Bodhgaya - Words or Path?

I sat under the tree where Buddha found enlightenment.  It was quite a beautiful tree, and pilgrims had come from all over the world to pay it honors.  Throngs of Tibetan refugees were scattered around, performing a ritual where they stand straight up, then lie down, stretch their arms toward the tree and rise again.  Each cycle is one "prostration.", and they will complete 100,000 of these over the next month to show their humility to the Dharma.  Meanwhile, groups of monks meditated to find some of that sweet realization and clarity that Siddharta found 2600 years ago.  Then there was me, soaking up all the magic and serenity with my best attempt at a calm, aware, Buddha mind.

Eventually this mind moved from the present ambiance to its history.  Siddharta's story played out in my head.  The Noble Prince viewing suffering for the first time and rejecting his fortunes to find the remedy of suffering.  The Young Seeker, learning from the aesthetics and moving into a cave where he meditated for six years.  The Skeptic, questioning the methods of the aesthetics and finally accepting a bit of food before sitting under the Bodhi tree.  The Buddha, who sat under the tree, this tree in fact, and found enlightenment.

This historical Buddha offered quite an interesting contrast to the hordes of Buddhists in front of me now.  Buddha himself rejected the wealthy, the aesthetics and all other worn paths.  He came to this tree to find his own answers.  Meanwhile, the rest of us come to this tree to celebrate his answers.

This balance between  borrowing others' wisdom and unleashing our own innate wisdom became a prominent task during my stay at Root Institute for Wisdom Culture, where I studied Buddhism and meditated for six days in complete silence, speaking only in discussions and debates with the resident monks.  I wanted to plug the holes in my spiritual understanding of the world and untwist some of the contradictions in my practice, and I hoped Buddhism could lend a helping hand.

To be fair, I found a lot of truth in Buddha's teachings that did just this.  Saying that, I saw just as many holes and knots in the Buddhist philosophy and practice as my own..  My major insights came when some Karmic Words cracked away at my thick skull, and a beam of my inner wisdom was allowed to shine through and spread.  These gleams of insight sometimes agreed with the teachings, but just as many times they disputed the teachings, which did no damage to their ultimate truth or utility in my eyes.  Even though I'm still a few major epiphanies away from finding and creating a really meaningful spirituality, by the end of my stay I felt like I had come a long way, due just as much to my own doubt and skepticism as my acceptance in the teachings.

So, while I suppose Buddha's words are quite helpful in giving us direction and support, ultimately its his path we must follow.

Varanasi - Public Cremation

Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust.  I've always know this.  I've always known that one day all of the world's children will return back to Earth so that new life can be created.  Yet, the process itself is subtle in its continuous and lengthy manner, so this idea of recycled matter and life remains just that, an idea.  Never an experience.  Unless you visit Varanasi that is.

While strolling past cows, beggars and mystical pilgrims on the Ghats of the Holy Ganges, a group of burning woodstacks on the riverside caught my attention.  If I had read Lonely Planet more closely (or at all), I would've known why these piles were burning and what they contained.  Instead, this information was revealed by watching two young men haul a dead body wrapped in white cloth from the river and drop it into the flames.  I was at the cremation ghat.

Most people nonchalantly walked past, ignoring the ceremony as if it was a flier plastered on the side of a building.  I on the other hand, was mesmerized.  From a distance of about 20 feet, my gaze stay fixated, never wandering from the body that was now submerged in flames.  I watched as the body became black and slowly crumbled into the fire like a dying, cracking leaf.  When I could no longer make out the body from the pile of sticks, I walked closer for a more discerning vantage point.

From this angle I could confirm that the majority of the body had ceased to exist.  However, one shin still maintained some sort of charred resemblance of a shin, for it laid on the edge of the fire where it's hunger was weaker.  Meanwhile, the foot laid completely outside the grips of the flame, fully intact and appearing alive as it ever had been.

Now only 10 feet away, I focused my entire mind, my entire being, on that shin and foot.  The fire slowly ate away at the shin while the foot remained untainted.  Eventually the shin became so withered and brittle it could no longer support the weight of the foot.  It cracked like a twig, and the foot tumbled toward me.  This brown foot, the last piece of physical evidence that within those flames lie the ashes that once constituted a human being full of joy, despair, dreams, struggles and love, sat a couple feet in front of me.  Quickly, a man knocked the foot back into the fire with a nondescript branch before attending to other business.  There were still many more bodies that needed to be cremated.

We all know that everyone is going to die one day, but we know this the same way that we know the South Pole exists.  Surely though, this intellectual concept of the South Pole is a far cry away from waking one morning to piercing cold and sweeping snowfields.  With the same sudden shock of waking in the Arctic, the idea of impermanence exploded from a corner of my mind and permeated into everything around me.  Every person and every thing was burning, hurdling toward non-existence.  Each moment a cremation suspended in time.

This new world existed with me for a few hours before giving way to my normal methods of perception and life.  I'm not really sure if realizing impermanence in this manner is ultimately helpful or not.  The vacant face and dazed constitution I possessed for those few hours certainly wouldn't serve me well on a first date, or really any task for that manner.  On the other hand, maybe consciousness of our Death could help us live life more meaningfully.  Moreso, maybe seeing everything as a cremation is a doorway to seeing the other half of the equation, everything as a birth.  Either way, whether it's useful or not, whether I acknowledge it or not, those few hours were reality.

Doug Becomes a Teacher... Kinda...

I approached the headmaster of JibJibe Secondary School and informed him that I was here to teach English for two weeks, but he told me I could just teach all of the subjects.  Then he pushed me into a classroom full of confused Nepali 10th graders and hastily told me I'd be fine as he walked out the door.  Ok... I guess I'm a teacher now... I assessed the situation.  60 Nepali students were crammed onto rotting, rickety benches which themselves where crammed inbetween cracking walls and a tin roof.  I had no idea which subject I was supposed to teach, let alone how to effectively teach that subject, let alone how to speak my student's language.  Also, I had no chalk.  I was fucked.  For a few moment I just stared at the class with the stupid, slackjawed expression of a nervous schoolboy who had suddenly been shoved face to face with the prettiest girl in school.

Well, I couldn't give an hour long lesson on blank stares, so I jumped into an introduction of who I was, where I was from, and what America was like.  The students probably understood only a fraction of what I said, but at least I knocked off ten minutes.  Finally, I just asked the students which subject they normally took at this time.  English!  Perfect!  Even better, they all had little exercise books, and all I had to do was lead them through practices that they were probably familiar with already.  Maybe I could bullshit my way through this after all.

The first exercise asked the students to read a passage about milk and answer questions about it.  How many interesting sentences could you craft about milk?  One?  Maybe two?  Well not this book.  Six whole paragraphs about milk!  Unsurprisingly, as one student read aloud, everyone else just chatted amongst themselves.  I continuously had to quiet down the class, but even in silence they just ignored the reading.  So did I.  It was six paragraphs about milk for Christ's Sake.

