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INTERVIEW WITH CARL HOFFMAN

“I DIDN´T WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD. I JUST WANTED TO TASTE IT, SEE IT, SMELL IT, AND BRING THOSE STORIES HOME.

For over thirty years, this acclaimed American author has not only explored all the corners of the world, but also all the possibilities travel narrative has to offer, from intensive investigative journalism to the obsessions and deepest longings of the people he portrays. His tanned skin reveals his physicality, his love for the sea and the outdoor, and his preference for wearing a white shirt reminds me of the classic reporter who travels mainly to listen. Incisive, evocative, committed; reading Carl Hoffman is to remember Ryszchard Kapuscinki’s words, “A journalist can’t be a cynic, can’t forget his humanity and that of the people he meets.”

VANESSA MARTÍN QUINTANA: You were born in Washington in 1960, and your father, Burt Hoffman, worked as a journalist for The Washington Star. I can’t imagine anyone growing up at that time, place, and environment and not wanting to be a journalist. How would you describe your upbringing?

CARL HOFFMANN: My father worked mainly as an editor and I remember going to The Washington Star newsroom as a child. There were always journalists at home too. My mother was a huge reader so I grew up in a house full of books. My father always gave me the literary journalists, such as John McPhee or The New Yorker people, and my mother gave me novels. So it was inevitable, I guess. But also, my parents divorced when I was very young. My mother was a severe alcoholic and there was a lot of fighting, and screaming, so I got into this kind of literature about real people living fantasy lives, you know, T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom or Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands. Those magnificent people who crossed borders into new worlds to gain knowledge and wisdom they brought home. They were my way of escaping. That is what stories are about: scapes and inspiration.

That explains why, since the very beginning, you focused on travel writing and worked in places such as Sudan, Afghanistan, and the Gobi Desert. What made you choose a life outside a newsroom?

I never wanted to be a reporter. My parents were super political, and my dad eventually left The Star to work in politics directly as part of the Press section for Sargent Schriver, the Democratic Party’s nominee, during the 1972 Presidential Campaign. After that, he worked in Capitol Hill for Tip O’Neill, a former speaker of the U.S House of Representatives. But I never thought I wanted to change the world, instead, I wanted to taste it, see it, smell it, and bring those stories home.

After graduating in Social Thought and Political Economy, I met a woman, and we went on a journey around Europe, then Egypt, Israel, China, and from there took the Transiberian from Beijing to Moscow. It changed my life. And when I came back, all I did was write about that journey and try to sell it. I sold my first story to The Boston Globe, it was about sailing up the Nile of a traditional felucca and I got 150 dollars. I didn’t have credentials. I had never taken a class on Journalism. All I wanted was to be V.S. Naipaul, Paul Theroux… and slowly, for many years, I made my way into magazines.

You wrote a book titled Lunatic Express: discovering the world via the most dangerous buses, boats trains, and planes. At first, I thought it was quite a sadistic premise for a man looking for trouble, but it is full of joy and struggle often happens in between, at home. It is also your first venture into travel memoir after a debut with a book titled Hunting Warbirds: the obsessive quest for the lost aircrafts of WWII…

Of course, writing a book was the big goal, and Hunting Warbirds just came out of a series of magazine stories that I have done about those crazy guys who tried to fly those B-29 Bombers from the WWII era out of Greenland. It was 2001, and I felt it was a big accomplishment, but nobody read or reviewed it, although it impulsed my career in magazines. I started traveling all over the world to write pieces for Outside, National Geographic Traveler, and also Wired, to which I became a contributed editor on contract.

Then, in 2007, I wrote a story for Outside magazine about an American named Tim Roman, who was a jet pilot in the DRC. At that time, two Kabilas ruled the region. The father took over after the war against Mobutu. Later, he was assassinated and his son took over. Tim Roman helped the Kabilas to win that war and in exchange got mining concessions, built roads, and started an airline. He became this wild courtesan figure. I spent a couple of weeks with him in Kinsasha and traveled around. At some point, we flew the Nigerian Ambassador, and the Congolese Minister of Finance to Abuja in a tiny plane, and I had to pretend I was the flight attendant! We got stuck there... It was a wild, crazy story, and my editor loved it. So he called up one day, and I suddenly came up with the idea, “What if I flew around the world on the most dangerous Airlines?” To which he replied, “What about traveling around the world in the most dangerous everything?” My reaction was, “That is not a magazine story; that is a book.”

I got my first big book contract, it was my dream come true, and at the same time, my marriage of twenty-five years, and my life was falling apart. That journey of five months and 50,000 miles coincided with all those changes. The result is that Lunatic Express became deeper, and had a lot more soul on it than Hunting Warbirds, which was a pretty straightforward journalistic book. Lunatic Express became of the ten best books of the year 2010 by The Wall Street Journal.

In 2014 came Savage Harvest: a tale of cannibals, colonialism and the tragic quest for primitive art, which tells the story of Michael Rockefeller in which you retrace Michael Rockefellers’ steps to understand his mysterious disappearance. The book, half investigative journalism and half travel memoir, became a bestseller. You said after the first trip to New Guinea, you realized you would have to risk much more, both financially and physically, go back and immerse yourself completely. Why did you feel it would not work otherwise?

I had always been fascinated by the story of Michael Rockefeller's disappearance in New Guinea in 1961. He was a very famous person and the son of the governor of New York at that time. When I first researched on the Internet, I realized there were only a few early references, nothing substantive in 55 years. I thought that maybe the time had come and people would be willing to speak. I hired a researcher from Amsterdam. He went into the archives and immediately found details, real data that pointed to Rockefeller being killed and consumed by the Asmat tribe. But this was only the official version. I had to find out if it was true. So, I went to New Guinea for two months, did two trips to the village where the story happened and I really hit a wall. There weren’t speaking to me. Asmat is a difficult place, a 10,000 square meter swamp with no roads around. When I came back, I tried to write with a lot of material I had, but I realized that I had committed the cardinal sin in journalism: to parachute into someplace and expect people to tell me their darkest secrets and everything about their most important rituals and culture, and do it through an interpreter. To answer your question simply: I had not given enough, not committed enough.

There, I had hired an interpreter; his assistant, the boat guy; his assistant, the cook. I needed seven or eight people. I realized that I had to go back to Asmat alone and speak the language myself. I found an Indonesian woman in the States and did and took a seven-month crash course.

