The day I got high at the Himalayas
NEPAL — No cannabis incense was used in achieving this state of transcendental highness. No holy smoke rising to form serpents, roosters and all the sad universes of desires. No sh*t.
All I needed this morning to achieve this: a cup of coffee, a crescent of a cookie and a view of the Himalayan sunrise from the terrace of my hotel room set upon these Windy Hills. Mt. Annapurna to the west, Mt. Everest to the east, a nirvana of greens, blues, and snowy masses in between. As my friend, “Tina Belcher” Tibajia, would say, “Calmness is the opposite of everything.” And equal to nothing.
The word “windy” does not begin to describe the conditions on the viewing deck. The hotel brochure offers some sound advice: “1) Nagarkot (which means “the Nearest Viewpoint from the City”) is very windy throughout the year, so always bring a wind cheater.” Very handy if you want to cheat the Tenacious D of winds; better hang on to your wig as well. “2) Avoid wearing loose flying skirts and sarees unless you want a Marilyn Monroe experience.” Or start flailing around like Mary Poppins. I wouldn’t mind being Bob Seger, though. The dude wrote about disappearing in the utopia of the Nepalese capital when he got so fed up with the cutthroat music business in 1975. I think I’m going to Kathmandu….
“Lots of hippies visited Kathmandu Valley in the ’60s and early ’70s” explains our guide Kumar. “It was a Shangri-La at that time.” The reason? “Because of mary-jona,” he says. Mary who? Jona who? Ah, marijuana. Weed and hash were even sold in Nepalese grocery stores on, say, Freak Street during those blissfully foggy years. A can of tuna, check. Royal Nepalese Finger, check. Temple Balls, check. Pringles, check…
Our group — composed of tour operators, travel agents and their clients, along with a few journalists — arrived at Club Himalaya Nagarkot yesterday afternoon after a chartered bus ride from Kathmandu. Dhesu India and Destinations Unlimited (headed by CEO/president Criselda Medalla) invited The STAR and another publication to experience the package they are offering: a tour of both India’s Golden Triangle (Delhi, Jaipur and Agra) and Nepal, specifically its paradise city of Kathmandu and the reverential Himalayas. Both countries offer visa-upon-arrival privileges to Filipinos.
On our first day in Nepal, we visit Swayambhunath, which is also known as Monkey Temple. “There are plenty of monkeys here,” Kumar points out, “aside from monks.” Legend has it that the monkeys came from lice on the head of a bodhisattva. Uphill, we see the stupa, a hemispherical structure used by Buddhists as a place of meditation. (One of our beloved companions would botch her pronunciation of the word “stupa,” marveling at the biggest “chupa” she had ever seen in her life. Whoa, Nelly!)
The stupa has a pair of Buddha eyes (plus a third one) painted on it. The all-seeing eyes, our guide adds. The mark that forms the nose on the stupa is the Nepalese symbol of unity. There are also a cluster of shrines, temples and shops atop this hill in the Kathmandu Valley. Travel operator Alice Chu buys me a couple of prayer beads. (Thanks, Alice!) I also get a swastika décor. In Buddhism, the swastika — appropriated by those damn Nazis — represents universal harmony, the balance of opposites, and good luck.
We are told that each morning before dawn, hundreds of Buddhist (Vajrayana) and Hindu pilgrims ascend the 365 steps from the eastern side to pray. Would’ve been quite a sight for a person such as me who only sees the snarl of traffic, billboards selling stuff I can’t afford and don’t even need, people rushing madly to get to dead-end jobs that are slowly killing them, and the phoniness of the girls I get to meet (I’m talking about No One in particular). This is my show every goddamn day. I need a mantra for this. And a plane ticket back to Nepal. And some grass…. to walk upon.
Our group is given a short intro course on thangka painting, which is listed by UNESCO as a Non-Physical Heritage of Nepal. Subjects focus on incidents from the life of Buddha, the blessed one formerly known as Siddhartha Gautama whose birthplace is in Nepal called Lumbini. The instructor points to the set of brushes that they use: five- to one-hair brushes. Talk about monkish exactitude and patience. “Some of the paintings took seven years to finish,” he says. (If I used such brushes, I would manage to paint half a skull in about a year.)
One of the most iconic works — side by side with the meditation mandala and deity paintings — depicts the Lord of Death or Lord of Time holding the wheel of life that spins out Birth, Sickness, Aging and Death — a symbol of impermanence.
“The moral is to accept impermanence and to rid of the remaining fear of suffering in order to find peace,” the instructor says. “Thus, our entire lifetime is an opportunity.”
Mountain song
There is something esoteric and enriching about Nepal that can’t really be explained in a travelogue.
Paris has its blindingly lit streets, gothic cathedrals, majestically graying buildings ghosted by history. The attractions? Have coffee where Jean-Paul Sartre concocted Being and Nothingness, take a picture of a hundred heads and hats of tourists visiting and obscuring the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, get drunk on wine and love and be Serge Gainsbourg.