After we finally stopped reading about milk, we answered questions about milk.  I difficultly communicated to the students that they could work in groups to answer questions.  Groupwork emphasized the importance of cooperation, unity and the value of shared purpose over individualistic effort, but more importantly it relieved me from the pressure of having to do anything.  Yet after ten minutes no one had come up with any correct answers, and it became clear I'd have to intervene and at least try and communicate with the students.  Mid-way through my fruitless gesturing and slow explanations, the bell rang and class (otherwise known as "The Shit Show") was over.  At this pointed I conceded I probably wouldn't be Julia Roberts in the Freedom Writer.  It would be a miracle if I could just teach one useful thing.

Still, I'd keep trying anyways.  I was trying to ask what the next subject was, when the science teacher walked in and told me all I had to do was teach the students about heat... Ok... what do I know about heat... Quickly, I raced through the dusty corridors of my brain to uncover some dormant knowledge of heat, but all I found was a crumpled piece of scrap paper that read, "Uhh... like... heat comes from the sun... and uh...it's like... wicked hot."  As I contemplated how I could spin this knowledge into an hour long lesson, the science teacher handed me a piece of chalk and exclaimed in fractured English that he was excited to learn about Western techniques for teaching, to which I replied I had no fucking clue what I was doing.  He disappointedly taught the lesson, and as he did so, I borrowed a student's mathbook and practiced the advanced algebra I was supposed to teach next.  By the end of the lesson I hadn't got a problem right.

Thankfully, at the end of class, the principal rescued me from a failed math class and told me I could stick to English.  Knowledge of my limited knowledge must have spread quickly, but at least I offered the Nepali teachers a more accurate view of the average American's grasp of science and mathematics.  Then, almost suddenly, I found myself in front of an overcrowded class of 5th graders.  Out of the frying pan and into the frier.  Once again completely unprepared, I relied on the textbook.  Once again, the students read a passage and had no idea what they just read.  Once again, I helplessly gestured to try and convey meanings of certain passages.  Then class ended, and for the third time in as many attempts, I failed to offer the students anything meaningful.

I was getting pretty disenheartened at this point, but at least I had a break period now, finally giving me a moment to reflect.  Of course, quiet, thoughtful contemplation is difficult when you're surrounded by swarms of frenzied children screaming "Hello, how are you!!!" and "What is your father's name!!!" (Apparently, the students are taught that asking someone the name of their father is the go-to icebreaker of the English language).  Still, amidst this chaos I was able to come up with a  couple useful conclusions.  First, the text book exercises were useless for me.  I posited that the student's actual knowledge of the English language was far below what the book demanded.  Thus, I would be far more effective if I ditched the book altogether and came up with my own exercises.

So, I tried again, this time with 50 seventh graders and some reclaimed confidence and purpose.  I taught comparison words (tall, taller, tallest etc...) that I could easily gesture.  Next, I showed how to use these words in a sentence using the students as examples.  Finally, I had the students write their own examples.  The kids eagerly shoved their papers in my faces, which had to be corrected over and over again, but by the end the majority of students were showing me functional English sentences.  It was working!  They were learning stuff!  Now, I suppose this is a very basic lesson, but compared to what I offered my earlier classes, this was like offering the wisdom to overcomes all of life's problems and confusions.  Screw my earlier doubts, I could be Julia Roberts! (The one who's an inspiring teacher, not the one who's a prostitute...)

I felt I could do this because I had just realized something that I had always intellectually understood.  The key to doing anything in life is malleable persistence.  It's some blend of headstrong determination and honest humility.  More simply put, it's trying and trying again, while maintaining the awareness to realize when what you're trying isn't working, and changing course accordingly.  It's a simple lesson that most people probably understand and agree with, but frequently ignore in the practicalities of life because of the undeniable pain of failure.  This time though, I took the punches, persevered, changed my swing a bit and delivered a knockout lesson.

And that's how things went in JibJibe school and life went for the next couple weeks.  Every evening I came up with meaningful activities and lessons for the next day.  Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't, but I always tried.  When I realized that I should focus on fun and culture, I changed the curriculum from grammar to popular American songs.  When I spent my day off working in the rice fields with the villagers, I worked through the pain while adjusting my rice-cutting form for maximum comfort and efficiency.  It may not have always been pretty, or easy, but in the end I taught the students some good knowledge, some great songs, and more importantly made deep, meaningful connections with a handful of students and my Nepali family.  Malleable persistence made my last significant Nepali experience a great one.

Drunk Yogi Wisdom

For the past week my mind had been obsessed with soul, what it is, what it does and how to unleash it.  A fundamental part of my current understanding was interdependence, not just the intellectual understanding of it but the expression of it.  However, the more I closed my mind in on the subject, the less I interacted and connected with the people around me.  Ironically enough, this focus on interdependence and mind isolated and blocked my soul from other - the exact opposite effect I desired.  So, I entered my six-day yoga retreat at Sadhana with mixed emotions and many questions.  Will this retreat help reveals the mysteries of Soul and Mind?  Do these secrets even need to be understood?  And more practically, can I do yoga without looking like a complete idiot?  Thankfully, concern over these questions proved to be pointless.  For a few days into the retreat, I realized the focus lay less on the Soul and Mind and more on eating and chilling out.  Just what I needed.

While we did practice yoga and meditation for 5 or 6 hours a day, most of the real action occured during our huge breaks inbetween sessions.  Mainly this was due to the fantastic people.  Of course there was the cyclical discussions of where you were from and what you were doing in Nepal, but with quite a few people I was able to move a bit past these formalities and engage in some solid, meaningful discussions.  More importantly, we were able to have goofy, meaningless conversation which always seemed to erupt uncontained laughter at the most inappropriate times.  This may sound like a simple pleasure, but for the past week I felt like my mind had been spinning and flipping around on a solitary alien planet.  After a while, not pleasant.  On the other hand, talking and laughing grounded me back in reality and relieved the vertigo of a mind wandering a bit too far.  Of course, this was pleasant.

As it normally does, simply being happy and content opened the door to memorable experiences.  One morning, a few girls and I walked up to the Yoga Centre rooftop and slapped mud all over each other's bodies.  None of us could quite figure out how covering your body in mud was beneficial to your body and mind, but none of us could quite give a shit either.  It was fun so we did it.  Dancing to the Sun Gods like a bunch of swamp hippies taking ballerina lessons was fun too, so we did that as well.  Not exactly high-class culture, but I've always held higher regard for absurdity than normalness anyways.

