From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Fifteen - The Emperor's Lost Love

It was as if the Yamuna River turned as black and thick as tar and swallowed the emperor whole. The weight of his wife’s death pulled him deep into a void of terrible suffering that was bottomless and inescapable. The common people felt great pity for him, for they knew that Shah Jahan had lived the most comfortable life as emperor, with all the privileges in the world. And so to have his most beloved Mumtaz Mahal taken from him surely caused pain unlike any suffering that they knew in their lives. For them, poverty and disease and death were so common that it was never a surprise.

Shah Jahan, who was always protected from such realities, was not prepared to deal with the death of his true love. The emperor could not cope with the loss. To attempt to mend his broken heart, he commissioned the best architects and engineers of the day to build a mausoleum of a size and scale that befitted his love for Mumtaz. As she was the most beautiful woman in the world, he demanded that the building be erected in the most beautiful material, Rajasthani white marble. It was to have inlays of jade and crystal brought all the way from China, turquoise from Tibet, and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. Mumtaz was pious and humble, and so a mosque was built on the western end of the complex. Four minarets were erected to soar into the sky, places where the muezzin’s call could echo through the area in somber humility to the God that had taken Mumtaz away. The gardens surrounding the mausoleum were to be made in the image of Paradise, so that all would know that no greater woman had ever been born and that in death she was surely the brightest star in Heaven.

The construction took more than a decade. Shah Jahan oversaw every detail with fiery intensity; it had to be perfect. She was perfect. Anything less would be a disgrace to her and to his love for her. From afar he measured the symmetry, demanding unprecedented exactness. He scolded and beat laborers who did not comply with his wishes of complete dedication. The building was his lunatic obsession. He observed every day’s work with implacable attention and a silent desire that once the Taj Mahal was completed, the emptiness in his heart would somehow lift and he could escape the overwhelming helplessness he felt as he was getting pulled deeper and deeper into the black void.

Twelve years later he stood inside the finished mausoleum. He looked up at the inside of the main dome and tears rolled down from his cheeks and fell onto the marble tomb that held the remains of Mumtaz. The building was truly emblematic of Heaven. The resplendent white marble gleamed in the sunshine. The intricate carvings and stonework, the inlays of precious stones and ethereal thuluth script at the Great Gate – which read: O Soul, thou art at rest. Return to the Lord at peace with Him, and He at peace with you. – made the Taj Mahal an otherworldly paradox; it was both solid and ethereal. In the morning mist, those who saw the Taj Mahal for the first time wondered if it even existed, or was it some trick of the clouds? Angels could reside in the building’s rooms and feel as comfortable as if they were still in Paradise.

With all the splendor of the Taj Mahal – its incomparable gardens and beautiful crystal ponds, its perfect symmetry – still, it was not enough. As Shah Jahan wept under the central dome, he knew that his powers were limited and that he too was as human as those he ruled.  All the emperor wanted was for Mumtaz to be alive again, to hold her hand and gaze into her eyes – an act that was once so simple, but that now all the riches in the world could not restore to him. 

From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Fourteen - The AH-1

A relatively "calm" street in Varanasi.

The Indian road system that I had known since leaving Bhutan was as disorganized as the rubbish heaps I so often saw along the way. I have come to expect my rides from one city to the next to be a fight through a gauntlet of bazaar crowds and cacophonous skeins of traffic. I inevitably get lost and swallowed into the maelstrom of Indian cities. However, I have learned that whatever your expectation of India, when you embark on a new day, you’ll be surprised.

I left from the hotel in Varanasi and wove Solivagant in and out of the morning bazaar chaos, as I had anticipated. But not long afterward, I took a turn and found myself in the strangest place: an expressway that looked every bit like an expressway back home.

The AH-1. It had three, flawless, clean lanes, bereft of potholes and debris. It had a median that separated the opposing traffic, who also had their own three lanes and who, magically, followed them. It was as if the rubbish pile that I was so used to expecting to drive through was plowed clear in a straight line, leaving nothing but open, easy road ahead.

Ah, the AH-1. It was a dream of a road. I could go eighty, ninety, one hundred kilometers per hour. There were no cows to weave around, no rickshaws to edge through. A paradise of a road. Just as I began to get comfortable, the essential Indian lesson reared its ugly head again: Expect nothing.

