Good Morning Varanasi!

Waking up in Varanasi was a loud shout Welcome Back to India! Beeping horns, spitting, hacking, a muezzin call making my mind work in my semi state of sleep, as I try to remember or create the religious importance of the Holy Ganga for Muslims. The room is hot. The windows appear to be boarded shut with ply wood. The glass windows on the door are covered over with a poster of Shiva and Parbati as their faces merge to create a rather disturbing image of their child 'Ganesh' – the elephant god.

Outside of my locked room box is a small shrine guarded by iron gates, but inside all that stands protected are discarded sheets of old newspaper, which in the villages of Langtang would have been used to decorate yak shit walls.

The view from the flat walled roof reminds me of Jerusalem, with the main difference being that is is not quite so beautiful, but certainly as intricate. Below me rises a collage of houses awash with movement and lives: Washing lines full of colours, walls full of drying circles of cow shit, women watering plants potted in rusty tins, red bottomed monkeys idling away the morning, mongrel dogs trying to protect their roof top territory, there is even a man jogging around his small patch of sky-high cement. Electricity wires congregate in a muddle, and are decorated by a plethora of plastic kites, which are still trying desperately to escape into the wind. The majority of plastic shapes are coloured with the pattern of the Indian flags. I lift up my eyes and see a flock of other kites, being maneuvered over the tops of the city as small boys run backwards and forwards across different roof tops. Each one playing independently and yet adding to the mosaic of skyline activity.

A woman calls for her 'babu' and eventually a child's voice screams a reply. Rickshaw bells tring, taxi horns beep, voices merge into the sound of the street which are carried up on the scented warm air. Loaded with sound, the atmosphere feels full as the air rises around me, lifting away the dawn and welcoming me with the sounds of a vibrant full life, in this city famous for death.

A Night Bus

Beep

Swerve

Braking.

An Aching bum unable to rest.

Aching eyes which strain to distract the mind.

Approaching headlights.

Braking. Bang!

A slight collision. Pause.

And so it continues.

Riding away from the setting sun.

Moving away from the Mountains.

Bumping towards the wooden boxes of electric lights.

Lighting the way to a confusion of concrete.

A box full of lives.

Beeping

Swerving

Braking.

A twenty four hour travelling World.

Monastic Wilderness

The Korean Temple, Lumbini: A wonderful, donation only, oasis in the middle of Buddha's birth place. Nepal now; India then.

A great morning despite another crazy night – this time filled with very vivid dreams (despite being now at sea level) and wild noises rising from the savanna like grasses outside. I have just finished my yoga practice on the roof: Plenty of cement dust and poky pebbles causing havoc under the clouds of my yoga mat, but still it was possible to find a nourishing silence. The view in front of my sun salutations was of another temple in construction. The temple rose from a field of long grasses, nursing an equal amount of spider's webs.

The day took hours to rise above the foliage, leaving my asana's free from the sweat of the sun. It was only during the finishing poses that the resident old American woman called a Namaste out of the bars of her bathroom window. A few moments later two Indian ladies took their seats on the wall; observing, giggling and the shouting into their communal mobile phone. Their presence was preferable to the audience of Nepali men who had been pulling their chairs at six o'clock every morning in Kathmandu – front row seats from the roof opposite my guest house.

Now I am sitting on a large wooden bench (or maybe it is a low table or bed?!) outside of my down. My view is of the rubbley courtyard and then to my left stands the newly constructed Korean Temple – the reply to the massive Chinese Monastery recently completely opposite. The Temple appears like a ghost – void of all life and colour as it still waits for the funds to be raised for it to be painted and decorated. Its grey facade reflects the grey robes of the monks and nun, who also appear slightly lifeless as they creep around camouflaged by the walls, and wearing the same shadow uniform of a 'seeker', devoid of an individual identity or even of a sex. Heads shaved and voices lowered to what seems to be a constant 'physical and verbal bow'.

In contrast, or rather to balance, there is so much wild life around here. Perhaps because the Lumbini complex is protected from busy roads and trucks. Transport around the inside is limited to ones own legs – or those of someone else's - as bicycles and rickshaws bump up and down the sandy roads. The only buildings are monasteries – which still appear to be carefully planned and set in their own lush gardens, full of flowers, watered grasses and the coloured streaks of prayer flags.

It is a pretty unique place, which so far seems to have been spared the commercialisation of religion to the extent that there was not a 'charge' to entre the complex and the only 'souvenirs' for sale are piles of wooden malas and even a visit to the birth place of Buddha – the Maya Devi – cost only fifty rupees and came with a complementary history of the area by a keen park attendant.