I suppose it's good that I prefer absurdity, for there was an abundance of it during a conversation I had with a shopowner down the road.  It went something like this. "How old are you?"  22.  "Are you married?"  Haha, no.  "Do you have a girlfriend?"  Not at the moment.  "Do you like Nepali girls?"  Ya, they're pretty nice.  "Would you like to marry one?"  Uhhhh... (awkward silence)... what?  A few inquiring questions later I learned there was a young Nepali woman named Santi up the road who was quite keen on marrying a foreigner.  I explained to the shopowner that in America, two people usually knew each other and dated for years until they married, and then asked how it worked in Nepal.  "You meet Santi now, and probably later today you get married.  Maybe tomorrow."  He then went on to describe how if we married, I could buy a small plot of land up the road, build a house and farm there, and come and go from America as I please.  For a brief moment I looked out upon the lake, the idyllic hillside and joyous children playing around.  I imagined working seasonally in America for four months, travelling for two months and living on a quiet farm in Nepal the rest of the year.  Not a bad idea I thought.  Then I thought just a tad bit harder and realized this was the stupidest idea I'd ever had.  I darted back to the Centre, ignoring the pleas to wait and meet my potential Nepali wife.

Considering I momentarily considered marrying a stranger, it should come as no surprise my judgement dictated it wise to drink beer during a yoga retreat.  Such it was, when a few of my closest yogis-to-be left the course and had one more night in Pokhara, I skipped afternoon meditation and yoga to replace peace with chaos.  It started with a beer and Nepali jenga down by the river.  Then there was some food.  Next came some singing.  Naturally, entranced dancing followed.  Mixed inbetween there were public sun salutations and shameless smack talking.  Moreson that any one particular event though, it was our glowing radiance of fervered insanity that made the night special.  We carried around the auroa and grace of a wrecking ball.  No thing or person around us was safe.  Honestly, I'd probably consider our group a no-good bunch of rambunctuous jackasses if there wasn't so much sincere laughter and good spirits.

I should take a break from these stories and say this about the Yoga Retreat.  It did involve yoga.  Amazingly, I was able to retain some level of dignity despite my feeble attempts to stretch and contort my body.  Even better, I feel like I learned a valuable tool for developing two tremendously important traits - awareness and presence.  Through my daily life, my awareness is frequently held hostage by trifling thoughts and attachments.  Like meditation, yoga helps me free my awareness and bring it back to the present moment.  Once there, the inevitable times of suffering don't seem so frightening when they're stripped of the excessive worries and negative meanings I place on them.  Moreso, the dull and boring moments are invigorated with the true colors and life they hold.  Awareness and presence in the moment.  Truly so crucially important.  So important in fact, plenty of my exhausting mental explorations into Soul before the retreat were concerned with this.  So important, I made myself look like a fool practicing yoga for six days in an effort to strengthen it
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Yet, what I'm finding is that yoga, meditation and contemplation only account for a fraction of what I'm searching for.  The rest of it lies elsewhere, and it seems to be found performing an activity I have aptly titled, "Living Life."  During immersing conversation at Sadhana, I was connecting with other people.  I may not have been cogniscent of it at the time, but I was experiencing interdependence.  Making an ass of myself in public with drunk yogis may not be an acknowledged step on the path to enlightenment, but at least I was living in the moment.  Throwing oneself into absolutely absurd situations was on neither the Kopan or Sadhana schedule, but sometimes it's when I have to ask myself "What the hell am I doing?" to actually be aware of exactly what the hell I'm doing.

Meditation, yoga and contemplating the soul have certainly proved to important parts of my spiritual path, but let's be honest here.  I'm not going to be a religous scholar living in a library or a driven yogi living in a cave.  I'm a simple human being who lives in a breathing world, and interdependence necessitates that this world is just as much a part of me as my sense of identity.  So if I'm truly going to find the Nature of Soul or Enlightenment, the world and all of it people, chaos and absurdity are going along for the ride.

Everest 8 - The Way Back Down

The hike back down was interesting to say the least.  For the first time in nearly a decade I contemplated the literal existence of a God and Soul.  I read like crazy.  I meditated like a madman (a very peaceful and calm madman).  So, what did I garner from this?

Well… let’s just say I still have a long way to go.  Most of my insights were on a philosophical level, which bothers me a bit.  I’ve always been annoyed by philosophers because they seem to climb to the peaks of human thought, but never seem to bring anything meaningful back down to the valleys where people live and do stuff.

But I will say this.  My spirituality has been dull and stagnant for a life time, and if nothing else this has revived a seeking attitude in me again.  Even more, when reflecting back on all my talk on the Travelers Key and following your heart, I’ve realized that I’ve actually been contemplating a common idea.  Being in the moment.  When people say, “It’s about the journey, not the destination.” More or less they’re advocating this idea of being in the moment.  Much like my walk up to the foot of Mt. Everest was a journey, my spiritual seeking is a journey in itself, and in both cases this journey is more important than the destination.  I’m certainly still searching, but from here on out I’m not going to concern myself so much with reaching some sort of divine truth or pinnacle of spiritual experience.  I’m still going in that direction, but I’ll be sure to be grateful and aware on each step toward that goal. J

As of now, I’m in Pokhara and leaving tomorrow for a week long yoga retreat.  After that I’m off to a village to teach English for a couple weeks… Haha life is good.

Everest 7 - Base Camp and Irrational Spirituality

Today certainly wasn’t a bad day, my hikes just didn’t possess that magic they had in the past few days.  What the day lacked in breathtaking views and “moments”, it more than made up for in new, exploding thoughts.

When I woke up, I just didn’t “feel” the hiking.  Maybe it was because I was physically exhausted from walking with a 35 pound pack on my back for the past ten days, or I was emotionally exhausted from the beauty that had been assaulting my senses.  Either way, I really just wanted to hang out in the common room and read a book.  Still, I asked myself “How often am I in the Himalayas?”, and forced my trekking boots on and walked on to Base Camp.

Of course the hike was gorgeous.  It was the same peaks, valleys and snow that nearly brought me to tears the past two days, but some of the magic was gone.  I tried using the Key, but it simply wasn’t effective.

Things turned up a bit when I was at trekkers base camp and chose not to go to the Climbers Base Camp.  A guide told me that trekkers were supposed to stop here and the views weren’t really going to be any better or different at the climbers camp, so I resigned to stop hiking for the day.  I watched a group walk further toward the Climbers Base Camp, and found a comfy rock to lay on and soak up the sun.  Here, I was not driven to the point of tears, but a bit of that magic seemed to creep back into me.

This brings up something I only briefly touched on the other day.  Until now all aspect of this figurative Travelers Key I’ve been carrying with have been mental processes.  They’re all states of mind.  None of them involve actions.  How could I ignore this?  A couple days ago I sensed there was a relationship between the Key and following your soul, heart, intuition or whatever you want to call it.  Now, I think that listening to that irrational aspect of self that tells you what to do isn’t related to the key, it’s part of it.