Afterwards, I came back, and approached things differently. I didn’t ask questions about Rockefeller. I lived in a house in the Asmat village with an Elder named Kokai. I smoked with them, drank coffee with them, listened, watched, and let people get to know me and take care of me. And when I started to ask questions, there were very different from the ones that I had asked before.

Michael Rockefeller working in Papua, New Guinea in 1961. © President and Fellows of Harvard University/ Peobody Museum

Was your love for Indonesia a consequence of that experience, or was it one more reason to write that story?

My father lived in Jakarta in the late 80s, and I used to visit him. At that time, I read Where the Spirits Dwell by Tobias Schneebaum, and my fascination with the Asmat started. I had watched Robert Gardner’s documentary film Dead Birds, which Michael Rockefeller had worked on and was released in 1963. That was the film that had brought both of them to the Baliem valley and Wamena. Working on that film led Rockefeller to the Asmat. In those days, it was too hard to get to Papua and I didn’t have the money either, but I went to Borneo through the Mahakam river which lit my fire. And when I was writing Lunatic Express, I learned that crowded Indonesia ferries sailing across the archipelago had a long history of sinking, killing thousands every year. So. it became logical to make Indonesia part of that journey.

So, I knew about Rockefeller and the Asmat because of those experiences, and that led me to travel there, learn the language… It is like you with the Himalaya, you keep coming back and you know more, and more, and one new thing reinforces another.

I know how you opposed Trump and how vocal you had been about his presidency, and in the middle of the chaotic Trump mandate, you decided to write a book about his followers. Liar’s Circus, which as the subtitle describes, is a strange and terrifying journey into the upside-down world of world Maga rallies. So you approach the story as your previous adventure books to remote places. It seems to me those rallies were more dangerous and hostile than any tribe or jungle. How was that experience?

Going into the Trump rallies and inhabiting daily life with the most obsessive Trump supporters was like getting into the Heart of Darkness of my own country… but it never felt particularly dangerous. It is about a middle-aged white guy hanging out with middle-aged white guys. However, I admit it was physically demanding and emotionally draining. For instance, I spent fifty hours in a parking lot in Tupelo, Mississippi, to be the 6th person in line. I also spent days camping on chairs next to my car, sometimes in cold or rain, and finally, listening to Trump is a terrible and exhausting experience itself. It was interesting to travel through my country speaking to all kinds of people without the language or cultural barriers.

Afterwards, I came back and approached things differently. I didn´t ask questions about Rockefeller. I lived in a house in the Asmat village with an Elder named Kokai. I smoked with them, drank coffee with them, listened, watched, and let people get to know me and take care of me. And when I started to ask questions, there were very different from the ones that I had asked before.

Reading your books, I see you have such a strong passion for traveling, nature and spirituality. I know you are an accomplished Ashtanga yogi too. Why did you start, and how has Ashtanga yoga influenced you?

I was raised as an atheist, but, you know, life becomes more complicated as you get older and experience grief and loss. You try to come to terms with it and find your place in the world.

My experience with the Asmat became a defining moment for me. There were intrinsically spiritual and had such a complex religion, and although some are Nominal Christians or Catholics, that is like a light veneer over deeply held spiritual practices. The traditional religions associated with hierarchies never interested me and threw me off. But seeing the Asmat drumming and singing for 24 hours straight all through the night was like a doorway for me. Seeing people untouched by the outside world held those powerful and insightful beliefs made me understand those are intrinsic to the human soul. After that, I became interested in authors such as Joseph Campbell and read The Power of Myth and understood the universality of it all.

However, my yoga practice is not part of that, to be honest. It is more physical. It keeps me strong and flexible. Though, it is good to have a daily practice that grounds you.

You have just written your first novel. What is the story about?

The working title is Borderland, and it is about some of the themes we have talked about. There is this old cliché that says that everybody writes just the same book over and over again. My story is about borders: physical and mental but also the imaginary ones. It is about distant lands and the impact of love, books, and stories. I think it also tells a bit about white western hubris.

You told me once you didn’t enjoy reading travel memoirs so much anymore because you were too aware of their structure and writing devices. How would you compare working on this novel to working on your previous books?

There are very different. Fiction is much harder. The books I had written were built on extensive investigative reporting. The more information, the more you can live the story, and then it all gets down to rearranging creating a structure and telling the story in an elegant way that moves the reader and puts your finger on a kind of truth. Yet, we all know there is nothing truer than fiction. Made-up stories are truer. Writing a novel from scratch means I will use what I had once seen, read, said, and experienced, and assemble them differently. It requires a different thinking process, and it is almost like lucid dreaming for hours on end. Writing some parts is like trying to tear off my skin, digging into a truth, admitting it, saying it. But there is also magic in it. You sit and describe a scene without having any plan, and when you look later at the things you came up with, its symbolism, for instance, it is striking.

excerpt from savage harvest

KATHMANDU LOCKDOWN

TRAVEL NARRATIVE

STRANDED IN NEPAL DURING THE FIRST WAVE OF COVID-19

I WAKE UP IN A HOTEL SUITE IN KATHMANDU, AND WHEN I TRY TO STRETCH IN BED, I FEEL SEVERE CRAMPS GRIPPING MY THIGHS. So I lie there paralized, alone with my eyes closed, remembering I didn’t finish the journey. I had planned to climb Mera Peak, but after four days in the Himalayas traveling with an old sherpa friend named Pasang and a 19-year old porter, I decided to quit and head back. I believed the main reason was the heaviest pre-monsoon rains that I had ever experienced in my past trips, but there was another reason that I was trying to ignore. The day I left, Spain decreed a state of alarm for Covid-19. For the first time, the people I loved in my home were at greater risk than mine in the mountains, and I would have to walk for weeks without any news from them.

To come back from where we came from took us several days, and at some point, we saw other trekkers suddenly changing direction and heading back to the Lukla airport. Pasang was able to book a ticket for me in a different airline, but it was the last flight, they had to stay. Noticing my unease, he insisted I should not worry as they could walk to Kathmandu much faster if they went without me. News among the trekkers was confusing, but that flight was actually the last effort to take people off the mountains since two days earlier, European countries had urged citizens to come back before closing their airspace. There was a sense of trepidation for the 20 people getting on the small aircraft while the propellers were roaring. The plane ran down a slide-shaped runway, and someone cried, “Woohoo!” But when the plane started shaking violently in all directions, nobody made a sound anymore. During that flight, I learned that just before the turbulence, a cold breeze gets inside the plane, reminding me of how fragile it all is.

