and finally Eagles.
lThe pilgrim wanted to stop under a tree. He explained that Vishnu had
sar under this tree and smoked it's seeds for enlightenment. He cracked
open a shell and handed us each one seed. "Don't smoke more than
half a seed," he told Lalit. "Make sure someone is with you
if you smoke it, becasue enlightenment can be real scary." I gave
my seed to Toshi, the Japanese guy. Toshi's gaze was fixed on the old
man. "This necklace the old man has. It's a natural stone penis!
It has the balls too!" Lalit talked to the old man and agreed.
Yes it was a naturally formed stone penis. "I will pay as much
as he wants for this penis!" Toshi told us. The old man refused.
This was a holy penis, a very powerful, magical stone penis. Toshi promised
big money, but the old man wouldn't budge. He probably could have gotten
a hundred bucks or more for that penis.
Lalit suggested Toshi come over for a home-cooked feast. Dried buffalo
jerky appetizers, beans, rice, curry and mint yogurt. Good music and
lots of other goodies. Toshi politely declined He felt Lalit was pushing
a sale. "I want the Steak House," he said. Lalit promised
him directions to the Steak House.
We got into town at dusk, about the time when the egrets gather in the
banyan trees on the lake each night. Toshi agreed to come over for a
smoke and some snacks. We sat on the roof, watched the birds, ate and
smoked. Lalit played his guitar and Toshi fidgeted. He wanted the Steak
House. He felt he was being dragged into a sale. "How much is the
tea? How much is the jerky? Do I pay for the charas? So sorry I want
a steak, not chickpeas and rice." Five minutes later, chin on his
chest, he was snoring. Lalit played his guitar, keeping a melody with
squawking white egrets glowing in an orange-green dusk, beneath the
icy peaks of Annapurna.
Dinner was ready, large macaroni-type noodles in a cilantro-spinach
broth with huge chunks of buffalo meat so fresh it was still red. By
far the best soup I've ever eaten. We each had three helpings. Toshi
asked how much. "My treat Toshi. Here's a phone, call your friends
and enhoy your time. See you later maybe?" The next morning Toshi
showed up with six more Japanese tourists.
That afternoon Lalit took me shopping in a local district, no tourists.
In order to get good prices, first I'd go inside and pick something
I wanted. Then I'd come outside and describe it to Lalit so he could
go in later and get a better price, about half the price I was offered.
And then as quickly as I'd decided to go, it was all over and I was
back in Busan, wishing I was back in Nepal.
For a cozy, inexpensive home-stay, guided tours through Nepal or India,
porters, home-cooked meals or anything else you might need, Lalit Scott
can be contacted via email: [email protected]