In the shadows of Lhotse Mountain I reveled in this new understanding for a bit.  Gratitude, clear mind and egolessness could only do so much if you were betraying a fundamental aspect of yourself.  And what is this aspect?  I’ve placed a lot of new age sounding word on it, but at it’s core it’s just doing what you want.  I suppose most people would argue that in their free time they already do what they want without listening to some logic-defying inner voice, but I’m not so sure.  It seems that the current American lifestyle is so stressful, that our rare moments of free time is merely spent escaping the stresses and anxieties of life.  Escape is quite different than pursuit.  Also, It seems that even when we’re momentarily free from all of our responsibilities and stress, we become more concerned with feeding an ego than listening to our true nature of mind that really reveals what we should be doing.  When you compound this with the reality of our expanding workweeks and decreasing vacation times, doing what you want is becoming harder and harder to come by.

I also imagine that quite a few people would consider simply doing whatever you want as a selfish desire, but I’m not so sure of this either.  I think violent criminals are simply afflicted with many delusions of mind.  Furthermore, it seems like those that are involved in the helping profession are much closer to doing what they want than those in the Corporate World.  From this frame of reference, it seems people lean toward the socially proactive when left with the option of doing what they want, not such a bad thing.

Doing what you want – Following your heart – Intuition – Wisdom – Soul – It all started to seem like the same elusive thing to me at that moment.  Even more important, it started to seem like one of the most important aspects on the effectiveness of the Traveler’s Key, one of the most important aspects of a fulfilling life.

Maybe the strength of the sun rays at 18,000 ft made me disoriented, maybe I was dehydrated, but as I laid on that rock my mind began to race all over the place.  Reflecting on the difficulty of simply doing what you want to do, my mind turned toward the CBT model of psychology.   The basic idea is that our thoughts, behaviors and emotions are all interrelated, and for some reason the unification of thoughts, actions and emotions seemed like the most beautiful idea in the world to me.  Furthermore, it seemed like the Travelers Key I’ve blabbed on so much about, was the key to accomplishing this!  I think all three times I was on the verge of tears was not only because of the natural beauty around me, but because of the harmony in which these different aspects of self were in accordance with each other.

I kind of laughed to myself on the rock for a bit.  Everyone is wandering by, sitting around, snapping photos, and although they see me in the background here, they have no idea what’s going on in my head.

Anyhow, the swirling of thoughts momentarily slowed down a bit as I reveled in the harmony of self I’ve been lucky enough to forge on the trek here. But then I started thinking of the aspects of self, and the currents of my mind grew stronger than ever.  Thoughts – behaviors – actions.  These are the aspects of self that the CBT model views a human.  Nice, tidy, easy to define and measurable. 

After living the past few days in the appreciation of that which is irrational and illogical, this normally neutral concept seemed repulsive.  Surely there is more than this.  Surely there is an aspect of self which holds higher meaning than this, something that escapes measurements, definitions and reason.  Surely if there was such an aspect of self that escaped logic, modern psychology and science would miss it!  Our attachment to reason, fostered since a child in our classrooms, would almost blind us to its presence!

The swirling stopped and I had a clear thought.

Yesterday I said my purpose was to pursue, appreciate and create that which holds unmistakable beauty.  As part of this, I now dedicate myself to a personal understanding and practice of spirituality.

Everest 6 - I Saw Mt. Everest Today

Today the Earth told us it was alright to go, so we did.  It was our 10^th day of the trek, the climax of the trek.  Today was the day we went to Kala Patthar, which rests at a healthy 18,500 ft, but more importantly, was a viewpoint at the seat of Mt. Everest.

In all we had to walk about 4 miles and 2,000 ft up.  An easy feat in Flagstaff, but with the snow and altitude one of the most physically trying things I’ve ever done.  Every step demanded magnificent effort and at least one breath.  When contemplating Alchemist ideas of following destiny, I’ve noticed it could be hard to recognize when our suffering was a sign to change course, and when it was an inevitable struggle that one draws strength from in achievement of dreams.  I have no secret to decipher between the two, no “destiny’s key”.  But this unbelievable difficult stretch was certainly the latter.  No part of my essence doubted it.

Overcoming this struggle rewarded us with a glimpse of unmistakable beauty.  At the wind-blown peak, the snow-dusted valleys, boulders and hills yearned for my eyesight, but the power of Mt. Everest demanded my appreciation.  Here I was.  Looking out toward the highest point on the Earth, 29,000 ft high, twice the size of the Rockies.  With the reflective state of mind I found myself in the past few days, you’d think that I would draw some meaning of humanity or nature from the most brilliant landmark on the planet.  But, with a tight clench of my Traveler’s Key, none came.  Instead, I was simply content in its beauty.  No brilliant insight, no deeper meaning - just unmistakable beauty.  Yet again, I almost cried.  Apparently the Traveler’s Key is also quite adept at turning me into a big “softie” who would probably be ridiculed at any Rugby party across the States.  Who cares.  

I’m at freakin Mt. Everest, the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in my life.

On my way down my breath wasn’t nearly as labored, and I retreated back to my reflective self.  For a while I’ve been wondering what my purpose was on this 6 month trip I was on.  When people would ask me before I left, I’d usually come up with some half-believed statement about culture, adventure and experience.  Even though what I said always made sense, it never seemed right.  In honesty, my real purpose for doing this has always evaded me, and I figured that at some point the experience itself would reveal the purpose.  Well it did, and the words came to me from seemingly nowhere.

The pursuit, appreciation and creation of that which holds unmistakable beauty.

This is a loaded purpose, one myself haven’t had the time to unravel.  I don’t mind.  In the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in my entire life, it simply appeared to me, and I’d be foolish to ignore it.

Everest 5 - Snow Day

Rob and I woke up at 6, bags packed and ready to tackle the 18,500 ft Kala Pattar.  Mother Earth had different plans for us though, as she sent us a full-blown Himalayan blizzard.  We decided to eat breakfast, consult with the other groups and decide what to do.  My feet and ego were telling me to go forward, but my heart (or perhaps just common sense) was telling me stay inside.  I was hoping the other groups were thinking similarly, making it easier to justify staying in for the day with my trekking buddy, but to my surprise and concern, almost everyone was plowing onward in the throes of the blizzard.  Still, I wasn’t going to let the actions of others drown out what my heart was telling me, so we firmly decided to stay in for the day.

What a wonderful thing that intuition turned out to be.  I had a fantastic day.

I wrapped up the book I was working on, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”.  Some of the philosophy was a bit over my head, but I loved reading about his idea of Quality.  I remember after reflecting on The Alchemist, I thought that it seems there is some aspect of self, lying outside pure reason, logic and thought, which if listened to, just might provide direction and purpose for the individual. Back in Kathmandu, when I wondered what to do with myself, I just quieted my thoughts, and did whatever my heart told me to do.  It wasn’t though, it wasn’t logical, but it was certain something.