2

AS A EUROPEAN CITIZEN, THEY CAN'T DENY MY ENTRY IN THE EU. My departure to Spain is in three weeks, so my flight is still scheduled, lockdown in Spain is intended to last only two weeks, and there are still no Covid-19 cases in Kathmandu. But in the meantime, Spain has quickly become the most dangerous place to travel to. Following the advice from the Spanish Foreign Ministry website, I report to the embassy that I'm in Kathmandu, but I choose to stay.

I'm in an old Newari hotel, and thanks to a friend, I can stay in a suite for very little money. I’m often the only guest in the east wing and rarely see others; it is like having my own apartment. I adore the Tibetan decoration inside the Hindu architecture, partially in decay. The pagoda roofs, the intricate courtyards, and the clay altars semi-hidden in the garden among the lush vegetation make me feel I’m among a temple’s ruins. I feel like living in what Buddhists call the Bardo, the in-between, a dreamlike state, one in which there is no coronavirus. But my illusion is shattered when I wake up on the 24th and see the staff is quickly packing everything to leave. The Kathmandu government has declared a lockdown without a previous warning after a Nepali student who had returned from France tested positive. Hotels close around Kathmandu, and tourists have to leave, not knowing where. The staff cannot answer any of my anxious questions. They tell me they will shut down in a few hours, but I can stay because they know me. They feel for me, some give me their telephone numbers and assure me it will only be for a week, the hotel manager lives in an adjacent building opposite the old wing, and the gatekeeper will also come every day. I call Pasang, and we talk in disbelief. How is this possible after just one case and without any warning? “Maybe our government is lying to us,” he says.

I know, the Nepalis don't believe a word their government says anymore. “We don't have a democracy”, a group of Thakali caravan drivers had told me in 2016 in Upper Mustang, “We have a demon-crazy.”

Although the staff tells me not to go out, I rush into the streets out of curiosity. As I turn the corner, the scene is surreal. A large group of locals hurries to buy food at a small grocery shop, opposite the store, there are the remaining flames of a bonfire in which the owners have burnt the cardboards used to transport the food;, behind them, the image of the ever-crowded Bishnumati Bridge now without a soul. I’m far away from the tourist center, where the locals don’t speak English, so I have to bend over the counter pointing with the finger to what I want and insist until someone understands me and translates. All I get is a tube of Pringles, biscuits, and all the water bottles I can fill my rucksack with. Even the water is past the expiration date.

But I can consider myself fortunate for turning back in time. Nepal also closes its airspace, and many of the travelers I saw in the mountains are trapped, waiting for rescue helicopters and government aid to get food and shelter.

Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, leader of the CPN-Maoist party, is in the hospital recovering from a second renal transplant and the country knows the many weaknesses to fight an epidemic from the very beginning. The Nepalis have access to free Health Care since the war ended in 2006, but their hospital system is characterized by poor facilities, undertrained personnel, and a ratio of one doctor for every 850 people in the Kathmandu valley, in some rural areas they don’t even have clinics. In a country where political corruption is the norm, early in the quarantine, the Health Ministry is accused of taking kickbacks while purchasing Chinese personal protective equipment, resulting also in delays and the delivery of useless testing machines.

The government tries to emulate developing countries' measures thinking that a quarantine that starts even before there is community transmission, together with testing, and contact tracing is the only answer. But besides tourism, the country heavily depends on remittance, and there are four million Nepalis only in India. As the tragedy unfolds there, the second most populated country in the world, Nepal unconstitutionally blocks the entry of their own citizens who fear the hunger more than the disease and walk risking their lives through mountains and rivers to cross the porous borders.

Two days after the quarantine started, a woman named Eva, from the Embassy of Spain, includes me in a WhatsApp group together with other stranded Spanish travelers who have managed to gather in one of the guest houses the government allowed to keep open. She announces dramatically they are doing all they can to evacuate us in one of the European evacuation flights destined to Paris or Frankfurt, from there we will have to fight to come back home. No help. Enraged and puzzled, people start complaining, alleging we could get stuck in a European city with all hotels closed. She writes if we stay, we will be dumped in the streets, soon with a shortage of food as borders are closed, and it will be a matter of time we will all get sick with Covid-19.

Everybody starts writing at the same time, a seventy-year-old woman complains, and then Eva immediately blocks her and explains what she just did should be a warning to the rest of us; we are there just to listen.

I’m shocked at her sadism and the counterproductive way she tries to spread the panic; the idea that quarantine and blockage are the same things. Our real problem is there is no Embassy of Spain in Nepal. The embassy in Nepal is located in India, and it is not only responsible for tourists in India, but also Spaniards in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan. Nobody expected all those countries to have diplomatic problems at once. They are overwhelmed and want to get rid of us by having someone else send us back, so we don’t complain publicly. Her speech is nothing but a story of riots and locals with machetes that would scare the hell out of any tourist.

I lived in Munich for many years, but no friend could travel to the north to pick me up. I have family in Madrid, but how could I tell them to take me in after stopping over two or three different airports when they had been in isolation for weeks. The other travelers start speculating with the idea of getting an embassy permit and hire a car once they are in Europe, but my risk of being stuck in an airport for days trying to come back to my hometown in The Canary Islands is much higher.

That night I stay awake. There is a window as large as my bed. I stare at the moon’s mountainous surface, the same way I do outside my tent when altitude prevents me from sleeping at base camp. I see the starless night fading into pre-monsoonal clouds and refuse the feeling of signing a contract I can't read first. The world is quickly changing, and everybody is improvising; I must base my decision on today. There is something else, an overwhelming feeling; the dream of every traveler is to stay when everybody else leaves.

So I stay, but I promise that whatever happens, I can't let myself get sick in here.

3

FOOD AND WATER ARE MY BIGGEST WORRY. There is no transport and only small grocery stores can open as the glass counters in these places are placed blocking the entrance. The suite is spacious, but I don't have a kitchen. I don't want to ask for favors even when all my sherpa friends call me to tell me they will defy the lockdown to pick me up with their motorbike and take me to their homes. After all, I travel alone for self-reliance. I can´t be a burden to others, so I encourage myself thinking this deprivation is my chance to prove the strength I could not demonstrate this time in the mountains.

Everything remains frighteningly empty at the beginning. My diet consists of tuna sandwiches, milk, and yogurt that I get going around the corner. I clean the room with my wool undershirts and share the suite and the tuna with a semi-feral, tabby cat that the gatekeeper used to feed and was always around in the garden. I don't think it is a coincidence that she is female and I name her after the 21,000 ft. mountain I was going to climb. Mera presses her body next to mine in the dark when the nightly rainstorms start.