The danger with a road like the AH-1 is that it makes you complacent. You can listlessly follow the straight paths and soon lose the hardened, animalistic instincts that you need to survive the other kinds of Indian roads. It was at such an instant of shortsightedness that the motorcycle in front of me flipped his turn signal, indicating that he would turn right across the median. Instead, he slammed on his brakes and quickly swerved left and clipped me on the side. The hit was strong enough to send a shock of pain through my foot and I quickly slowed to a stop and assessed the damage.

The man looked on behind me, waiting, checking if I would come over and berate him for his recklessness. My bike was okay. My foot, though painful, appeared to not be significantly hurt. I looked back at the man again. He was still waiting. I shrugged my shoulders and moved on. He made his turn and drove off. It was another minor accident, so common in India that it is not even worth a conversation between the two parties.

Around noon, a new challenge arose on the AH-1. The Loo, an infamous dry-season wind came fiercely from the west and hit me head on. The Loo is a wind of biblical ferocity. It is the harbinger of drought and heatwave, of dust storms that can blackout the sun. It blows heat as hot or hotter than the daily temperature, up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and can cause heatstroke, even for those trying to escape in the shade. At times it can be fatal. 

Luckily, The Loo was a was a forgiving 90 degrees when I rode against it on the AH-1. The wind beat against me relentlessly and I decided that I could not endure it for a sustained period of time. I was stuck on an overpass that crossed the behemoth city of Kanpur though, and I could not get off of it easily. The Loo and the sun baked the asphalt and the heat came at me from all angles. I began to get light-headed and knew that I had to find a motel. I could not go on in those conditions. But there was nothing in sight. For an hour I rode against the Loo and moved up and down the overpass, crossing the city. By the time I found a rakish, disreputable motel, I thought I’d collapse from the heat. 

As always with these random stops, when I took off my helmet and entered through the doors, the patrons sitting around stared at me in surprise. I nodded and smiled, but the smile was only returned with more intense stares. A liter of cold water and a Coke had me back to coherency and I spent the rest of the evening and that night sitting under a fan and swatting at mosquitoes as I sweat and went in and out of a fitful sleep. 

From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Thirteen - Holy Places on the Gangetic Plain

Lumbini, Nepal

The spirit must be a burning thing. When it is sanctified and exalts it must vibrate like an empty tea kettle left on a gas flame. That would explain why my descent from the mountains down to these holy places felt like I was being pinched by the scruff and carried closer to an open fire; why, as I rode along the dull, flat asphalt, I became enveloped in a slow oppression of heat. All of the believers must have been reverberating with such hot intensity that they filled the atmosphere with it. 

When I arrived at Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha, the foothills of the glaciated peaks that I had left that morning were but a thirsty desert wanderer’s delusion of oasis. The very concept quickly ceased to be fathomable. Ice and snow could only exist in fanciful dreams. By midday, all I could do was take a cold shower and sit under a fan and wait for the sun to resign from its relentless arrogance at the peak of the sky.

Lumbini is therefore best visited in the mornings, when a cool breeze still lingers from the night. When Gautama Siddhartha was a child, he must have also found that time of day to be a sweet pleasure. He must have escaped his life in the palace to explore the villages and paddy fields when it was still morning and the sun could not take his spirit away. Before he meditated under Bodhi trees, he must have passed languid days in the shade and daydreamed, desiring all those things that made him human still.

It is hard not to feel a reverence for the spot where Buddha was born. Though I am not religious and my spirituality wanes more and more these days, it did not stop me from feeling a certain power inside of the birthing stone temple. I stood behind a woman who genuflected to the floor, held her hands in prayer, and prostrated over and over again, lost in the rapture of the place. Others touched their prayer beads to a wall of weathered, golden bricks, believing the mere contact would bring Buddha’s spirit into each bead.

Outside of the temple, there was a giant Bodhi tree festooned with prayer flags. Monks and sadhus sat in vigil, pilgrims of many different lands. Tourists made offerings at the tree and gave alms to the holy men. They ignored the signs for silence, and they took pictures, many using Selfie Sticks.

 “Destroy the ego,” Buddha said.

There are monasteries in Lumbini built in designs from all around the world. Almost all are palatial, garish. Chinese, Korean, Thai, German. Gautama Siddhartha left this area to escape the cloistered life of his royal upbringing. Outside of his palace, just like here and now, he found poverty and sickness; there are still children begging, people with crippling disease, elderly gone mad. Buddha found the Middle Way as the way toward enlightenment, something between this abject poverty and the riches that these monasteries embody. That journey seems to have been forgotten.