Yesterday we rented bikes from the builders who work at the Korean Temple. Fifty rupees for the day and a perfect way to explore – peddling around, dodging potholes, rocks, baby cobras and small children. My little red bike was like am arm chair. It was comprised of a large padded seat, a rusted red frame and a highly erratic steering, leaving me swerving at every pile of soft sand (of which there were many). The horizon of long grasses and marsh land was interspersed with the maroon robes of the young monks, which flew and bumped across the mud roads as they raced each other on their own rented bikes. By far the most entertaining were three monks who had hired an entire rickshaw while the owner jogged along next to his hijacked carriage.

I am left wondering what sort of people visit this place? Foreign tourists seem to be limited to Chinese and Korean visitors. Or maybe they are just more visible as they tour in packs and with a united 'flash' as their cameras light up their curiosity . There are also an incredible amount of Indian visitors, as Buddha is considered to be the ninth reincarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. According to the ticket seller at the Maya Devi, there are between 200-300 foreign tourists per day in comparison to the 2000-3000 Nepali and Indian visitors. I suppose that this ratio 'protects' the complex from certain development, as at the moment all that needs to be 'watered' are the lush gardens of the complex rather than people like me who demand gallons of water each day, waste disposal and a 'variety' of foods. For example, three times a day the Korean Temple provides a spread of food for a small donation. Everything from wholewheat rice with beans to curry, daal, three types of spinach, fruits and even sushi are served. But last night Bruno still complained that he wouldn't be able to eat at the Temple for more than a few days – he would need more of a 'choice'...

Meanwhile, I feel really grateful to have found the Korean Temple rather than to stay in some typically overpriced windowless room. Ironic as it may seem, it almost feels as if this is one of the few spaces left, where spirituality can be explored rather than exploited. Without its fancy churches or famous mosques, the entrance fees for the sacred sites are minimal, while if luxury resorts are present, they are well hidden. In fact, I feel really lucky to have 'found' Lumbini' before Buddhism explodes in popularity.

As the visitors to Dharamasala demonstrated, the search for an alternative style of spirituality is appealing to both the young and rich; Buddhist literature is exploring intellectual debates which the monolithic religions hide under the label of 'faith', while the Dalai Lama's dedication to peace and compassion highlights the failures of Western leaders. Yet with this continuing interest in Buddhism comes new incentives for religious commercialization through the vehicle of spiritual tourism. However it is not the Western countries who are solely responsible for this new 'development' of ancient Buddhist sites. Eastern countries are also beginning to explore the market of 'Buddhist package tours'. One particular example is of Korea. In the past nationalistic Koreans were encouraged to spend their vacations exploring their own country; yet now more and more of the younger generation, as well as the wealthier social groups, are beginning to explore foreign destination, with religious sites holding a particular appeal.

Whatever the direction of the hypothetic future, I feel privileged to be here now. I have really felt a sincere peace and moments of Reality in Lumbini. Moments where I have been able to feel the silence and energy of the nature, and this is a sensation which it is actually difficult to find even in the most 'remote' places. Even in the Himalayas where just as you taste tranquility it is shattered by an offer of a lodge, or a question forcing you to remember 'where have you come from' and 'where are you going?'

I have loved the absence of vehicles, hotels and the lack of other 'explorers'. I have loved the presence of beautiful places well visited by seekers searching for a spirituality guided by humanity. I have loved the presence of nature and the wild within a community of human animals.

A special place. To be returned to. At some point...

Pogada's of Peace

Space. A sacred construction.

Curves of Peace so smooth that they give way to

Eternity.

Round and Round.

Spiralling upwards.

White stone so beautiful in its Simplicity.

A perfect complement to the clear blue of the painted sky

Above and Around.

A desire for Peace based on Unity.

A Spirituality founded upon tragedy and found in Space.

Mount Disney

More and more distance is growing between us and the snow capped mountains. Now they loom like a line leading to the clouds rather than as an explosion of power popping up under our feet. The more we descent the more that plant, animal and human animal life rises. Today the forest opened out into terraced hills, villages filled with more than just lodges for trekkers but with a more traditional foundation: Based not on seasonal and unstable tourism but on agriculture and trade. Buddhist Chortens marked the tops of hills – a peaceful counterpart to the eerie caravans of the illegal Israeli which mark the hilltops of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I kept passing young attractive men holding Khukuris, until one of them walked (ran) past us later, directly us to his guest house. When we finally arrived I took a warm shower in a unlit shed while being dried cold by the wind. We ate next to a wood oven and in the company of a Belgium man who spoke no English, and his Nepali Guide who spoke excellent French.