After I tell the hotel manager what I’m eating, I found some sardine cans and avocados on my doormat outside the room, but soon I realize I must venture further.

The first I see are the slums below the Bishnumati Bridge; a man squatted on a platform by the river cuts his son's hair while the family circles them; the elders sit on benches near an abandoned rickshaw cart. Children play with balls and chickens. Nobody wears a mask. “The beloved river of Vishnu” is a landfill the government has commissioned to clean several times, but no-one, not even the police patrolling the bridge above in opened trucks, notices the Dalit, the untouchable, living in rooms made of uralite sheets. The river acts as a thin boundary between the quarantined families to the left and people socially isolated for years to the right.

My hotel is far from the common tourist mess. So, now I have to walk up and down the ubiquitous slopes of a Himalayan city in the afternoon, when it is allowed to go out for food, just for two hours, at exactly the same time the rain starts pouring down. I wear my mountain wind jacket, cover my mouth with the wool cloth I wear in the mountains, place my camera under my arm to protect it from the rain, and carry my rucksack hoping to fill it with enough food and water for several days. I crouch sometimes dodging all the entangled wet wires overhanging from utility poles and try to remember all the pharmacies I pass through; they are the only places that are always open and sell water too. The police officers I met along the way dressed in camouflage uniforms, carry large bamboo batons, called lathis, to dissuade people from sitting on their house thresholds to chat. They patrol the streets in open trucks and use extendable claws, normally used to recover corpses from the water, to grab and push those defying the quarantine.

In a couple of weeks, grocery shops are surrounded by stray dogs waiting for the sellers to give them some food. Used to the travelers’ food, they now rest their heads on the sidewalk, too weak to sit. People’s suffering remains indoors, but I will never forget the bewilderment in the animals’ eyes. In Thamel, the tourist hub, no incense smell or music comes from each store to flood the streets anymore. On some main roads, piles of rubble accumulate, and construction workers have left their rudimentary wooden machines as if a sudden tragic event forced them to run for their lives.

Many think the lockdown extension is a way to ensure nobody will celebrate the springtime festivals and the New Year. The massive chariot-pulling processions carrying Buddhist and Hindu deities or the tongue piercing festival are too Tantric and visceral for an epidemic, too dangerous; thus, priests are alone at the temples to perform the pujas. All the attention is directed to the cremation grounds at the Pashupatinath temple, in which, although it has been closed to the public, a rising number of corpses could not be kept secret for long. The country has seen fewer than ten cases of Covid-19 for almost a month and we all start adapting to one of the hardest lockdowns in the world. But on April 21st, newspapers in Kathmandu announce that local contagion has started after eleven Indians who had crossed the border hid in a mosque in the southern district of Udayapur. Now everybody knows airports would not open before August. Evacuation flights had stopped weeks before. I remember the silence at home when I called to tell the news.

In the Narendra Modi era, the Muslim community had been scapegoated in India, accused of spreading Covid-19 with their religious gatherings. Many of the emigrants who sustain Nepal are denied their rights to come back and now crowd out at the border. The improvised quarantine facilities in rural areas are traps in which they get sick, and the Nepalis confined for a month feel they have been good for nothing. An incompetent government has sealed their fate, so they find their own ways to open.

4

SAHEEL IS A 26-YEAR-OLD MADHESI, A MUSLIM NEPALI OF INDIAN HERITAGE, that I met in Thamel. He emigrated from the Terai plains to Kathmandu to find a job in one of the Thangka shops in the hub. I was photographing there when I heard people whistling at one another. Soon I see that, some men are following me, I intuitively grab my camera, the leather strap is around my neck and I‘m worried if they pulled from it, they would drag me along the street.

In that moment, Saheel walks further and introduces himself. He is nimble-witted, has crow-black hair, and wears the same cloth mask everyone wears in a terribly polluted city. Because of his eyes, I imagine him having a beautiful face. He asks me if there is anything I need. Do you know if there is any open restaurant? I ask. He guides me away from the main streets through narrow alleys, where there is no one. To follow a stranger whose face is half-covered around deserted narrow alleys is way beyond my solo travels protocol. I follow him, but take my hand in my pocket to grab the brass whistle I always take to the mountains in case of an accident as I prefer walking alone. He takes me to a pub where only three local men are and asks me what I want to eat. Whatever you have, I say, understanding it is officially closed and he is asking a friend for a favor to get some money. They both get into the kitchen to discuss, but Saheel comes back disappointed, saying we better find another place.

We talk all the way to there and he takes from his pocket something that resembles a passport to show me the picture of his two-year-old baby inside it. I notice the painted kohl around his eyes, a way to protect children from the evil eye. Saheel tells me he had no job for a month in a country with no welfare and is doing what he can there to survive. I know what he wants; it is something that nobody has asked me since my first trips to Nepal during the last years of a long decade war. Some Nepalis used to ask foreigners to buy them a can of powder baby milk that would last a month in a one-child family and costs $17, the salary of a week in Nepal, most of the time, they go back to the store to return the powder milk and get the money back.

Saheel takes me to another narrow alley where people, mainly Nepalis, are crowded, forming lines on both sides. Two Chinese women in Hazmat suits guide them to a water drum to wash their hands before crossing the stairs to sit on a balcony to eat. We ask one of the women if it is possible to can for the food, but she shakes her head, so tell Saheel that I don’t want to eat there. Before I leave, I turn to take a photo, and an angry man waiting in line turns back to shout me not to do it. I put the camera down, but as soon as he walks back into the line, Saheel tells me, “Take the photo, I’m here.” I hesitate for a second, and this time the man walks violently to Saheel. I shout him it is not worth it and we leave quickly but, I understand better what people in that alley are feeling when the next time I pass by, I find several stranded Chinese tourists taking pictures with their cell phones, one of them is using a selfie stick to film himself explaining why the people go there.

We turn around, and then, I come across a large group of foreigners slowly walking together in the direction to the restaurant. A 6-foot tall man in front seems to lead them. They are about 15 people, all wearing cloth masks and dusty trekking clothes. Since we were in quarantine, I had not seen other foreigners, but I knew there were 10,000 travelers in the country when the lockdown began, and not all could leave. I’m not surprised about their appereance. They look like ghosts and seem defeated; they came to a poor country as privileged tourists and now depend on the country's food relief program.