But there is hope. The most Buddha-like thing that I saw while in Lumbini was a Chinese monk attending to three stray dogs whose skin had become mangy. He took each dog and tenderly rubbed a medicinal oil on them as they basked in the sun. He was unaware of the gawking tourists and did not seem to care about the opulence of the Chinese monastery. His attention was on these fellow living beings, these reincarnations that may have been past family members or friends.

From Lumbini I awoke early to make my way further south still, to India. My goal was to explore another holy place, one that would be even hotter and drier. In my mind it was infamous; everyone I had talked to about Varanasi described it in the same way: “It’s the most intense city I’ve ever been to.”

Varanasi, India

The falling of the sun in the early evening did little to make the heat abate. It filled the streets like a steaming liquid would, entering crevasses and nooks, drowning all of us in it. Shop owners sprawled out in their little stalls, dozing under whirring and clicking fans, their bric-a-brac going soft, as if melting. Rickshaw drivers pushed against the simmering heat waves, sweating as they carried corpulent women in saris to their desired destinations. There were men and women that you could tell had suffered that heat for a lifetime, who stumbled in the streets and whose eyes glared with the suggestion that they were driven mad by it.

But the Varanasi heat was not the sole threat. There was so much more that could drive one mad.

Boiling in the miasma was the fetid stench of feces and burning refuse. Full-grown, robust Brahma bulls made pit stops down through the streets and chewed at the trash. The beasts gave off their own scent as well—the smell of bulls, cows, of goats and mange infested dogs. The air was swollen with a black mélange of exhaust from the desultory paths chosen by motorcycles, trucks, and cars. And yet there was a sweetness in the squalor. A whiff of some redolent incense, the savory elixir of dough frying and chai being prepared. The veritable potpourri leaves one enticed and appalled, hungry and at the verge of vomiting.

If only it were just the smells. But there were the sights and the sounds too, the Everything that was happening in a glance. A sparsely robed sadhu, dreadlocked and bare chested, peddled past with a monkey clutching the side of his head. The clang and procession of Hare Krishnas singing, “Hare, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Hare!” Women in full, black burkas filed into the mosque at the call of prayer. Men were ironing their shirts out in the street, or getting a shave, or burrowing into a tangled nest of electrical lines to do some repair. Some men wore light-cotton shirts and trousers, others only loincloths, their foreheads streaked with pious and esoteric symbols. There were rakish men with vitreous eyes who came to me, grabbing me by the arm. I walked fast to avoid them and the heat hit me harder. Old women, without a drop of moisture in their baked skin, attended their piles of vegetables spread out onto blankets on the asphalt. They yelled caustic imprecations at customers asking for a fairer price. And as if through a miracle, a blind man, unassisted, navigated the melee all by himself.

Within minutes, I was swept through these streets by the rush of the Everything. I too felt like I was going to lose it. How can one live here and keep a semblance of sanity?

And then I was at the Ganges, the Everything having dropped me there, wanting me to experience more. I knew what awaited. I had been told by everyone who has come here before me. But I was not prepared.

Not too far distant, I saw the black smoke. The columns rose separately, spaced out on the shore. It looked industrial, a feeling that was highlighted by the austere Ghats that towered from amphitheater-like staircases, high and imposing from the river shore. There was a crowd watching. Almost none of the people were foreigners, which surprised me and made me slow my pace. Was I allowed to be where the Everything had taken me?

The flames from the pyres added more heat to the relentless day. The jumping embers crackled and railed against the wind. Men talked casually around the flames, as if it was nothing more than a campfire. I only saw one person who appeared to be more mourning, but it was difficult to tell.

The flames did their job well and the body was quickly blackened. The muslin wrap was now burning away, confessing its secret. Here was a head. Here a cheek. Here was an arm. A hand, raised. Fingers opened as if in farewell. In time the flames burn it all down. I wondered, was I watching a man or a woman? Was he young or old? Was she loved? Did she have a family? Was he a good person? What were his sins? Did he hurt others, or bring joy into their lives?

I pinched at the flesh of my forearm, feeling guilty for having muscle and skin and strength, for being witness to this other being as he becomes ash, for being able to think still and ponder and be shocked. I know that one day it will be me and it will also be those close to me and even those I have hated. If not cremated on the banks of the Ganges, then thrown to the wind somewhere, or buried or lost, and in time forgotten.

My grasps at sanity now raised one clear thought: This moment is important. It was a thought that saved me somehow. It lifted the guilt and the sadness. It was followed by another thought: What have I done with my life?

And the Everything winked and smiled at me.

I felt alright again, standing there on the banks of the Ganges. Varanasi had given me something important.