Tokyo has the spirit of the Quirky animated into rainbow corners and a motley crew of girls in cosplay. The come-ons? Get lost like an existential Bill Murray and banish those midlife blues by finding Scarlett Johansson in a Karaoke-kan joint in Shibuya (with Bryan Ferry’s pipes a-piping….), or partake of pasta and miso while listening to Norwegian Wood in one of the food stalls of Kabuki-cho, in effect being a Murakami character, play pachinko, get glittery.
Nepal has its own attractions for tourists. The temples are majestically designed and wondrous to behold; the souvenir shops are brimming with beads, trinkets and rich fabrics; Nepalese cuisine is heavy and hearty, a riot of spices, lentils and meat — pure joy to partake of while watching a Nepalese cultural show (our companion Rootbeer would attest to that).
Visiting the cultural capital of Nepal called Bhaktapur (“Place of Devotees”) is like stepping into another era with its ancient temples, courtyard and snake statues. Bhaktapur Dubar Square is a city within a city characterized by the various arts of stone, metal, wood, and terracotta, as well as curious religious structures. The Place of 55 Windows was built during the reign of King Yaksha Malla in the 15th century and remodeled by King Bhupatindra Malla in the 17th century. “It is the most beautifully crafted building in all of Bhaktapur,” explains Kumar. “One of the windows was carved by the king himself.” He was a woodcarver when not micro-managing the kingdom.
Pottery Square is where the Real Nepal emerges: potters diligently working on their traditional wooden wheels, black clay and earthen pots all in a row; goats, pigeons and pensive old men casting shadowy shapes under the midday sun, the smell of hay everywhere.
We arrive at Boudhanath in Little Tibet, an ancient stupa that is one of the biggest in the world, right about dusk as monks in burgundy ceremoniously go around the temple clockwise — 108 times, we are told. The sounds of trumpets and conch shells slender mournfully from one of the shops.
It’s that vibe that makes Kathmandu, Nepal a must-tick box on every traveler’s list. It’s the attraction of the non-physical. An invisible Shangri-La. Something that’s, well, not even a thing.
Kumar and a handful of us get down the bus to go to Pashupatinath Temple, a famous Shiva temple by the banks of the Bagmati River, a tributary of the Ganges. Legend has it that the Shiva the Destroyer took the form of an antelope and sported by the banks of the Bagmati. The gods caught up with him, grabbed him by the horn and forced him to resume his divine form. The broken horn became the divine linga of Pashupatinath. (In other places in Nepal, Shiva is worshipped in his wrathful form as the destructive Bhairab, but in Pashupatinath he is celebrated as Pashupati, Lord of the Beasts.)
Near the bust stop is a market of religious stalls selling marigolds, prasad (offerings), incense, rudraksha beads, conch shells, tika powder in rainbow colors, and glass lingams, among other things.
We arrive at the temple itself with black smoke billowing upon the ghats or stone steps jutting out of the holy river. An open-air cremation is taking place. Tourists watch the ceremony from the opposite bank of the Bagmati. Non-Hindus are not allowed to go inside the main temple. The body of a deceased female is wrapped in saffron cloth, festooned with flowers, washed by relatives with river-water, and then taken to a platform of wood and straw. The pyre is lit. Her mortal remains burn in the Kathmandu afternoon. You can hear the crackling of flesh. We watch in silence. There is an Everest of questions about mortality, karma, transition and the constant spinning of this phantom world.
Buddhists believe that life is but a stopover. Or a series of stopovers that you must endure until you get things right. But what about for us? For me? I stopped asking these questions the moment I became an appendage to the shiny machine of materialism.
Other trips will make you think of where to take that perfect selfie to upload on Instagram or Facebook, and humble-brag to friends and followers about ticking yet another box on your bucket-list. Thousands of food shots, from-where-I-stand shots, and wacky poses to go along with it. What key chains, ref magnets, oversize shirts and other souvenirs to buy. (A kitschy Eifel Tower paperweight, perhaps? Or the Merlion?) What club to go to after a long day of touring. Who to wear. Are we there yet?
Nepal is quite different. You just can’t reduce it to a blurb the way exaggerating travel writers would describe each place they visit as yet another “Paradise on Earth.” They can’t all be paradises.
I see my travel companions staring at a person slowly becoming smoke, ash, an idea.
You are here. This is now. And the trip is ongoing and it’s infinite.
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Tour arrangements were done by Dhesu India through Destinations Unlimited in the Philippines. India and Nepal package for Feb. 22 to March 2 can be booked through the following agents: Royal Class Travel in Ortigas (tel. 721-0993, email jdy_chua@yahoo.com); Richfield in Binondo (353-1977, richfield_travel@yahoo.com); Great Wall in Binondo (242-2522, greatwall_88@ymail.com); and Airlink in Pampanga (0917-2559668, 0922-8341020 and 0918-9018759, airlinktravel_2020@yahoo.com). For information, visit http://destinationsunli.com. Photos by Igan D’bayan