Further ahead, a man in his sixties approaches Saheel crying, showing him his hand. They speak in Nepali but, Saheel again is protective and tells me to hurry up. He tells me someone has stolen his money and hurt his hand. I ask further, but he shrugs his shoulders, “He is on drugs, you know? Glue.” It seemed the shop owners prevented people in trouble from coming, but Thamel has a different meaning right now.

Eventually, Saheel has the idea to take me to a bakery he knows is open. A little away, there is a Thamel for the locals. In the peripheral, narrow alleys, women squat in the streets, elbow to elbow, to sell vegetables. If what I long for is to eat something warm, they make small hard-dough pizzas they warm up in the oven. It is better than nothing. I buy him the baby food, and at the pharmacies, he calls his brother Nakir by phone, who comes to pick me up with his rickshaw. Saheel registers his phone number on my cell phone and tells me he is always in Thamel, trying to survive, and will help me with anything I need.

On the ride to the hotel, Nakir turns his face back and offers me to buy hashish; it is a typical offering as Kathmandu still evokes in so many ways the mystic hippy trail. I refused politely and guess Saheel knew he would offer it to me. We are going home at the speed of a bicycle on an empty road. I never went so fast. Nothing remains of the chaos that makes South Asian cities what they are. “No cows, uh? No people,” he shouts. The more I laugh, excited, the more encouraged Nakir is to ride faster.

I meet Saheel again a few days later. This time there are even more men controlling the hub, asking me what I was searching for. When I ask for a supermarket, some would lead me a few steps ahead and knock on the steel rolling door for someone inside to open. After coming out, I encounter others, Do you want shawls, trekking boots, a haircut, didi? I can see the feet of some shop owners under unlocked doors, and from time to time, I hear repeated whistles traveling along the streets, sometimes they are warning others that the police is coming or there is a new foreigner searching for something. Rickshaw men also follow the few foreigners that they see, offering, paradoxically, tour guides around deserted places.

Saheel wants me to take photos of what is happening in his country and leads me to the backside of the Annapurna Hotel where about 200 Nepalis people also wait in line to get food. One the way there, I see many children, Saheel gestures to one wearing his mask on his chin to fit it properly. Children don’t feel embarrassed, they walk resolutely with their friends and take it as an adventure, but I also see some thinking they are going to be shot when a policeman measuring their temperature points at them with the handheld device. A blond western woman gives food packages to each one, her hair and surgical gloves are completely covered in sweat. She runs, to and fro, looking spent, and in less than 10 minutes, she shouts, “Finito”. The food is gone; the rest will have to arrive earlier the next day. So, the line dissolves, without reproaches, people turn and go home, business as usual.

5

SEVEN WEEKS HAVE PASSED BY SINCE I ARRIVED. From the rooftop, the Himalayan range can be seen in the distance for the first time in decades. Every day I wake up before dawn at the sound of Asian Koels crazy for one another and leave bananas on the balcony for the silver langur monkeys that invade the garden trails before the gatekeeper arrives. I have stopped recalculating when I might come back. One evening, I’m sitting on a step at one of the porches facing the garden. I’m surrounded by mango trees, weeping willows, and star jasmine. The lights along the garden trails are lit just for me, and above them, there are sculptures of dancing Hindu gods and goddesses. Tiny Mera is playing around and, from time to time, she stops and looks at me, like a child checking if a parent is there. Although I’m used to traveling alone, I had taken for granted a whole safety net to see it disappear overnight. I used the skills I had learned in the Himalaya; self-confidence, alertness, acceptance. Now I listen to that beating voice within me. I look around and finally feel it, the awe that had escaped me in the mountains, and I realize I have been happy all the way into this journey.

Then, an email from the French embassy comes unexpectedly. They urge me to go to the embassy and get a ticket for one last repatriation flight that will take place that Saturday. My first reaction is to erase it without telling anybody, but Spain has already flattened the curve while the worst is coming here. I feel like a Freeskier who has been waiting at the top of the mountain for the right second to jump.

I go to Thamel one last time to say farewell to Saheel. I see the disappointment in his eyes. We can’t shake hands, but instead, he takes his mask down his chin, only then I see the typical discoloration around his nose and mouth, his front teeth gone, but the roots still there; all the signs of someone who has been a glue sniffer; someone I would have never dared to talk to. I'm dazed and hurt. Gasping for air, I whisper, “I don’t want to go,” battling also the tears I had held back for two months; I fear the uncertainty of being trapped in France, I fear getting sick, but most of all, I fear coming back to a country that has changed while I was not there.

“You will be back soon, you'll see,” Saheel says. I nod with a sad smile he can’t see and wish him the best, then, I turn away and leave.

More pictures

UPPER MUSTANG: TO THE KINGDOM OF lO

TRAVEL NARRATIVE

*Reaching Tangye, Upper Mustang. ©Vanessa Martín Quintana*

Excerpt, Part I

THE BOY LOOKS MORE LIKE AN EGYPTIAN GOD THAN A LO-PA. He is a thirteen-year-old monk who combines his red robes with old trainers and keeps his sweatshirt hood on when he takes me inside the Jampa monastery. I have just reached the ancient Kingdom of Lo in good condition, which means I have won. There was nothing my two Sherpa friends could say to convince me to make the average journey and end it here as all the other groups we have met along the way. I felt so much joy when I came close to the city walls that I rushed around them, searching for the northeast corner gate. At some point, the canyon surrounding the wall became much narrower. As I lost my footing for a second my attention immediately shifted to the Kali Gandaki River’s roaring deep below us.

The gompa is overlooked by a giant golden Maitreya, the future Buddha, the savior one finds in all religions. The light from the opened gate reflects on it and leaves the rest in darkness. I turn on my cell phone lantern, and we start circumvallating it to see the wall frescoes. One by one, I illuminate the five great Buddhas and mention their names out loud as I pass them; White Vairocana, green Amoghasiddhi, red Amitabha, yellow Ratnasambhava, and blue Akshobhya. Like all Tibetan imagery, they are old vestiges of animistic origins. Each represents a cardinal point, an earth element, an animal, a different mudra, a mantra. They are the five prayer flags that flutter in the mountains to fill the wind with their essence. The five skulls on the demons’ crowns represent the five primary negative emotions, and each of these Buddhas teaches you to neither struggle against those emotions nor deny them, but to transform them into skills. The light from my lantern falls straight upon their faces. I see equanimity in their smiles and intense compassion in their gaze, and it is intimidating to know their meaning. Their laser glare seems to ask me, “Have you done your work yet?”