From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Twelve - Everest and Kala Patthar

The trek to Everest Base Camp was replete with cleansing, meditative days. The beauty that struck me came in many forms: the view of Phortse village with the Khumbu in the background, the expanse stretching out from the summit of Gokyo Ri, Ama Dablam and her matriarchal command over the valley. But of all the sights of my twenty-one day trek, the view from Kala Patthar was the one that, like the wind there, nearly knocked me over.

I started to Kala Patthar from Gorak Shep, already at an altitude of 5,000 meters. I had met two Buddhist lamas on the way to Everest Base Camp and now we endeavored to reach the 5,550 meter summit of Kala Patthar together. One might conclude that being in the company of monks added an element of spirituality to the journey, but that was not the case. As much as their jovial smiles and flapping maroon robes added a certain quintessence to the Himalayan experience, the truth is that I quickly parted from them as they, unaccustomed to hiking at altitude, walked very slowly. 

Again on the uphill climb, I found myself alone. Well-acclimatized after two months of hiking in the Himalayas, I was not at risk of getting altitude sickness. That did not give the air any more oxygen, however. Just like everyone else, I labored to breathe with every step. The late afternoon wind forced me to zip my jacket to its apex, so that only my cheeks and eyes were exposed.

There was no snow on this section of the hike. The wind pushed it off of the slope and the morning sun had melted what was left. There was a well-trodden dirt path, easy to follow, and it was not long before I reached the prayer flags that marked the top.

The view was all mine and mine alone for that brief period of time. Or, better stated, I was owned by the view, by the vastness of the Khumbu range. I was a mite propped up on the mountaintop by some benevolent force that brought a whole life to a literal ascension, setting me at the highest point I had ever been.

I looked out, astounded by the stark beauty, full of wonder: How is it that a boy of fourteen-years old can read Into Thin Air and dream of the storied history of Everest and these surrounding peaks and now at thirty-three—a man—he was sitting across from her? What serendipitous fate brought it all together so elegantly? Being there, ensconced among the talus, was not a dream that I sought and struggled toward. It’s as if as soon as I closed the pages of that book, I had casually ridden a seventeen-year, lazy stream that carried me there. Even then, as the wind caterwauled against my jacket, as I watched the clouds rip from Everest’s summit, I only vaguely understood that I was in that hallowed place, and that now it became my turn to reflect on what it meant, on the adventures that had led me there.

It was a terrible place for my camera to run out of batteries. But the bad luck also sanctified the moment. It made it one that I had to internalize, making it mine in memory alone. As a result, despite leaving behind the monks, I did find mindfulness. Thirsty to remember all of the details of that beauty, I paid special attention to the chill on the wind, to the sound of the prayer flags; I watched Everest keenly, memorizing the pewter sky behind her and imagining the short distance from the summit to the limits of the Earth’s atmosphere.

I also thought about that boy that I was. What would he think of his chance to be in such a place? Had I been there when I was fourteen, would I have appreciated it as I did now? Or did the seventeen years in between prepare me better? Did my experience in other mountains in the world—the strength built up in my legs and lungs, the knowledge of just how unique these were—make my experience more vivid? Was this therefore the culmination of a pilgrimage that I had been on, but was unaware of the whole time? 

I bid the mountain farewell, knowing that the stream that had ushered me there had dried up. That particular pilgrimage was over. I was already starting down a new stream that would carry me off toward another future that I solemnly wished would be as easy and as beautiful as the one that culminated on top of Kala Patthar.

From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Eleven - Annapurna

The fresh snow has made the path more laborious to navigate. The whole of the Annapurna region is muffled by it, the stream far down below barely audible, the clouds muted as they lift up and over the behemoth peaks, dissolving into a blue sky. It seems a sin to add the Styrofoam sound of crunch-crunch to the scene. It’d be better to keep it silent, soak in the silence until it completely relaxes you.

But I’ve got miles ahead of me, and I need to push on. Each step: Crunch. Crunch.

Who would I be disturbing anyway? There is no one else here.

I imbibe a question that may have originated from the very sound of the footsteps, which vibrated through my legs, into my chest, and then appeared in my consciousness, nagging:

What is the worth of walking alone in the mountains?

I think of the parallel universes that would have me with my feet up on an ottoman in a dry-walled home, watching TV. Or in a busy bar, clinking bottles of IPAs with friends, the music too loud for good conversation. Or maybe I’m back in that café, sitting across from Her and chatting over a cup of black coffee, but this time our knees laced together like teeth on a zipper.

