I am sitting on a window ledge with the lakes behind me and the sun slowly rising behind the mountains. Listening to really badly recorded Tibetan (or maybe Tamang) music which intermediately has cows mooing and roosters crowing and it is impossible to tell which is real until I remember that there are no cows or roosters at 4380 meters. Stamping comes from the kitchen: A young guy cooking the mornings daal bhat in the kitchen. Yesterday he was singing along to 'I'm too sexy for this shirt' whereas today he seems happy with the moos and crows accompanying this popular home recording. The lake is still dark and covered in a skin of ice, although the sun is spreading a white golden path across it. I had followed its marker rocks yesterday – tracing the footsteps of the pilgrims who believe that the lakes were created by their vagabond Lord, Shiva.
The pilgrims visit the lake to change their scared strings. This means that the rough slated path which circumnavigates the water is covered with discarded holy thread. I walked around thinking of all the thousands of people who had walked so far for their beliefs. Walking with no 'special' equipment and sleeping in roofless barns. I thought about the woman with frozen feet, wooden feet, who was hobbling and hiding her way around Sing Gompa. I thought about how the pilgrimage had killed her and how she had ended up left, abandoned, dying, in a cold desolate lonely place. I thought about the person she must have been and the person she is now – clearly crazy and only sort of alive. I felt privileged to be walking a path which people will sacrifice everything for, while I was 'just' enjoying nature. As soon as the sun peaked down behind the highest peaks, the air around the lake seemed to freeze.
I walked fast through the shadows picking out the most stable slabs and passing mini piles of stone statues which frame the lake, almost as if they were 'natural' creations rather than the man and woman made constructs of the years of pilgrims.
The next day we crossed the pass. I hung a small string of prater flays in the middle of a mountain of flags and thought about the dead, the dying and the living: I though of a woman who I never really knew, but who had recently died, the mother of a dear friend. I thought of how she must feel to be free above the mountains, drifting in the winds. I thought about the woman who is dying from crossing this pass as she sits and waits for her frozen body to consume her, a painful and fateful pilgrimage. I thought of little Gita, who will never see the enormity of the power of nature, but only feel it from the confines of the walls of an institution which saved her. Three parallel realities.
The pilgrims visit the lake to change their scared strings. This means that the rough slated path which circumnavigates the water is covered with discarded holy thread. I walked around thinking of all the thousands of people who had walked so far for their beliefs. Walking with no 'special' equipment and sleeping in roofless barns. I thought about the woman with frozen feet, wooden feet, who was hobbling and hiding her way around Sing Gompa. I thought about how the pilgrimage had killed her and how she had ended up left, abandoned, dying, in a cold desolate lonely place. I thought about the person she must have been and the person she is now – clearly crazy and only sort of alive. I felt privileged to be walking a path which people will sacrifice everything for, while I was 'just' enjoying nature. As soon as the sun peaked down behind the highest peaks, the air around the lake seemed to freeze.
I walked fast through the shadows picking out the most stable slabs and passing mini piles of stone statues which frame the lake, almost as if they were 'natural' creations rather than the man and woman made constructs of the years of pilgrims.
The next day we crossed the pass. I hung a small string of prater flays in the middle of a mountain of flags and thought about the dead, the dying and the living: I though of a woman who I never really knew, but who had recently died, the mother of a dear friend. I thought of how she must feel to be free above the mountains, drifting in the winds. I thought about the woman who is dying from crossing this pass as she sits and waits for her frozen body to consume her, a painful and fateful pilgrimage. I thought of little Gita, who will never see the enormity of the power of nature, but only feel it from the confines of the walls of an institution which saved her. Three parallel realities.
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