In this book, Prisig’s main idea, Quality, is a real part of the human experience that has been drowned out by Greek methods of reason and logic we’ve adopted in society.  I would probably do a poor job of fully explaining his idea of Quality, but at a basic level it’s a fusion of subject and object, mind and object.  It’s an experience that can’t be defined, and because it defies logic and reason, science and the modern man doesn’t acknowledge it.

For the first time since I’ve been five years old, I’m not in an academic institution that generally holds reason and logic above all else.  The indefinable and irrational hold no place in the classroom.  Now, with a temporary vagabondish lifestyle, I can give these things the attention I believe they deserve.  I’m not sure if this will amount to anything, but a bit of exploration into the soul feels like the right thing to do.

Back to what we actually did that day.

Just as my mind was becoming tired from a meaningful conversation with a Spanish couple, the snow ceased and the clouds cleared up.  Following my heart led to my mind getting its fill and now it was my body’s turn.  I zipped up my down jacket, snatched my hiking poles and reminded myself the tenets of the Travelers Key – Gratitude. Clear Mind.  Seeing mind.  Egolessness – and headed up a hill overlooking the village.  It snows plenty in Flagstaff, but I never really had the time or motivation to really immerse myself in it.  Here, scrambling up slippery boulders, plowing through fresh snow, I was in it.  Reaching the crest of the hill revealed quite a remarkable scene.  The mountains, which usually honor only the peaks with snow, spread the distinction to their whole being and the rocky hillside below.  It was amazingly beautiful.  With the Travelers Key in hand, I almost cried for the second time in as many days

.

I listened to my heart that day.  I held on to the Traveler’s Key that day.  It turned out to be quite the day.

Everest 4 - Travelers Key in Action

It works!  On the hill up to Lobuche, I made concerted efforts to try and put my thoughts into practice.  I generated gratitude for where I was.  I took efforts to clear my mind, which allowed me to deepen my appreciation of both the boulders strewn all over the hill I was climbing, and the larger panorama of snowy Himalayan peaks it was a part of.  I had no ego related to forging ahead to reach my destination quicker, which let me be content with the climb – labored breathing and all – instead of occupying my thoughts with getting to Lobuche and drinking hot tea.

This all culminated at the memorial site for fallen climbers.  Prayer flags linked many stone temples, bearing plaques with names and accomplishments of people who lost their lives in their attempt to summit Everest.  I became overwhelmed with…something.  Being in the presence of memorials that honored people who followed their dreams so intensely it ultimately led to their demise… made me feel something.  Overwhelmed with awe perhaps that some people have a sense of purpose, direction and effort so strong it leads them to live extraordinary lives.  Lives I haven’t an inkling of desire to imitate, yet extraordinary nonetheless.  For myself, some lateral drifting seems like a fine course of action to take at the moment, but perhaps one day after some more experiences and growing, I’ll feel comfortable adopting a purpose so strong.

The prayer flags also had some weird, indescribable effect on me.  I always knew their meaning, to spread good Buddha vibes through the wind that raps on them all day and night, but I never really comprehended this.  Suddenly, the meaning of these multi-colored cloths attached to strings seemed like the most beautiful idea in the world.  With the Travelers Key in hand, these flags were completely different than they ever were.  The combination of memorials and flags summoned such an intellectual and emotional wave, I was a few degrees away from tears.

I could’ve stayed there for hours, but fortunately Robert was standing around on the trail ready to go, kindly reminding me (Even though I kept him waiting quite a bit…), that if we didn’t hurry up a bit we probably wouldn’t be able to find an open room at the next village.  I tried to hang on to the “moment” I was having for a bit longer, but the Traveler’ Key lost it’s power.  The prayer flags became cloth and the memorial turned back into stones.  I walked off to Lobuche.

So, the Traveler’s Key does exactly what I wanted it to do.  It heightened my senses and awareness.  It brought me to the “now”.  It made what has already been an indescribably amazing experience even better. 

Still, the end of the experience brings up an important point I hadn’t considered.  First let me say this.  Recently, I’ve been trying to follow where I think my “soul” is telling me to go.  Less mystically I’ve just been trying to listen to my intuition.  Even less mystically, I’ve just been trying to quiet my thoughts and do what I, want to do, instead of my ego or sometimes circular thought processes..

To this point I don’t know of any link between the Travelers Key and soul/intuition, but there seems to be one.  At the prayer flags my intuition was telling me stay, admire and simply be there.  I listened, I kept the Traveler’s Key in the back of my head and the results were magnificent.  Then I was reminded that even if I was having a great time, I better get a move on unless I wanted to sleep outside in the Himalayas at 16,000 feet elevation. Things became less magical.

While it seems that following your egoless wishes helps strengthen the Key, external pressure that pushes you away from following these feelings seems to bend it, rendering it useless in unlocking the secrets it holds.  If the freedom of the Himalayas and worldwide traveling presents enough pressure to bend the Key, I have a lot of work to do heading back to normal life.

Everest 3 - The Traveller's Key - Scattered journal entry from 10/19

I don't know why today, but things seem to be coming together. Perhaps because I've been in Nature for a week. Perhaps reading about a deep thoughtful madman has been inspiring me to return to a form of deep contemplation that I've abandoned. Either way, a lot of things seem to be making sense today.

My current train of thought took off when reading about the difference between ego-climbers and instrinsic, selfless climbers. The ego-climber may make it to the top, but he'll miss out on all the subtle beauty beforehand. Blinded by a furhter destination, he'll never appreciate the present. Even reaching the summit may prove to be a hollow victory, because there will always be another summit to climb. More ways to build and feed an ego that he's terrified of viewing realistically - a temporary illusion.

This thought led to a previous one I had not too long ago at Kopan Monastery. One of the nagging, unanswered questions I had was about positive desire or attachment. More specifically, I was interested by my desire to see the world and everything it holds. To "see it all." Obviously this is a desire that will never be fulfilled, but in pursuit of this unfulfillable desire, I'm likely to see and experience much more than if I never had this desire. What's the problem in this?

Through my limited experience and knowledge, I've come to conclude that there's two types of travelers. Some who are in a cage, and some who are not. The actions of the two different travelers may seem similar. They both get off planes, stay in swaggy motels, see the sights and search for ways to penetrate the tourist veneer to see the "real" country. Yet although the actions may seem the same, the caged travelers have a motivation that drastically changes the meaning and experience they have.