In this life, such occurrences are not so. Almost every day I have found myself doing this exact same thing: walking alone up mountain paths, with just my thoughts as company.

There is an overwhelming peace to it.

When you have climbed up the steep grades and your t-shirt is cool with sweat and your lungs are hot; when the fatigue in your legs is not crippling yet and you are not weak; when you step with lightness, then you can push on over the high passes, beyond the forests, where the wind is uninhibited and stings with an invigorating chill. You lose yourself in those alpine winds.

During those times you are meditating, and not just on behalf of the threadbare prayer flags fluttering in the wind. Your thoughts come and go as a natural state of things. They may sometimes be frivolous thoughts, and sometimes profound. They may cause pain, but they may also heal. Yes, in fact, they often do. You will smile and laugh aloud sometimes, the noise echoing off a far crag, or swallowed up in the wind. All the thoughts are fleeting; they change with each mile gained. Some are gone as quickly as you take a single step. It would be a good thing if I could learn to let go of the poisoned thoughts always in this way: with just a step. That’s the beauty of this kind of walking – it is easy to let go. You learn the way thoughts ought to be.

It is healthy to walk alone. It makes your heart pump strong blood through to your extremities. Your muscles do what they’re designed for. You breathe fresh air. In and out. Cold, fresh air that smells of pine in the lower altitudes, and of tundra higher up.

Whether you are paying attention or whether you are not, you will learn about yourself. Since no one is there accompanying you, you get chances to see yourself as others see you. When you meet yourself there in the mountains, and you see yourself alone, do you like what you see? Do you like who you are? The fortune is that you have no distractions from these questions; you will have to face yourself as resolutely as you would a bear in your path. Do you turn around and run? Do you bluff?

Or do you charge?

There is too much virtue in these solitary walks. When I am walking alone in the mountains, I am graced by the knowledge that by being there I am a part of the mountains. I feel their imposing presence with clarity and awe. I respect them, their majesty and inhospitality. Their beauty strikes me deep in the chest and I find it impossible to understand how vistas can hit you so profoundly, how the feeling sits with you for years after, unforgettable. The feeling can be nothing other than love. It is a good love, the best of love, because it has no pretense. Walking alone in the mountains teaches me how to love, and how to appreciate beauty.

Yes, it is good to wander alone in the mountains. Benefits abound. When I return to civilization, I return better, healed of lingering wounds and chaotic thoughts. I know who I ought to be, how I ought to feel. I am calibrated to that mountain-walking man, and when I find myself slipping into the vices of the city, into polluted, metropolitan delusion, I know where to find redemption.

* * *

I’m alone, but not lonely. Not this time.

I have the comradery of the Annapurna range. This, now, though entirely new, is familiar. I’m on foot and have the weight of a backpack instructing my pace. The air is thin in the altitude, it smells of junipers and freshly fallen snow. I know how to move here, I know my pace up the steep slopes and when to take off layers of clothes to keep cool. I know that a pinpoint of pain on a foot is a warning sign, but general soreness means that I can still go for miles.

The Annapurna Circuit to Annapurna Base Camp stretches nearly 125 miles. It is regarded as one of the most beautiful treks in the world. Like a Buddhist devotee circumambulates a stupa (only counter-clockwise), those who do “The Circuit” loop around the Annapurna range of the Himalayas, peaks reaching 26,000 feet. It’ll take me three weeks to complete.

I’m fast. I don’t mean to be, and I probably shouldn’t be, but I can’t help it. Since I was a child I have been hiking in the mountains, struggling to keep pace with my father who carried a monstrous pack and never seemed to slow down. Now that I am an adult, I walk with the same urgency as that boy. Only now I have a man’s muscles and a man’s gait, and so I find myself quickly covering ten, twelve, fifteen miles in a day. I pass groups and individuals. I pass local farmers, trains of donkeys, and porters who try and keep up but give it up all too soon. When I arrive at the guesthouses, the owners ask me where I came from that day and when I tell them, they all respond with same word: “Fast.”

I don’t think I miss anything though. The landscape is too expansive. It takes all day to traverse the base of a single mountain. I can still take it all in. I take pictures of the gorgeous vistas, and ensconce myself into ancient villages made of piled stones and fragile, decrepit wood beams. I say “Namaste” to women with ruddy cheeks and men with calloused hands and kind smiles. I appreciate the pulsing vibrations as I walk across suspension bridges that cross raging rivers. I observe sheep and buffalo, and then yak in the high tundra. No, speed does not inhibit me from being a part of this place.