Trekking creates an interesting situation where new issues intersperse with forgotten thoughts as together they circle the mind during its hours of walking meditation. Trekking itself carries enough development issues to keep one preoccupied for kilometers at a time, while every issue debated is compounded by ones own role in the equation: The commercialisation of rural communities; the tensions it creates among old neighbours and the new business men and women it brings to remote and arid lands. Lodge owners fight for customers, leaving you feel like you have arrived in a popular backpackers suburb rather than a remote mountain village. Farmers ask you to sponsor their children so that they can fulfill their dreams of attending an expensive private schools. They ask determined to provide an 'opportunity' they only dreamed of and they ask despite the economic and social sacrifices it will demand as children leave and never return, or return with unfilled ambitions and frustrations.

Lines of porters sweat their way along the trails, providing imported food for foreign mouths which perhaps the local land could not afford to nurture but which leaves a smell of cultural imperialism and the globalisation of the remote Himalaya. Guided groups of up to thirty people trek by, all with their own porter carrying their bag of 'essentials' including a panel of solar panels and too many changes of clothes. The parties remind me of Reinhold Messner's recent dubbing of Everest as 'Mount Disney'. And yet 'these people' are just enjoying the nature, no different from 'me'. In fact they are bringing more economic development to these rural areas, and to these generations of porters, but again I am reminded of a comment made by Appa Sherpa – A Nepali sidhar (chief Sherpa) who holds the record for his 18 summits of Everest but when asked acbout his 'achievements' replies that he climbs so his sons won't have to. A BBC documentary, Carrying the Burden features the life of a Nepali porters, who often comes not from the mountains of the Sherpas but from the city of Kathmandu. Even the Sherpas are naively viewed by trekkers as partially superhuman; as small strong men, able to walk though wind and snow while carrying a basket filled with a ruck sack weighing 50 kilo and wearing nothing more than passed on clothes and collected odd shoes. The International Porters Protection Group (IPPG) works for the protection of porters rights, by demanding access to medical care when they suffer from what can be deathly altitude sickness or frostbite as well as proper shelter and food and equipement: It is all to common to see groups of porters camping around a fire, cooking the food they have carried as well as the bags of the trekkers who sit inside a warm lodge eating pasta and drinking bottled beer.

The French Speaking Nepali guide in the lodge told us that guiding was indeed his preferred profession. In 2003 the fighting between the Royal Nepalese Army and the Maoists had reached such a level that the dollar bills of the tourists had left the Nepali hills. Wages from sons who had travelled to the cities to work in the tourist resorts had dwindled, and with few young people left in the villages, farming food from the arid land was becoming harder and harder for those who had remained. Families who had built their livelihood around the seasonal income of the trekkers were struggling. The guide himself had no alternative but to borrow money from his friends and family to pay for a plane ticket to South Korea. He worked in a weapons factory alongside many other Nepalis. The factory was supplying the USA. The work was hard but the money was good and much to his relief he managed to pay off his loans and save some money but as soon as peace returned to his country, so did he. The guide explained he was relieved to be back in the mountains; in his home land and doing a job he loved. Business was still slow, but it was enough. Working aboard had helped him to pay the bills when his own country was failing, and had also provided him with a warm company coat, which he was still wearing with the logo of the weapons factory printed on the breast pocket.

We were joined by the attractive khurkuri wielding man who had lured us to his guest house earlier. The guide explained that the man was about twenty years old. He had left school during the fighting in order not to be conscripted by the Maoists who at that time were taking over schools and forming their own army of 'Youth Cadres'. Without an education and with limited English, Mr Khurkuri helps his mother run the guest house. Today he had walked over two hours up the hill to cut a mountain of leaves to feed the family's buffalo. His mother is a big woman who has eight children and who clearly runs the show. Her eldest son is hoping that all of his brothers and sisters will finish their education. I cannot help but wonder the value of this 'idealised' Western ideal.

I wonder where all the husbands are: South Korea? The Gulf? Singapore? Apparently it is easy to divorce around here – you just have to 'cut' the knot tying the wedding string around your wrist, and there is no problem for a woman to remarry.

The final days of the trek seemed to condense all of my previous meditations. The trails were filled with litter from both tourists and locals. Large painted signs advertised Coca Cola and trekkers with their porters leading the way, drank from newly purchased bottles of water. A lovely lady from Cuba asked me if the plastic in the bottles was bad for her health? Why else she wondered, would I prefer to drink boiled water than buy another bottle of plastic? Guides from Kathmandu discussed between themselves the correct route for day two of their two day trek, as it was also their first time in the area. An entrance fee for a national park left me feeling infuriated as biscuit wrappers continued to litter the paths and the park wardens themselves supplemented their salary by setting up a small stall full of shiny packets at the entrance.