So, where does this difference in motivation lie? Directly at the motivation to travel itself. It lies at the motivation to "see it all." If the motivation is truly this simple, then like I said before the desire will never be realized. Yet the damage caused by this motivation lies much deeper. It's clear to almost anyone that they actually won't see everything, so most will be somewhat satisfied with the travels they do have. Yet the desire to "see it all" significantly decreases the satisfaction one will have on their travels. If one truly wants to see it all, their current location will never be enough, because "it all" is over at some vague horizon "over there". Yet once they get "over there", they'll find it unsatisfying because now "over there" is "here" and "it all" lies on some new horizon "over there". With this desire to get "there", one is likely to miss out on the subtle beauty of "here", which ironically was once the very horizon they were seeking.

What a conundrum! The very desire that leads to one to get to a new location is clouding the beauty and perfection it holds. It's a troubling trap without a clear escape. I call this the "cage of seeing it all."

For an evening in my sleeping bag and a morning of meditation I examed this cage. Looked at the nature of the bars and the possibility for escape. But after close examination I discovered the cage was complete, inescapable. I looked inward instead.

Upon doing this, I learned numerous routes of escape. With a sincere feeling of gratitude, opposed to a delayed gratitude for the ever-moving horizon, the bars widened a bit. With a clear and aware mind, developed through meditation, one's mind was free and open to sense the subtle beauty of a place and its people - the bars widened more. With eyes that aimed to truly "see" instead of just "looking", both the panorama of the mountains and the small rocks that create them were simultaneously visible - the bars became rubbery and flexible. Finally, as the ego disappeared, which is so concerned with clinging to impermanent identities to impress others and oneself, the bars themselves disappeared. The "cage of seeing it all" was no more. Contemplating this, I feel free to roam while still being completely content with what "is.". I feel like I can move to "it all" over "there", but find satisfaction with every step of the journey, every moment that I am "here.".

Meditating upon all this, I feel free, almost as if I've entered a new state of being. What is this state of being? "Roaming enlightenment?" "Flowing isness?"... No... Those both sound amazingly pretentious and stupid... Hm...Aha! "The Traveller's Key." A key to escape the "cage of seeing it all", which invariably leads to seeing nothing at all. A key to being perfectly content with here, but also being perfectly content with going over there. Perfect.

Well, not perfect. In all honesty, I don't know if a renewed focus toward gratitude, awareness, seeing and egolessness will be the solution to trying to travel the world while still finding happiness with the current location. I don't know if it will help me escape the cage. At the present moment it's only a thought, with just faint traces of it in my feelings and actions. It's like a potentially wise passage of a book that I've skimmed over instead of carefully reading and understanding. I have 3 days until I reach the viewpoint for Mt. Everest, so until then I'll study the passage, revise as necessary, and see what I find.

Everest 2 - The first 6 days

The first 6 days of the trek were amazing in every regard, but my train of thought and experiences became more meaningful toward the end, so I'll recap these days quickly.

The days went very much like they did on the Langtang trek.  On the first day I found another fun guy who was trekking by himself, so we became partners.  Rob was a funny and talkative guy, making conversation and companionship fit naturally.

Also like Lantang, most of the days followed a similar pattern that somehow always led to new experiences.  Wake up early, eat a good breakfast, trek through beautiful scenery, find a lodge to stay at, meet all of the other interesting travelers, and fall asleep reading a good book in a cozy sleeping bag.

Somewhere along the way I discovered that the quality of my days were measured in laughter, beauty and conversation.  Many times on the trail while looking toward the almost incomprehensibly massive peaks that were all around, I couldn't help but laugh because a smile couldn't quite containt my appreciation for the scenery.

Like I said, these were great days, full of connection with nature and other human beings.  I was genuinely happy. 

Still, the following days contained more intense experiences and thoughts, so I'd like to focus more exclusively on those.

Everest 1 - Insane planes and Insanity

        The Kathmandu airport proved to be as confusing as I expected. At around 8:20, the gate I was directed toward announced they would be boarding the flight to Lukla. With my 8:30 boarding pass in hand, I confidently strolled through the gate and followed the crowd to a bus that would take us to our flight. Once there, a man asked us to show him our boarding pass, and while everyone else pulled out a blue ticket, I confusingly held up my red pass. With an exasperated face, the attendant told me I was seconds away from riding toward the wrong bus and hurriedly escorted me off. Having given up the idea of self-efficacy with Nepali transport long ago, I cracked a joke about my own foolishnes and headed back to the terminal with an unshamed smile. Being able to laugh at your mishaps has become necessary, as the other option is a crippled self-esteem, scared to do anything at all. So, I sat with a grin and waited for my correct bus.
       2 full hours after our schedule departure, I was led into the correct bus ths time and rode to plane. As the ten seat plane gained altitude, all the soon-to-be trekkers eagerly snapped photos. With my camera lens focused on the green rolling hills underneath the plane, it took me a couple minutes to notice that huge snowwy peak lie on the horizon. I couldn't identify which mountains were which, but I knew that among these lie the largest in the world. Then it hit me. The Himalayas are mountains on top of other mountains. It was like Mother Earth had twins. The older brother peaks looking down on their younger hills, who in themselves are perfecctly formidable mountains in themselves.
When the plan had been in the air for about 1/2 hour, my vantage point revealed that we were heading directly toward a mountain. This concerned me little. If busses can driver over waterfalls then planes can fly into mountains. My hunch was correct, for as we flew closer to the mountain, a short, upward slanting runway appeared. We landed and the plane slammed on the emergency brakes, stopping us mere few feet before a barricade that protected the village from the planes.

       Exiting the spine-tingling plane ride, I walked to a cafe with a good view of the airstrip and ate some lunch. Watching the planes take off a strip that ended in a complete mountain drop, I was overcome with insanity. It's a different sort of insanity that normally plagues me (and I imagine many others as well.) It wasn't that insanity and unrest caused by a monotonous and strangely unfulfilling life. No, this was different. It was the same feeling I got at the Phoenix airport before my flight to India departed. It was the feeling I got lying on top of a Nepali bus all by myself, staring at the stars as the bus roared through the hills. It's an insanity that arises when I actually take the risk to fully live, and the places this drive leads are astounding and unbelievable. This insanity is one of the best feelings in the world, and I hope all people are lucky enough to experience it at some point in their lives.

      With a "moment" still lingering in my bones, I set off on my 17 day trek through the Himalayas and to the seat of Mt. Everst.

Laughing in a Nepal Village - Journal entry from 10/5

Today was my second day staying in Gopal’s village, the 9^th day of the Dashain festival.  Having grown comfortable at Gopal’s home and establishing it as a sort of safe zone, I felt more comfortable venturing outward through the rest of the village.  This led to one of the largest, most consistent WTFs of my life.

At around 7:30, I walked up to the water sprout to do some laundry.  On my way I passed a very welcoming and smiling family.  The mother insisted I sit down on her porch and she handed me a huge plate of some sort of buffalo cheese.  Suddenly, the entire village swarmed around to view my reaction.  I felt like a giant movie screen showing the climax of a summer Blockbuster.  Will Shia Lebouf somehow defeat gigantic evil robots!?  Will Doug like the buffalo cheese!?  All eyes were glued to the screen for the exciting conclusion.