I rest at the guesthouses. I order sweet milk tea and Tibetan bread and I sit out on the veranda, breathing in the dry alpine air. From these perches I wonder at the beauty of the peaks and I ask myself over and over again just how I got here. It seems like such an experience cannot be real. In some of the villages I wander up to monasteries and I turn prayer wheels and incant Om mani padme hung, like I did in Bhutan. The prayer wheels ding against a bell with every rotation. I stand alone in the monastery – even the caretakers have seemed to have disappeared – among golden Buddhas and multicolored idols. I prostrate, turn around and walk out into the sunshine and then my eyes adjust on the view of the Himalayas in every direction and I believe that I am having a religious experience.

In the evening, other trekkers arrive to the guesthouses. There are never many as it is the off-season. We form a small coterie around the woodstove and we talk little about trekking. Rather, we learn about the world, each person representing their corner of the planet.

“In Indonesia, we usually go to the beaches and spend our weekends hanging out.”

“In Korea, we have some nice beaches, but we are city people. But there are many problems right now. We have a bad president. But our democracy is making it so she will not last long. There are many people protesting.”

“Democracy is a great thing. We have the largest democracy in the world. We are still trying to rid ourselves of corruption, but it is good that we have it.”

“And Trump? What do you think about all this, Josh? How are things going in America?”

“Very poorly. I’m embarrassed by him. But we can really test our democracy now. We’ll see if our protests can really do anything. We’ll see what power the people really have.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t be too embarrassed. In Europe we are going through the same kinds of problems. What is wrong with the world? What is this illusion of a singular cultural identity? There is not one kind of Frenchman, like there is not one kind of Brit, like there is not one kind of American. What is all this fear?”

These conversations flow easily as dinner is served. Usually the meal is the illustrious dal baht, the only local food that comes with free seconds, an opportunity not often passed up by famished trekkers. “Dal baht power, twenty-four hour.” We have all learned the t-shirt slogan.

At one point I sat with a Finnish doctor, two Austrian scientists and their Nepali guide, a German psychologist, an Australian barista and a Spanish computer programmer. We talked for hours, ordering drinks, and discussing such variegated lives that had all found themselves together as brief wanderers and vagabonds, inspired by the Annapurna range. In that moment, despite having just met those people, I felt a connection that made it easy to call them friends and feel comfortable among them. I will remember that conversation as clearly as I will remember the views of the celestial peaks—both enriched me and made me feel whole. I was alone on the Annapurna trek, but also not. There were many friends I met along the way, and their company during times like these was relished.

For a final exploration on the Circuit, I added a five-day jaunt off to the Annapurna Base Camp. It had just received a meter of fresh snow and the sunrise view gave me the impression that I was standing in a cirque of clouds. It was easy there to forget the tourist infrastructure, the wide, cobblestoned trails and gaudy guesthouses, because they are so miniscule in that world where glaciated peaks surround you and soar into the sky. Nature is no less majestic because there are a few huts around and more than a few tour groups guided to that spot. The mountains still vibrate a magnetism that can’t be ignored. The Annapurna range had that power that I have always known mountains to have. 

Still, they possessed their own personality, one that I got to know like the new friends along the way. And like with the others, as I left the Annapurna range, I felt I was leaving a good friend, one that I shared challenges and moments of great beauty with. It is a friend that I will miss. One that was hard to say goodbye to. 

From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Ten - Jagat

Ride the open road from Dumre to Besisahar on a clear February morning and you will be enveloped by all that is beautiful in Nepal. It is an easy road, one that does not cut too many hairpin turns and stays relatively level in this world where steep grades are commonplace. The road meanders wistfully, just enough to keep you entertained. It is relatively free of traffic: an occasional Jeep on its way to Manang; villagers walking along the sides carrying refrigerator-sized bundles of leaves, pine needles, textiles to sell at the market. Mercifully, the road is paved all along this stretch; it is easy to look up and see it bending serpentine, ushering you into the Annapurna range off in the distance. The peaks sit stoic and bear a grandfatherly hospitality. From the vantage point of the Dumre to Besisahar road they are just becoming clear, just materializing out of the atmosphere, becoming real.

The villages that flow by are vibrant and colorful. Most of the traditional houses are gone, but the concrete homes have their novelty, painted in pink and yellow and sea green. Children play outside unattended. Mothers in traditional clothes tend to small spinach gardens, and then gather on the expansive lawns that separate the houses from the road. It appears that there is much to gossip about.