I see the chalk circles among them, and when I look closer, I realize they are encircling cracks in the walls. “From the earthquake?” I ask. The boy nods sharply. Each time I see one, I ask if I could take a picture hoping that being alone, he will find the forbidden attractive. But these are not children. To let me visit the second floor where the Tantric figures are, is out of the question, even for him.

I have to refrain from touching those thin cracks the same way I have repressed, placing my hand on the monk's shoulder to walk. They move me. Nobody has seen the cracks the earthquake made inside me or could imagine why I still feel them. But they are the main reason why I decided I would not postpone coming back, not by a single year.

*Novice monk in Lo Manthang. ©Vanessa Martín Quintana*

2

Upper Mustang had been my goal since the end of 2014, when I first started editing a book titled Mustang: The opened gates to the forbidden Kingdom, a German book about a pioneering journey that took place in 1992 just after the region, a demilitarized zone for almost forty years, opened to the world. The region remained an independent Kingdom until Nepal claimed it in 2008, after the monarchy was abolished and Nepal became a Federal Democratic Republic. Although Upper Mustang culturally and geographically belonged to Tibet, the Kingdom had annexed to Nepal at the end of the 18th century to fight on the Nepalese side during the Sino-Nepalese War between Tibet and Nepal. The Tibetan culture and identity survive today, while in Tibet, it is being shattered by China.

For centuries, the salt from the great Tibetan lakes and India’s grain and spices made Upper Mustang a prosperous trade center. The major trade route caravans would join the livestock that nomads took from the rain shadow country to greener pastures. Not only gompas and stupas but fortress ruins and the walled city of Lo are a testimony to its past economic hegemony and its enmity with the neighboring Kingdom of Humla.

Yangsor is a Lama, a clan within the Tamang people. He practices Bon Buddhism and was born and raised in Humla, a region bordering Tibet, the highest, most remote, and one of Nepal’s poorest. We did the Humla-Tibet traverse together twice. Those were my first journeys, and I didn’t start the easiest way. It was during wartime.

At the airport waiting for our flight to Jomsom, Yangsor is constantly reminding me of how that traverse has changed under Chinese influence, “Do you remember how excited you were when our small aircraft landed straight into the mountains? Now, there is an airstrip and quite some traffic there. Do you remember the Land Rover accident we had when we were driving on the dirt road from Kailash? Now it is all asphalted. Do you remember the Guge frescoes you wanted to explore? Now the Chinese built a stairway and sell tickets to get there.” He tries to avoid giving news about Tibet, although I’m aware The Kailash I traveled to several times doesn’t exist anymore. Progress is necessary, life in the Himalaya is extremely hard, but this progress comes together with a complete disregard for the traditions, with religion and minimal advantage for Tibetans. Yangsor’s memories remind me how fragile what I’m going to experience is. With the Tibetan culture in peril due to China's control, the Dalai Lama has called on Mustang and other ethnically Tibetan Himalayan regions to preserve his peoples' way of life. Nevertheless, in the last decade the Nepali government has built a new highway connecting Mustang to Cina and Nepal’s modern infrastructure. It brought electricity and a few other conveniences, but I know from traveling to Nepal during the most decisive moments in the last 12 years, how effective China has been in getting the Nepalese government to carry out its policy of control. What I see in Upper Mustang is a crude, unpaved road following the ancient Salt Route footpath. But I have to travel further where the canyons made it impossible to build anything.

On the fifth day, we are slowly ascending a large hillside when I heard a strong rhythmical rumbling filling the open air. “What is that?” I ask. A Puja ceremony is starting down there. I turn to take one last look to the Tsarang Gompa and the fortress ruins surrounding it. In its façade, the white, olive, and ochre painted stripes indicate it belongs to the Buddhist Sakya tradition. For a moment, I had thought the drumming was coming from the blood pounding in my temples.

It is not an alpine journey, but one into a high altitude desert. The pockets of green from the scarce terraces in Kagbeni reminded me of the vineyards grown out of the Canary Islands’ volcanic soil. They also use stone walls to surround the crops and protect them from the strong winds, a symbol of perseverance. When we were caught in a sandstorm while climbing up the slope opposite the Renchung caves the previous day, I heard Yangsor already on the top shouting to me too. Once I´m standing next to him, I recite, “I’m from a windy place, and the day I was born, a Sirocco wind had turned the sky completely red with Sahara sand.”

Kebi laughs. This region area requires a minimum of two foreign travelers, and I did everything to make the trip without a group. Just two months before, the Nepali authorities imposed the company of a certified guide to trek this restricted area. These new rules responded to a blizzard that killed 39 trekkers in 2014 in this Annapurna region, followed by the earthquake disaster a year later. Kebi is not acting as a guide. He has only been to Upper Mustang once before. In the same way, my foreign partner was a woman who wants to travel by motorbike. We share the visa permit, we are bound together by the day of arrival and departure, but we never met. When Yangsor introduced me to Kebi in Kathmandu, I could not help but compare our shoulders’ width. Mine were probably twice as broad as his, but he ended up carrying the heavier weight, cooking while singing and defending me against condescension as Yangsor cannot help treating me like a Nepali sister.

As it happens with meditating, hard walking for long hours is not always peaceful. In 2005 before my first journey to Tibet, I started practicing meditation in a Meister Eckhart Institute. My mentor was a Catholic priest who would soon be excommunicated for inviting poor people to his church and teach them Zen meditation. The German theologian and mystic whose name was adopted by the Institute, had died waiting for a heresy verdict for he merged Eastern mysticism with Christianity. However, Meister Eckhart is now considered one of the greatest theologians in history. Before we started meditating, the priest had warned us that we would go to places in our minds, we would not want to inhabit before we could learn to be present. He also told us of a man he meditated with who suddenly stood up and smashed his meditation bench against the wall and never returned.

In Upper Mustang, I have to deal with my anger for things that I linked to Nepal and the earthquake. Sometimes I realize about those thoughts just because I’m swinging my trekking poles violently. Then, I stop, gasping for breath, watch the landscape from a high pass, and remember I’m traveling through the deepest canyon in the world. Tibetans believe demons carve these gorges and mountains. Sometimes, I succeed, and the rhythmical pull from the ceremonial drums fills my mind for hours.