And…

It was delicious!  I proclaimed to the crowd, “Mita! Mita!” (Delicious! Delicious!) and they went crazy, cheering in a frenzied jubilation.  As I ate the crowd dissipated a bit, but as I was forcing down my last bite one of the children went into the room and brought out a two sided drum.  He placed it around his legs and banged out a simple but catchy beat.  Out of the thin air the crowd grew again, all eyes turned toward me to see how this weird creature would react.  As I do frequently in uncomfortable situation, I danced.  An overjoyous roar of laughter and cheering consumed the crowd yet again.  I didn’t know whether the villagers genuinely enjoyed my company or if I was just some weird freakshow that happened to roll into town.  Either way, they were smiling and I was smiling, so I was happy to play whatever role they wanted.

After finishing my laundry and reading in my safe zone for a bit, I noticed all of Gopal’s family had left to mingle in the rest of the village.  So, with a chest full of confidence and pockets full of juggling balls, I ventured outward.

 I namaste’d everyone I passed, cracking smiles and namastes in return.  Finally, I mustered up the courage to gesture to a family that I’d like to sit with them.  With a huge smile they pulled up a chair and told me to sit.  Much to their amusement and pleasure, I asked them “How are you doing.” And “What is your name?” in what must’ve been awfully fractured Nepali.  After hearing their replies I did my best to tell them that I was doing well and my name was Doug.  Telling them my name was Doug arose an overflowing curiosity in all the kids around, who took turns trying to pronounce my name.  As weird as it for them to hear my try in vain to correctly pronounce a common name, it was bizarre to have 5 children all screaming, “Derg”, “Daug”, “Dog”, and their favorite “Daaaaaaaaaaaw?”, but never just “Doug.”

Having captured the attention of the youth by simply sharing my name, I decided now would be an ideal time to bust out the magically unifying juggling balls.  Once again, I was urrounded by a huge crowd, this time all the village’s children mystified by my ability to throw three balls in the air.  They took turns trying, laughing equally hard at their catches and drops.  Then it turned into some hectic, volleyball, hackeysack, baseball group play session with myself at the focus of everything.  After what seemed like hours everyone in the village started yelling, “Bing! Bing!” and ran down the steps to a rare flat spot in the hillside.

In a frantic yet synchronized effort, Nepali men sprung from every direction and dug four deep holes and hacked away at 50 ft. tall bamboo trees while the women threaded together budles of tall grass into long rope.  Up on the hillside I caught eyes with the kind mother who served me cheese earlier.  Sensing my complete confusion, she laughed, to which I shrugged my shoulders and laughed, which spiraled her into the uncontrollable laughing fit of a stoned 14 year old watching Pokemon.

Luckily, a 12 year old skilled in English had found my juggling skills as proof that I was the coolest person on the planet, and he stuck me like velcro for next few hours and narrarated the bizzare scene the unfolded.  Apparently, “Bing” means “Swing” and it’s tradition across the villages to build a huge bamboo swing for the festival.  With concentration and dedication that surpassed the deepest efforts of the monks at Kopan, the men cut down bamboo trees and anchored them into the dug up holes.  Then, men scurried easily up each tree and bound them togethers using the rope the women weaved together.  To get the trees to line up just right, the men on the ground needed to push the trees from the base, causing the trees to violently sway back and forth.  Thankfully, the villagers on the ground found the sight of four men, aged 15 to 50, grasping for life onto wildly swaying trees with their lives as funny as I did, and I could laugh hysterically without being culturally insensitive.

The completed swing was quite a spectacle to behold, easily five times the size of a standard American swing and utilizing much more bamboo and grass.  Like thie buffalo cheese before, the entire village was eager to see the Westerner’s reaction.  So, by no choice of my own really, I was forced onto the swing by a mob of villagers, and I started pushing.

While the swing is five times the size of an American swing, it’s infinitely more fun.  Within seconds my backwards swing brough me to a height that made me the tallest peak in the Himalayan range.  Upon reach such astronomical heights, I show my legs forward, blasting me like a missile through the crowds of cillagers, and back to dizzying heights perilously close to thick bamboo forests.  The whole time I was on this testosterone-infused swing, my screaming and laughter was drownded out by the wild cheering and laughter of the villagers.

Having enjoyed such a rush of emotions and adrenaline, it was nice to retire back to Gopal’s home for a healthy serving of daal bhaat.  As the family and I sat on the clay floor, stuffing rice and lentils into our mouths with our bare hands, for a guilty second I though of how from an outside Western perspective, the group of us on that clay floor could almost be seen as savages.  Yet, if the lack of utensils and tile floors make someone a savage, these are the nicest savages I’ve ever met.  For most of the year the family has only enough food to eat one meal per day, and they still only have enough food for about 10 months of the year.  If they’re lucky, they can sell some extra milk or cheese for enough profit to buy food for those hungry months, and if they’re unlucky, they take out a loan which traps them in debt for years.  Despite this, they take a rich foreigner into their home during the Nepali equivalent of Christmas and feed him plentifully without a second’s though.  I finished my meal with genuine gratitude.

After dinner, the village gathered around a skilled drummer, sang Nepali songs and danced.  My hippie wiggle looked no more bizarre than the children’s flailing dances, so for once I was simply a part of the scene instead of the focus of attention.  This quickly changed once the the somewhat English speaking children told me their parents wanted me to sing.  Everyone grew quiet and stared at me with anticipation.  I felt like a scared Freshman girl who was about to speak the opening lines at her first big high-school musical.  Obliging to the wishes of the villagers being my only real option,  I told the drummer to start up a beat, and to the surprise and delight of everyone, I belted out a famous Nepali pop song Gopal taught me on the trail.  On the last repeating line, “Ny nobunde lu” (“Don’t say no to my love.”), half of the villagers sang along, and the other half laughed and cheered in their most crazed, complete joyfulness yet.  That scared freshman girl gave the eager crowd the performance of a lifetime.

After about another hour of swinging and dancing, I now find myself in the perfect place.  My bed.  After adopting the roles of Emeril the master food-taster, Bozo the juggling clown, Evil Kineivel the daredevil swinger, gracious guest and the Nepali Ricky Martin, I’m glad to just be Doug, the exhausted, uneducated and bewildered yet speculative anthropologist.  It’s hard to make sense of the day I just experienced,  but I know that the villagers laughed a lot, I laughed a lot and laughing is good.  I think I’m going to go to bed now.  I wonder what the final day of the Dashain festival will bring.