On this road I learned a bit about how one can relax while on a bike, how you can float through these scenes as if replaying a languid dream. The stresses of Kathmandu traffic and the fears that I had carried with me since crossing the Bhutanese Indian border, melted away. Had it not been for the great comfort of momentum, I may have just settled in there, laid down on the lawn sunning myself, and let the chatter of the women hypnotize me to sleep.

But beyond Besisahar I had something else entirely in store. I met up with Pratijung, who I had arranged with to volunteer at his school for a couple of weeks. He told me that I would love the village of Jagat, and that I’d just have to ride a bit longer to get there. Pratijung assumed I was better than I am.

“You can take your bike all the way to Jagat. It is a rough road, but many people do it on bikes,” he said, sitting atop his own souped-up motocross bike. “It’ll be another two or three hours.”

I looked at his high suspension, his knobby, aggressive tires, and the mud caked against the bike. “If it’s a really rough road, I’ll just leave my bike here.”

“Not too rough. I think you can do it.”

The calming reprieve from that initial ride ended as abruptly as the pavement. What followed was hours of the worst road I’ve been on so far. Solivagant jounced and cracked against the dips and huge stones. It ached and cried and I cursed and splayed my feet out to try and keep balance. I tipped the bike twice in deeply rutted and loose dirt. It came down on my leg once and it took all my strength to lift the bike and stand it up again. A family walking by stopped and watched me in shock. At a precipitous slope composed of erratic stones, I capitulated, parked my bike at a guesthouse and used their phone to call Pratijung who had stayed in Besisahar to finish some work.

“This was a bad idea. My bike isn’t meant for these roads.”

“I think you can do it. Many people with bikes like yours do it.”

“I’ve tried to do it. I’ve tipped the bike twice. I should have left it in Besisahar.”

A Jeep came by and I left Solivagant at the guesthouse, promising to retrieve it in a month, after I finished volunteering and walking the Annapurna Circuit. I was livid, believing that I had caused unnecessary damage to the bike. It was easier to leave it and try and forget about what damages I’d have to deal with in the future. I wanted to start fresh in the village and not carry any stress with me when I met the family that I would be living with. I’d deal with the bike and its problems in a month. Now I had a fresh experience ahead of me.

* * *

The school was ragtag and worn down. The smallest students, barely four years old, had streams of mucus constantly coming from their noses; they picked at scabs with surgical attention. The older students, up to fourteen-years old, stood in awkward lines at assembly and intoned the national anthem with a mocking reverence. It was a proper village school, with concrete walls that struggled to stay clean, blackboards dirtied and scarred and with no erasers to be found. The floors were muddy and cracked. There was rebar crossing the windows. The teachers, who found bits of sun to warm themselves in during the cold mornings, had no rush about schedule nor routine.

“Josh, why don’t you go teach class seven.”

“Teach them what?”

“Anything.”

“Is it English period? Do they have a textbook?”

“Sure, sure. But you can teach them anything.”

And there I was again in front of a class of students, about twelve of them. It was comfortable. The boys’ uniforms of collared shirts and slacks were stained with dirt from horseplay. They ran around in ersatz sandals. The girls were tidier, though not bereft of scuffs and stains. The older ones wore ribbons in their braids and giggled in their row. The boys were bolder. They answered questions with a confidence that masked their incorrectness. Within minutes, it seemed that the students were comfortable with me too.

For two weeks I taught half days of mostly English, but there were occasional stints of web design, biology, geology and pleas that I join them for recess. There were also ample opportunities to just sit and wait to be told what to do. The students jumped up in their seats and smiled when I would eventually be directed toward a class and told the same teach-whatever-you-want advice. We’d play speaking games mostly. They were interested in new English vocabulary that they could try out with other tourists that passed through the town.

In the evenings I sat with my host family and drank tea and ate meals. The mother took great care in seeing that I was comfortable. I’d sit with her boys, Ashim and Vipin, and help them with their homework, each vying for attention, showing off the English that they had learned that day. Mr. Surya, another teacher from the school who boarded with the family, would sit by my side and teach me Nepali with an infectious smile. He was a faithful friend and looked over my shoulder as I wrote and applied for teaching jobs and even when I was reading quietly.

“How do you find Nepal?” he would ask.

“It’s very nice. Beautiful country. Very friendly.”

“You stay in Nepal, maybe one year?”

“No. No. Only for a few months.”

Mr. Surya would look saddened by this news. “Ah. But we are good friends.”

“Yes, we are.”

And then he would begin again with the impromptu Nepali lessons.