*On the way with Kebi Gurung. ©Yangsor Lama*

We climb the Nyi La pass at 13,000 ft, and from the top, Yangsor points at a huge amphitheater and tells me we are in the land where the Khampa Tibetan resistance hid for decades. Then, he points to the horizon and adds, “the Tibetan border.” We descend the ramp bordering the amphitheater, and suddenly the waterless monochromatic landscape becomes a colorful mandala of layered mountains. Most mountains have the shape of arteries spreading in all directions; there are rock pinnacles of a pristine white alongside yellow and gray pillars— rust sandstone grades into an unreal light blue hue. I have only seen such a combination of colors in volcanic soil. The thin air makes me see the distance so clearly that I can add the snow-capped peaks to this desert vision.

Hours later, in the sunny afternoon, the desert landscape turns into a small oasis where we follow a stream surrounded by a dry golden poplar glove. We cross a tree trunk bridge and enter Drakmar. I have an eerie feeling walking the maze of allies through the deserted medieval whitewashed houses. The autumn leaves are blown inside as we pass a curious Tibetan mastiff whose sleep had been disturbed, a village fountain with a bucket full of clothes to wash, and two ponies tied up in the shade. There is nothing else in the hamlet. Then, I raised my head, and above the flat-roofed houses, I see fluted cliffs of an intense red, full of caves. It is difficult to believe that in Upper Mustang, the mountain colors are caused by erosion and not painted by hand, but this time I know of a legend that explains it. When the Indian saint Padmasambhava introduced Buddhism to Tibet, he found that a Tibetan demoness had destroyed the foundations of a Buddhist monastery under construction in central Tibet. He pursued the demon west, deep into Mustang, and the two fought in the sky among the Mustang’s snow peaks, desert canyons, and grasslands. Padmasambhava prevailed, and he scattered the demon’s body parts across Mustang; its blood formed towering red cliffs, and its intestines tumbled to the wind-scoured earth east of the peaks, and with her red heart, he built the Ghar Gompa. It is the oldest monastery in Upper Mustang and the only one of the Nyingma School.

The same copper red that distinguishes the monasteries from the cluster of whitewashed houses is the same that nature gives to the fluted mountains in Drakmar mountains as if claiming, “These are the real temples, these are the real Schools of Buddhism.”

THE THIN MOUNTAINS ARE CONSTANTLY WALKING

TRAVEL NARRATIVE

“There are no mountains like the Himalaya for in them are Kailash and Manasarovar. As the dew is dried up by the morning sun, so are the sins of mankind by the sight of the Himachal.”

— THE RAMAYANA SAGA

*Mt. Nanda Devi, second highest mountain in the Indian Himalaya, behind the Sutlej Canyon in west Tibet. © Bruno Baumann*

NOTHING HAS GIVEN HUMANKIND A BIGGER SENSE OF DIVINITY THAN MOUNTAINS, and no place can make you more aware of their power than the Himalaya. According to the Vedas, their vision may change your life, and when the traveler walks around the crowded city streets or enters the different temples and hotels throughout Asia, they are unwittingly seeing mountains and finding hidden messages about them. Such is the Himalaya’s influence that they are at the core of Asian religions shaping Asian cosmology, art, and daily life.

According to the Vishnu Purana, a Hindu myth, the creation of the universe started when Vishnu counseled the gods to seek cooperation with the demons to churn the great ocean together, which would reveal the gems, herbs, and the nectar of immortality they were both seeking. To do so, they uprooted Mt. Mandara. They also summoned the sacred serpent Visuki which wound himself around the mountain as a churning rope. It caused chaos, the water turned into clarified butter and from it, they emerged the sun and the moon, all the sacred elements, animals and gods, the wish-fulfilling jewel, and Mt. Meru, the center of our universe and the beginning of human life.

The legend of Mt. Meru spread to Buddhism through two different systems which explain the universe’s structure. One is derived from the early Abhidharmakosha composed by the Indian Buddhist master Vasubandhu during the 4th-century a. D. The second is called The Kalachakra Tantra, the Wheel of Time, and was introduced to Tibet in a. D. 1024, becoming the highest esoteric teaching in this country.*1

Mt. Meru appeared at the center of the cosmic ocean, and surrounding it, seven concentric rings of golden mountains arose, each separated by an inner sea formed of rainwater, and surrounding these was a vast circular saltwater ocean bounded on its outer circumference by a fence of iron mountains from them came out the four directional continents surrounding Mt. Meru as islands. Paintings of these maps are in the walls of many gompas all over Tibet.

The mountain legend also became part of Asian architecture. The classic Indian temple structure spread throughout Asia; from the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia to Mandalay’s ones in Burma, represent Mt. Meru, surrounded by a mountain chain. Therefore, what the travelers see and what they step into, even in the cities, is part of a legend inspired by the Himalaya’s sight.

In Tibet ceremonies, Buddhist monks create Torma; offering cakes made of flour and butter, which convey deities or depict deities on their summit. Tibetans place Tormas in altars to please the gods or to appease wrathful spirits. Later, they consume these mountains, and the leftovers are offered to lower beings after being blessed.

*Mt. Kailash southern face behind a yak skull carved with a mantra. Ngari prefecture, Tibet. © Bruno Baumann*

Four major religions; the Hindus, Buddhist, Jainas, and Bon identified Mt. Meru with Mt. Kailash located in southwest Tibet, in the Transhimalaya. All of them place their deities on its top. On Kailash southern face, the rocks form a carved swastika, a symbol of the Wheel of Dharma in motion. Near the mountaisn shoulder, on that side, you can also see a small mount replica of the giant peak. This is the reason why Hindus believe the Tantric god Shiva and his consort Parvati dwell on its summit. Parvati once asked Shiva to teach him the secrets of the universe. Shiva then, sat her on his lap and instructed her on all the different forms of lovemaking. The image of Parvati on his lap, sometimes with her feet placed on his, is the one of the two lovers who has been more frequently depicted. All the Hindu goddesses are avatars of the primordial feminine principle and source of creation called Shakti and the name of the goddess Parvati comes from Parbata, the Sanskrit word for the mountain. Parvati, who resides at the summit of Mt. Kailash, is the daughter of Himavat, also called Parvat; the personification of the Himalayan mountain range. Her name means ‘She of the mountains,’ and with her mythology, the creation source is again associated to the Himalaya.

Nevertheless, what makes Mt. Kailash the most sacred mountain of all is the fact that it is the source of four of the main rivers of Asia, which flow strictly in all the four cardinal points; the Sutjet (west), Karnali (south), Brahmaputra (east) and the Indus (north).