Mountain tourism is tricky. Rural people want the same opportunities as those in the urban areas, while trekkers from the urban areas want the same luxuries and are prepared to pay ridiculous amounts for it without regard for the cultural or economic implications. Infrastructure needs to be developed in a way which benefits the local community and protects the fragile mountain ecosystems. Tourists need to realise that money cannot buy them a Shangri-la; if they try it will come at the price of the wilderness and the culture rich lives which it supports.

Internationl Porters Protection Group

A Little Nepali Frog

A little frog swimming around in a muddy pool. A pool filled by fresh mountain water from a concrete pipe. The water falls through the air, landing softly below. Below the water is no longer clear but brown. The pool has been enjoyed by local roaming buffaloes, as large pile of pooh sit on the shallow concrete bottom. The little frog pushes herself around, suspended between the surface air and the liquid water. Pusssssssssssssssssssh. Paddle. Pusssssssssssssssssssssh. Paddle she goes. The little frog seems so content; investigating floating sticks, and sneaking up to idle skating flies. She is busy exploring her watery world. Perhaps she doesn't mind its dirt. Perhaps she enjoys the invaders, she certainly does not care much for her audience. But she is small; only beginning her amphibious life, where at the moment this small pool of water is her whole world.

A shimmer of silver reflects from the mud. A watch. Bruno picks it up. Examines it. He turns it over. Made in Japan.

'Di!'. A woman's voice calls from above. We look up and a local lady is calling us towards her. Its mine! She shouts pointing to our find.

Bruno looks quizzical. The woman is squatting next to her washing. Her head coloured head scarf pulled tightly around her long black plate which hangs down to her hips.

He folds the watch in his hands. 'What colour is it?' He asks. I shrink. Embarrassed. I would not have the courage to doubt, but I understand why he does.

A crowd of children and young men appear from the mani stones, and what was only moments ago a peaceful afternoon trek, has suddenly become a spectators sport.

The woman's English is shaky, but she is determined that her property is returned. She replies 'white' which could well mean 'silver' and Bruno hands over the watch.

We walk along the mud path turn a corner and come face to face with a line of Japanese photographers.

Mountain Medicine

The beauty of remoteness. I bask in the silence of mountain life as I walk down from the top of Kyangin Ri. High in the Sky where only the birds fly. The go-betweens from the land to the hills, to the mountains to the air. Passing lines of ancient mani stones; rock carved prayers adjacent to wheels of water prayers. Crossing glacier streams, and then re crossing them. Following lines of porters, as they jog down steep mountain paths with their own woven baskets of mountains balanced on their sweat singed brows. The stony hills give way to grassy meadows, overseen by herds of domestic yaks and naks.

We turn a corner and walk into an old man. He is wrinkled to the core, wrapped in a old army jacket and with a wollen hat pulled over his head. He stands in our path and points to his lips. His lips are swollen. They are bloodied. And filled with pus He has some sort of infection, but exactly what I am not sure. He is asking for medicines. We discuss a possible diagnosis: A fungus, a bacteria, a virus? We don't know. I search through my first aid kit as if looking for clues. I pull out boxes and packets and tubes - a range of different antibiotics, anointments and creams. But would a broad range spectrum antibiotic help? And if so how much should we give? Do we have enough? What if we need it ourselves in the next few days?

Remote beauty comes at a high price. Where even food does not grow and children leave for school for years at a time, mountain medicine is a privilege for only the rich. It is possible to charter a helicopter if the 'price' of life can afford to be paid. For others, perhaps they can leave for the 'services' of a city but that leaves them without the security of a family or a community. But for most mountain people, the lack of medical care is not a 'sacrifice' because access to orthodox treatment has never been a luxury they have experienced. The recent arrival of 'Health Posts' often means an increase in the responsibilities of the local midwife, as well as increasing frustrations as she does not have the medicines nor knowledge to fulfill the expectations placed upon her.

Meanwhile, for an old man with no English, and a humbleness beyond equality, his best choice is to catch a foreigner with the 'magic pills'.

We give him a couple of paracetamol and a handwritten sign in English to ask other tourists for the most likely antibiotics. Upon returning from the trek we look up a possible and distant diagnosis in a book entitled, “Where there are No Doctors”.

Shiva's Lakes

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 Woman with Frozen Feet

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.