As you may expect, we have many amazing and amusing stories we would love to share with you, but to help you avoid eyestrain we have narrowed it down to four.
Story # 1: A Day in Kanjim
The day before, we hiked a short two hours from Langtang up to Kanjim, where the Lama family runs a guesthouse called Yeti Lodge. We stashed our bags then hiked up to the top of the mountain right next to town, to take in the amazing 360 degree views. We made it up in a little over an hour, and spent several exhilarated moments looking around in silence. The wind was blowing hard, pushing all the warm air out of the valley in a big rush which we could see as well as feel. A few birds were riding the swells, probably getting a pretty big rush of adrenaline at the major turbulence, and I could see the same look in my fellow onlookers’ eyes: Oh, what it would feel like to fly like a bird! Some of the mountains were masked by the big afternoon clouds, so we all decided we would just have to come back up again tomorrow morning to get a clearer view.
This morning, we were awakened by PJ’s quiet knock at the door a little after 5am. He headed out just before us to race to the top, and we couldn’t even see him on the mountain by the time we got out, he was that fast. I managed to take a wrong turn somewhere on the clear path straight up the mountain, which is a distinct (though unintentional) skill of mine, and I ended up going around the mountain into a small valley. I decided to keep going and enjoyed a pleasant, gradual hike among the rocks and yak tracks until I realized I would miss breakfast at this rate and chose to walk straight up the side of the mountain. As I walked higher, I felt the sun begin to warm my crown, then my face, then creep slowly down until the whole view was bathed in sunlight. I got to the top right at the spot of a giant rockslide which had carved a deep gash into the side of the mountain, leaving a bare space which made the rocks beneath look almost naked. I leaned over to see better, and got a very steep, shocking view of the looooong way down. I quickly took two steps back, then one deep breath, and started walking along the ridge to my intended destination, where my companions patiently waited. After having a good hike and contemplation time on the top, we were all excited for breakfast. PJ went down first, bobbing and weaving in his bright yellow windbreaker, and Neal and I followed, a bit less gracefully and far less quickly on my part, but we still made it down right in time to eat.
After breakfast, we all got to ride on Mipsang’s small but sturdy horse (don’t worry, Neal’s friends, I have pictures), and then we went for a leisurely walk to the river, where we looked at flowers and lazed next to a small pond. On our way back, Ao spotted a black female yak (aka a nak) stuck neck-deep in mud. The team went immediately into action. Neal and PJ grabbed horns and rump and pulled, while Ao extricated her limbs one at a time by plunging his hands deep into the mud and heaving. Jangmu and I kept up commentary and took photos, and the nak furiously ground her teeth with anxiety. The moment was tense, but it wasn’t long before the nak was being dragged out and laid onto the nearby grass to recuperate. She was clearly exhausted, and almost didn’t have the strength in her tired muscles to stand up, but a few well-placed rocks to her side from Ao got her moving higher to safety. We all stood around and congratulated each other for a job well done. Capes and badges for everyone! Good work, Team Nak Rescue!
Everyone was energized and walked lighter after the Great Nak Rescue. Neal talked of making t-shirts (Team Nak Rescue, First Responders), while Jangmu replayed the video and I gave a recap of the highlights. It was not long after this proud moment that PJ welcomed us into the highly esteemed He-Man Jungle Doctors’ Club. What an honor!
Story #2: “Escape ceremonies”
The work that the medical team does for the people in these villages is very much appreciated, and the people are glad to show their gratitude. Generosity and appreciation are inherent in daily Tibetan culture, but when Doc PJ and crew comes around, they take it up a notch.
Every morning after a clinic day, we would wake up, pack our bags for the next town, eat breakfast, and participate in what PJ liked to call the “escape ceremonies.” This consisted of going to a number of houses and being offered thanks through tea, prayer scarves, food, tea, blessings and conversation, drinks, and tea. It is an honor to be treated so respectfully by such loving people, but it is also a bit of a strain on the belly and the bladder, particularly right before a day of hiking steeply up for four hours. PJ and Thiley got very creative about shortening the time these interludes would take in the mornings, choosing to go to houses the night before, split up and cover more than one house at a time, or allow one family to make us dinner and another to make us breakfast. It was a clever strategy. PJ has also learned how to be very graceful about declining further refreshments when he is full, which is something I have discovered that I struggle with, because I always found myself looking incredulously at the fresh mountain of food on my plate even after telling myself I could not eat one more bite. On one of our last days I remember looking at the full cups of Tibetan tea, coffee, beer, and soda in front of me and gravely wishing I had not eaten so much breakfast. Tibetan tea is a salty butter mixture which probably helped a great deal in getting through the hard mountain winters through the generations, and it is very popular in the area. PJ wasn’t a huge fan of it; Mipsang laughed as he told us, “He has tried many times to like it, but he cannot like it.” I found the taste pleasant, but the consistency too rich to drink much more than a few sips before feeling satisfied. Instead, I settled with the delicious milk tea made with local nak milk, but after a morning of tea ceremonies, even the most pleasant of experiences can be a burden when you have too much of it. This is a good lesson for me to remember: know your limits!
Story #3: Fellow travelers
We met a few Western trekkers along the way who hiked and talked with us for awhile.