Think in symbols, the first eastern sacred one that comes to our minds is the mandala, A mandala is a cosmic map created to help the practitioner visualize a journey. It is sometimes described as a palace with four cardinal entrances and a throne on which a god and goddess embrace. Mt. Kailash is a natural mandala and the primary model for the meditational map. Once more, what religion encourages you to stare at and worship is a mountain.

The same happens with the Kalachakra seal, the central esoteric teachings in Tibet. The entire symbolism of the seal, with the all-powerful ten syllables, is exceptionally complex, containing meaning related to all the Tantric teaching; the external, internal, and secret. The external aspects deal with cosmology, astronomy, and astrology, but the image of this seal named the ‘all-powerful ten’ mantra in the seal relates to Mt. Meru and its surrounding universe.

The Kalachakra first aphorism is "As it is outside, so it is within the body." The same elements that configure the cosmos explained in the external teachings are placed inside ourselves. As the Axis Mundi, Mt. Meru is our spinal cord; without that mountain within ourselves, we could not stand not walk. Furthermore, there are Hindu Yoga treatises such as the 1899 Yoga manuscript in the Braj Bhasa language that portraits the painting of a man’s chakra system together with a whole pantheon inside him, the different sacred stories of the gods and, of course, entire mountain ranges depicted inside his arms.

This Tantric idea of having the whole cosmos inside one’s body inspires Theravada monks to tattoo in themselves a yantra named the Gao Yord representing Mt. Meru surrounded by its nine peaks. It is part of the Sak Yant tattooing tradition performed in Thailand, Laos, Burma and Cambodia.

Eventually, in the East, not even in the afterlife can’t we avoid the presence of the Himalaya. The Thangka, paintings made into clothing and colored with semi precious stones, often show a deity in their own paradise, emanated from their enlightened mind after they died. The Himalayan range is often part of them as if their mind could not forget them and recreated them, as if they could not leave those mountains behind. The Tibetan most important sage Padmasambhava, the man who in the 8th-century a.D. brought Buddhism from Pakistan to Tibet, formed from his enlightened mind a copper mountain to be his entire paradise.

2

The Axis Mundi, or center of the universe, is a common fixation in a worldwide mythology, the Mecca is one of those places. Not surprisingly, it was in a mountain nearby that the Quran is revealed to Muhammad, the prophet. According to the Bible, Moses came down a mountain with the ten commandments. There is also a Greek legend in which Zeus places two eagles on each edge of the world and commands them to fly to one another. The place in which they met became the center of the earth. Some say it is Mt. Olympus, where the Greek gods abide. Mt. Fuji was the center of the world for the Japanese, and the landscape poetry and paintings in Japan and China express in images their belief that mountains and rivers are Buddha ancestors. From the siddhis in India to the Yamabushi in Japan, most sages gain their supernatural powers in mountain retreats. Thus, Mt. Meru has its expression in every single culture and religion. It has roots that descend to the underworld and is so high that it reaches heaven. Mountains fulfill our desire to transcend our world, and water; life itself, comes from them.

However, any mythology can compare to the one created by those born near the Himalaya. There, mountains become lovers you want to breathe in, become one with.

*Mt. Gaurisankar, named after the Hindu goddess Gauri and her consort. The Rolwaling Himal, Nepal. © Bruno Baumann*

I have a favorite legend from each religion. The Hindu one regards Lord Krishna. The young god came to earth during the preparations for the annual sacrifices to Indra, the god of thunder and rain. Krishna debated with the villagers about what the Dharma indeed was. Because they were farmers, they should do their duty and concentrate on farming and protecting the cattle, never conducting sacrifices for natural phenomena. The villagers were convinced and did not proceed with the special ceremony, but Indra, not being workshipped as he used to, was angered and flooded the village. Krishna then lifted Mt. Govardhan with one finger and held it up to protect his people and cattle from the rain. Krishna represents the ecstatic devotion, the Bhakti, and he teaches us not to worship the sky for rain but to turn our devotion to the mountains instead, the protective force who is the source of the water we need and gives without asking for anything in return. The Diwali, the most important Hindu festival and a memory of the triumph of light over ignorance, dedicates a day to this legend by celebrating

the mountains.*2

From Buddhism, I felt inspired to climb when I read about the life of Milarepa, the first human who attained enlightenment in just one lifetime after he decided to live his life as a yogi on a mountain instead of becoming a monk. Doing so, he created the fast path to nirvana, the Tibetan Tantric path. Milarepa’s story also reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from the book Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, “Short is the little which remains to thee of life. Live as on a mountain.”

Paul Thoreaux once said, a tourist is someone who doesn’t know where he has been. I grew up surrounded by amazing mountains, but Canary Islanders like I belong to a culture much more related to the sea. I was lucky to study a subject on South Indian studies in college, and it made me dream for years until I left it all to travel the Humla-Tibet traverse. Only when I came back from that journey, I noticed the mountains ranges on the island and revered them. But what happens to those who remained insensitive to the Himalaya and blind to the hidden messages? Well, there is hope if they seek guides who have been constantly exposed to them; the people who made the mountains into food and eat them, turned into speech and chant them or carved to feel enveloped by them, the ones who earn their living in the mountains; the sherpa.

These are people who burn juniper incense as an offering to the mountains not only before the climbing, but as long as anyone remains up there, which beyond worship is an exercise on caring about others. After the earthquake in 2015, some climbers in Everest described how everyone crouched in fear when the earth started shaking, they all waited helplessly listening to the earth roaring and with it, the loud mantras the sherpa were chanting to appease the mountain. Their beliefs and way of life is made of all these stories and rituals, and the biggest gain for the ones who are guided by the sherpa is this sacramental way of living.

We only need to travel to the Himalaya once, to feel how the mountains and even the altitude’s thin air have shaped their beliefs and spirituality. Only the insensitive would not respect their environment, would not learn their teachings, or climb their mountains just to cross them from a bucket list.

A Western story goes that after the first Everest summit, Tenzing Norgay turned his face back on the way, looked up, and shouted full of gratitude, “Thank you, Chomolungma!” calling the mountain by its Tibetan goddess name. However, Edmund Hillary never looked back, and his first words as he reached base camp were, “We knocked that bastard out!”

Choose the one you prefer to be… and then climb.

1-2 The encyclopedia of Tibetan symbols and motifs by Robert Beer