There were a few times during my explorations of the Langtang Range that I came face to face with my own fears, as well as against several moral dilemmas forcing me to examine the basis for my reactions as well as their worth.
The following set of blogs explores a few of these themes, and begins not in chronological order but with a brief interaction which has lasted far more than the few seconds it grew from. This blog is a memorial for a death which at the time had still to happen. The events leading to this death were explained to be by a local woman and elaborated upon by guides familiar with the dead. Now I will retell what little I know to you, because this is the story of the last few months of an Indian pilgrim who will die in a remote village in the Nepali Himalayas, nameless and alone, with no one to remember her and no living testimony apart from I suppose, these few impersonal helpless words.
We had just arrived in Sing Gompa, it was day seven of our twelve day trek. At 3330 meters I was feeling good if a little nauseous as I waited for my body to readjust to the altitude. We had just bought 100 grams of yaks cheese which we were munching away on, as we visited the 'gompa'. The gompa was being renovated which meant that it was a wooden shell of a monastery with dust, pebbles and the odd large block of concrete falling down as we stepped over dusty relics and planks of wood.
As we walked back to our tea house, a local woman was marching after a beggar. Now there were two things which struck me as particularly strange. Firstly, this was the first beggar I had seen while trekking in the mountains. It is normally the city's where the beggars congregate, while in the more remote rural areas, the family and village networks are still strong enough to act as a social security net for those in need. Secondly, the 'beggar' was not actually begging. In fact this was why the local woman was marching after her – she was trying to give her money.
I looked at the beggar woman. She was bundled up in scarfs and blankets. But she walked awkwardly; like a wooden puppet being manipulated from above. Her movements appeared to be more mechanical than natural. Her steps seemed to jar and her sense of balance disturbed as she was unable to walk with fluidity along a straight line. The reason for her robotic movements was that the beggar woman was trying to walk on feet which were frozen black and swollen to cracks of blood. The beggar woman was still managing to walk on her lost feet. But it was difficult, and her motivation seemed to be to try and put as much distance as possible between herself and the helping hands reaching towards her. She supported herself with a hand, which appeared stiff and again, wooden, as she touched the doorway leading to a cow shed; a rickety barn behind the gompa of the towns namesake.
I walked passed, into my tea lodge. I took a shower in sun warmed mountain water; a luxury at this altitude and the first one in countless days. But the chill of the mountain air blew through the cracks in the plywood walls and made my wet skin turn bumpy. The freezing winds were gaining more confidence as the afternoon sun dropped prematurely behind the ring of mountains. I dressed quickly, but began to feel the chills shiver up my legs and numb my fingers and toes. I piled on all the clothes that I had carried in what I considered to be a relatively light bag - layers of long sleeved tops and polar fleeces.
I basked in the simply warmth which my tea house offered and in return for my free accommodation I ordered a pot of hot lemon. I rested my feet on the heated bricks around the wood fire. My toes began to tickle as the circulation returned. I closed my eyes. I had climbed over 1000 meters that day and my body was aching from the trek and from the altitude. I closed my eyes and my mind took me on a wander. Thoughts and images took me to a cow shed. I felt my body, and I felt the cold. I let go of my 'safe' surroundings, and imagined myself alone, abandoned; frozen. I imagined myself as her – imagined losing myself – or rather losing the sense of self and then imagining being unable to pull back to the self. Panic seared through my body, but I kept my eyes shut. At what point would it be impossible to retreat from my day dreamings? Is the definition of sanity really defining the otherwise porous borders of reality? The woman in the cow shed was 'mad'. Clearly crazy from the pain that she has been living with and inside of for three months. The image of her wooden feet, her stuttered walk, her confused glances shook away the feelings of tranquility bestowed by the previous days trekking. I was confused why a woman could be left to freeze in a cow shed, next to a Buddhist gompa and in the middle of a village made prosperous from its foreign visitors. I asked the local woman – the one with helping hands – and this is what she replied:
Sing Gompa is a village one days walk from Shiva's Holy Lakes. The lakes of Gosainkund are stunningly clear pools of glacier water. They stand at over 4000 meters, and for most of the time are covered with a layer of ice as the temperatures are rarely warmed more than a few degrees above freezing. Hindu legends say that the lakes were created when Shiva, who thirsty for water after being poisoned, pierced a glacier with his trident. It is said that the Gosainkund Lake disappears underground via a subterranean channel and travels the 60 km to resurface next to the Shiva Temple in the ancient capital city of Patan. Apparently, Shiva's dreadlocked head is still in the largest of the lakes, and protrudes from the surface taking the form of a large black stone.
The Holy Lakes attract thousands of pilgrims per year who come to worship, bathe and to change their Yajñopavītams (the sacred Hindu threads) during the full moon festival each August. The Hindu pilgrims walk from all over India and Nepal, climbing up to the 4460 meter pilgrim site over a course of weeks, often with little other 'trekking equipment' than perhaps a pair of flip flops – or perhaps not. Although the temperatures in August are warmer than the rest of the year, the elevation and the proximity to the snow covered peaks still brings ice kissed winds. Moreover, August is in the middle of the monsoon, which brings an added challenge to the pilgrims who will have to climb up through mud washed trails and paths of rivers. And this is the pilgrimage which brought the beggar woman to her fate. She was found three months ago (which would mean shortly after the full moon festival) at the lakes, and was helped down to Sing Gompa by a trekking group. As a Indian Hindi speaker, she remained isolated from the Sherpa village. Unable to speak their local dialect and as a low caste woman unaccustomed to traveling alone, it must have been a rescue which brought little more than the perceived threat of strangers. She found shelter in a cow shed, where she has remained ever since.
My first reaction was that she needed medical attention. I spent the evening arguing the logistics with a Nepali Tourist, who arrogantly told me he would 'save' her by paying for a porter to carry her down to the nearest town next to a road three days away and then leave some money for her to catch the bus back to Kathmandu. The beggar woman, I reminded him, was clearly crazy. After three months of living with frozen limbs, isolated from family and far away from her village she was now barely able to communicate with either Nepalis, Sherpas or tourists. She would need an escort to Kathmandu I replied, and then she would need private treatment. As an Indian woman it would be nearly impossible for her to receive free medical care. Her feet would have to be amputated, and then what? She would live as a crazy beggar woman on the streets of Kathmandu? During our discussion, a local guide intervened. He told us the beggar woman is here to die. She is waiting. She will not go anywhere. And at least in the small village, local women know her and try to feed her; surviving in Kathmandu would be a very different story.
I spent the night Angry. Even my sleep was Angry. I was imagining the woman outside. Imagining what it must be like with frozen feet with the absence of sanity the only anesthetic. Imagining myself outside.
The next morning, we left early, before the dawn frost had chance to thaw, but before the winds collected power. I left a paltry 100 rupees with the local woman towards her food. Then I followed the footsteps which the beggar woman can no longer make, as I walked past her, bundled up in her pile of shawls, slumped at the entrance to her temporary shelter.
The sense of helplessness to save a life that no longer wishes to be saved has stayed with me. It followed me as I climbed up to the lakes, and it whispered to me as I saw discarded shoes in the snow. It became my shadow when I followed the pilgrimage around the edge of Gosainkund Lake, as I stepped over the discarded threads as I quickened my pace to escape from Shiva's ice kissed breath.
The price of a pilgrimage? Not just a pair of feet, but sanity, dignity and ultimately Life.
What could have been done?
I still feel its presence.
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