The Langtang area is far less touristy than the Solukhumbu, but it still had its fair share of fair-skinned faces, and even one swanky café which was tourist-run! One nice couple around our age, a French girl named Celine and a Japanese guy named Keita, spent a few days sharing lodges and meals with us. We had some great talks about travel, and one particularly interesting morning chat about how travel affects family. Traveling for me has been a wonderful experience, but it has been difficult to be separated from my family for such a long time. I know that when I go home, I am going to want to spend as much time with them as I can to catch up. I also know now that I would not be happy living far away from them (like in another country, or even too many states away) for extended periods of time—it just feels like I am missing too much. It was therefore really interesting to hear the accounts of other travelers. Keita has been traveling for many years now, and he has gone as much as two years without seeing his family. When he does come back, he is happy to see them and spend time with them. Being away is an experience which makes his time at home more enjoyable. “When I go home,” he says, “nothing has changed. They are all still doing the same things they did the last time I visited. My father does not even like to vacation outside of the area surrounding his home. Only I have changed. I come home and do the same things with them that they love to do, and I can entertain them with stories of my experiences. It is fun for both of us.” Keita does not want to go back to a life in that town with his family, but he has found a balance which suits them both.
Celine has also been abroad for a long time, and she had a different story. She had been traveling away from home for a year, and she decided to come home for a few months to surprise her family. But when she got there, she said it was not the same. “They didn’t even seem to want me there,” she said. “Nobody was that excited to see me, and it was like they didn’t know how to relate to me anymore. It was very strange, and now I am not sure that I can even go back.” Being away caused her family to distance themselves from her, and she is left to continue her journey without relying on their advice and genuine support, an occurrence which I doubt she had foreseen when she first left home.
Neither Keita nor Celine plan to return to their hometowns to settle once their journeys are over. I, however, have realized in my travels just how wonderful my home really is. These are just two of many conversations we have had with others who have been far from home for a long time. The travel experience is a quick and easy way to open a lot of doors in your life, but we are discovering that it has its consequences. Relationships are hard to maintain even when the people are close by, but absence from those relationships for too long can change the dynamic in unexpected ways. Even PJ talked to us about how it is hard to find someone who wants to hear stories of his travel experiences. “Most people will give you about 3 minutes,” he says. The travel life is just so different from daily life that it can be extremely challenging to reconcile these two worlds, and people outside of those worlds have difficulty understanding the ways in which you have changed. I have not a single regret about coming on this trip (though it is going to be pretty hard to miss my sister’s college graduation), but conversations like the one with Keita and Celine make me wonder how this big trip is going to play its part in the rest of my life.
Story #4: Old and new
Nepal is a place where old and new are coming together, interacting, and creating a unique way of life. Every place has bits and pieces left over from the people who came before, and history is everywhere. We walked past an ancient Mani stone one day and Jangmu pointed out a cluster of rocks half-buried in the ground beside the trail. “This is where the lamas used to perform sky burials,” she said. A Sky Burial is an ancient Tibetan ceremony where the person who has died is chopped up into small pieces and fed to the vultures, which to me sounds like an extremely powerful and spiritually charged method of going back to the earth. This practice is becoming less and less common, however, because there aren’t any lamas in the area who are trained in the ritual. Now, it is more common for people to be cremated or buried in the hills. Sometimes people’s ashes are mixed with clay and formed into small temple-shaped figures, then placed in caves or near holy sites like gompas. We saw a few such figures near a gompa we visited, sitting there for who knows how many years, protected by the weather under a large rock. The prayer flags, another ancient tradition, are covering the hillsides and holy places, and adorning people’s homes. The fresh ones are placed alongside the faded and tattered ones, refreshing the prayers and blessings while honoring the fragments of hopes and dreams of old. Many house interiors are painted black and decorated with white tsampa flour in celebration of the New Year, and the tsampa is left to chip off slowly with time. We watched a video of a yearly festival which happens near Langtang, with people in traditional and modern dress swaying and singing in a big circle for hours and hours. People come from all over Nepal to attend. Every person knows the songs, every person moves in time to the music. The ancient life is its own thread in the grand weaving that is shaping the Nepali life, and one of the great themes is honoring the passing of time.
Another related theme is acknowledging the changing times. We walked past a woman separating grain from its husk outside her home, listening to loud Hindi music on her cell phone as she worked. Even from so far from Kathmandu, we continually heard news of the constitution-passing process and the pros and cons of the newly forming government. And we heard many stories from the old Lama family history, stories of how the land was passed down for generations and how they lost their family name in the process of applying for citizenship, stories of their yak herding days and stories of their new life in Kathmandu. Even for a family who lives steeped in the history of their ancestors every day, it is hard to hold on to the old ways, hard to remember all of the stories of their people. On our last morning in Langtang, before beginning the long walk down, we were served breakfast made by Thiley’s 92-year old mother, the last noble queen of Langtang. She honored us deeply by coming up to the house herself, a rare occurrence these days, and sitting with us for awhile. Her presence was tangible, powerful, directing the reverent focus of all in the room toward her. PJ thanked her for coming, and tears welled up in her eyes, then his. It was an indescribable moment which invoked so many emotions and feelings about the unavoidable passage of time, a moment which PJ described as “more powerful than meeting the Dalai Lama. Her life represents a transition, between what used to be and what will come.” After we began our journey down, I stopped for a moment and turned back to the house. She was standing outside facing us, looking like a tattered prayer flag and a solid Mani stone at the same time, knowing yet distant, wise but somehow lost. I wanted to go up to her and tell her everything within myself, but I had the feeling like she knew it already. I wanted to ask her everything about her life, but I also felt like I had been shown it in more ways than I yet knew. Instead, I turned around and began to walk. This is Nepal, in all of its crashing together, its weaving of fragments from all walks of life and all times, holy and irreverent, simple and complex, beautiful in its brave and unselfconscious display of its own truth. Here, mysteries are only mysteries until you truly see what is right in front of you. Here, gompas and mountains and the bare earth are all monuments to the sacred. Here, you can discover yourself and that which is far greater than you in a single, timeless moment. Whether or not I will come back to this place is something I cannot know, but that I will be forever changed from this experience is something I am certain of, and deeply grateful for.
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