 

Langtang Trekking

If teahouse trekking was available in the United States, everything would change.  Obesity would vanish as people of all ages, races and sizes raced up the hill to the new attraction.  Organized sports would become obsolete as our finest athletes would be revered for their ability to run up mountains instead of putting balls through hops.  World peace would prevail as our leaders reasonable compromised over black tea in the Himalayan shadows.  Okay, I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but my first trek through only the third most popular trekking route was quite spectacular.

Interestingly enough, my first trek began with one of the most horrific moments of my life.  My lonely planet guide wrote only a meager forewarning sentence about the bumpy, dangerous road to the starting point for the trek, but I mostly shrugged it off.  If the Nepali people take it all the time, how bad could it be?  After exiting the bus in a pouring rain so I could walk over a landslide and piling into an overstuffed cattle truck to clear the next stretch of land, I found how bad it could be.  As we approached a narrow, boulder-laden stretch of road with a small waterfall crosing, I figured this was where we would get out and walk past the next landslide.  Instead, the insane truck driver kept rolling along through the waterfall, boulder-field death trap.  In the midle of the crossing, the truck teetered off the edge of the cliff and everone gasped in terror. 

This is it I thought.  Remembering the Earthquake fiasco a few days prior, I resolved to view my Death as an inevitable conclusion to my impermanent nature and decided I wanted my final thoughts to be calm and peaceful.  Still, I hoped my body could be readily identified so my mother wouldn’t send my poor father on an endless and ultimately meaningless quest acros the Himalayas to find his lost son.  Yet, to my surprise the truck landed back on four wheels and proceeded (somewhat) safely down the road.  After walking another hour down slippery rocks in a drenching rain, my wet, carsick body found a peaceful lodge to rest at.  Even better, after locating a friend from my Meditation retreat, I met another lone trekker who I invited to walk with me the next day.  Now I had not only a guide named Gopal, but a friend named Luke.

On day two, Luke and I walked up 100 meters to Lama Hotel and discovered thestark differences between teahouse trekking and backpacking.  The first difference for me at least was the scenery.  I’ve hiked many places, but never a jungle like this.  Throughout our hike we were accompanied by a raging, rocky river that only the truest mad man would consider rafting down.  The greenery was the greenest green I’ve ever seen.  The green-leafed trees have green mos on them that have different green plants growing off of them.  The second main difference is the food.  At around noon when I would normally be pulling out a crumbled up bagel sandwhich and a bag of trail mix, Luke, Gopal and I sat down at a riverside village café and were served endles heaps of rice, lentil soup, curried vegetables, and all the black and lemon tea we could drink.  The third main difference is the sleeping arangements.  After trekking up and down steep hills for a few hours in a light but consistent raind, I may dread the prospect of setting up a tent and the possibility of my stuff getting wet.  Instead, at the end of the day I was shown into a simple but clean room, outfitted with a cozy bed and desk where I could lay my nighttime essentials.  Finally, the most important difference is the company and culture at the end of the day.  Packed comfortable into a comfy dining area, I could chat with trekkers about life on the road, and to locals about lives without roads.

Having quickly accustomed to life on a trekking trail, day 3 was another pleasant, albeit tiring, walk up another 1000 meters to Langtang valley.  About halfway up the trail to Langtang the rainforest thinned out and high-alpine mountai valleys opened up.  By the time views of the highest peaks were possible, we were stuck in a cloud and couldn’t see all that much.  I didn’t mind at all though, because by early evening I found myself in a quiet lodge, consumed in conversation with Gopal.  He told me all about the joys and struggles of living in Nepal, and I shared my perception of the successes and failures of the American lifestyle.  More and more on my trip I’m learning how people amongst cultures are completely different yet so similar at the same time, and my discussions that evening only reinforced my viewpoint all the more.

The 4^th and last day of trekking uphill was both the easiest and most spectacular.  It took only a couple hours to climb the 500 meters to Kyanjin Gompa, and with a clear sky the majesty of the Himalayas were in cull force.  Vocabulary could never do the beauty and power of these 20,000 ft plus peaks justic, so I won’t even try.  Instead I’ll simply say this.  They are huge, snowy and beautiful.  Solitary confinement for life wouldn’t be all too bad if you had these peaks for company.  Unfortunately, by mid-afternoon the clouds covered the peaks from view, so I allowed myself a well-deserved nap.  That evening, Luke, Gopal, Gopal’s friend and I laughed about women, girlfriends, multiple girlfriends and sharing girlfriends with your brothers (not too uncommon in Nepal according to Gopal’s friend…)

On Day 5 Gopal and I awoke at 5:30 am, determined to tackle the daunting Tsergo Ri which lies at 4,900 meters.  A cloudy morning changed our plans though, so we slept in and hiked to a glacier field instead.  We admired the glaciers and the peaks we could see for a bit, then curiously interacted with the locals who were collecting yak milk that they churned and boiled into butter and cheese.  Normally on hikes I enjoy watching nature untouched by human interference, but for once I considered that humans working in accordance with nature could be at least equally beautiful.

Later that evening with the clouds let up, I went behind the lodge and sat on a roack for some surprsingly rare alone time.  I had one of those moments where my monkey mind stopped jumping from past memories and future concerns and simply sat still to fully observe the present moment.  I noticed just how many boulders laid strewn acros the many hills and valleys.  Just how yellow the alpine grass was.  Just how contoured the mountains peaks were.  Just how transient the clouds were.  It was magical.

On day 6 Gopal and I walked steeply up to the 4,800 meter viewpoint at Gyanjin Ri.  Some of the postcard views were covered in clouds, but I could care less.  Lying next to a prayer flag and admiring the many powerful peaks I could see still easily ranks as one of the best sights I’ve ever had the privilage of viewing.  After about 20 minutes of silence, normally mild-mannered Gopal blared Nepali pop music from his phone and started dancing around the stones and flags, providing me with some unexpected hardy laughter.  Sure, the panoramas weren’t quite as spectacular as they would be in another few weeks when the monsoons fully ended, but I was perfectly content and happy in these moments.

During the afternoon of Day 6 and all of Day 7 we retraced our steps in a knee-busting trudge from 4800 meters at Kyanjin Ri to Sryabu Besi at 1400 meters.  Gopal and I shifted the focus away from our knees by sharing famous American and Nepali songs with each other.  Just when I thought my knees couldn’t take anymore, Gopal would randomly start singing Adele, renewing my jovial spirit and giving me the motivation to walk another hour or so.  As always, the lodging company was suberb.  At Lama Hotel I had a fun time trying to explain to a British family that actually very few Americans identify with the tea party, and on the final night I had a really interesting discussion with a Denmark couple about the development field.  I went to bed that final night with firm thighs and a slew of new memories to cherish.

Normally when I have such a remarkable experience like this, I try to search for some grand truth or ultimate meaning.  This time, I think the experience itself holds all the meaning it needs.  I shared beautiful sights with beautiful people, and I was happy.  I think that’s enough.