There was a grandmother who wandered around the house. She had weather-darkened skin engraved with hachures and crevasses. Her teeth were gleaming white and perfectly aligned and her eyes bespoke of a sharp, sagacious mind. She talked to me boldly, without demureness, always in Nepali. She cackled and smiled with those perfect teeth when I couldn’t understand or when I could only reply with a simple, childlike response. She was the kind of grandmother that makes you see that old age is a blessing: you rise into enlightenment and grace; you become the most beautiful form of yourself, like an Aspen in autumn, shining with vibrant color.

When I left Jagat, the students were ready with the katar scarves. They each smeared a small fingerprint of bright red tikka onto my forehead – and the mischievous ones put it on my cheeks – and said thank you. The scarves piled around my neck and my head barely poked out from them. I shook hands with the adults and said my goodbyes and directly from Jagat I was on the Annapurna Circuit trail, where I would spend the next three weeks, wandering the mountains. 

From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Nine - Pokhara

Again, I fell victim to the all-too-easy profligacy that comes with an abundance of foamy-topped Americanos and a general, insidious craving for western food. A year in the hinterlands will do that to you. It was not a time for me to prove cultural adeptness; the opportunities for escape into the tourist trap were too many. I failed at being a traveler who slips into culture easily and adapts to the Nepali lifestyle. In truth, in Pokhara I wasn’t even good at being a tourist.

When I first I arrived, I drove straight to the fringes of the city, along the shores of Fewa lake and back onto bad dirt roads. On a tip from hippies in Kathmandu, I thought I could get luxury accommodation cheap in that part of town. I pulled into the first gaudy lodging I could find and asked the price.

“Six thousand rupees a night,” a soft-smiling Briton told me.

I attempted a composed response. “Oh. I was looking more for six hundred.”

“You’ll have to go down the road.”

“Three thousand,” they quoted at the next place.

It wasn’t going well. I found one hovel with a man sitting outside who glowered as I asked the price.

“Seven hundred.”

“I’ll take it,” I said right off the bat, not seeing the room first. I wanted to convince him that I could handle anything. 

He opened the door to what could easily be mistaken as a cell for solitary confinement. Once the cockroaches scattered under the five-foot long bed, I could see that I had been taken in. He should have been paying me to stay there.

That night I went back into the main part of the tourist strip, found a room for five hundred rupees a night that was large, comfortable, had hot water and only one cockroach that I could see. I moved there the next morning.

The scene of foreigners in Pokhara was its own amusing experience, worth a good long sit in a café just to observe the interactions. This is what I did for most of the time, the few days that I stayed in the city. One such interaction stood out as a favorite:

The Reiki Master and the Christian Missionary

“We’re here on a mission,” she said.

Blonde. Slightly less than puritanical dress, low cut at the chest, sleeveless. She looked to be barely twenty.

“A mission to do what?”

“To spread the word of Jesus Christ.”

He looked himself a bit like a pre-Crucifixion Jesus Christ. Straight brown hair almost to the shoulder. Full beard. About the same age as the girl. He smiled at her often and stood close.

“Do you believe in Jesus?”

“No. I’m a Reiki master.”

“Oh wow. A reggae master. That’s cool.”

“No, a Reiki master. Do you know what that is?”

“Sorry, no.”

“I heal people through energy.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“What? You don’t believe me?”

“I only believe Jesus has the power to heal others. If you believe in him though, he can transfer that power through someone else. I’ve also done healings.”

“Really? How does that work?”

“Well. It’s hard to explain. What if I show you? Do you mind if I touch your shoulder?” She looked down at the floor and the closed here eyes.

“Dear Lord Jesus. I’m asking You to bless this man and bless his heart and heal him so that he may see the Divine Light. I’m asking that You pour Your grace unto him so that he may be healed and enjoy the fruits of Your blessed Kingdom. Thank you Jesus for heeding my prayers and we will honor You now and forever. Amen.”

She removed her hand from his shoulder and looked at him. He averted his eyes.

“If you believe in Him, you will be healed. We’ve all been witness to it.”

She glanced toward three other girls sitting behind her. One looked dissatisfied, another ignored the conversation and continued to draw in her sketchbook.

“We’ve all experienced the love of Jesus.”

“Well. Yeah. Thanks,” he said, now less enthusiastic than he was at the beginning. “I guess it won’t work if I don’t believe in it though, huh?”

“Well, we’ll just have to see.”

“Right.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I guess I’ll get going now.”

Perky, she twisted around in a bound and faced her friends, a resplendent smile across her face. The girls continued about their business and the Reiki master left the café, slumping his shoulders, looking a little less powerful.