Phil Druker/Department of English/ University of Idaho

Chapter 3: The Trail to the 21^st Century   (© Phil Druker  2009)

Moving On

When I opened my tent door in the morning a troop of neighborhood children were sitting in the doorway waiting for me to appear.  They had big smiles and snotty noses, and they greeted with “Good morning!”

For me it was a rough night—I had to get up five times to pee.  Still, the cold, clear view of the stars and the mountains glowing in the starlight made each trip worth the effort. Each time, I wanted to linger, but the cold sent me scurrying back to the warmth of my bag. Tea and chang—I muttered.  They made me pee too much.  Being well hydrated seemed like small consolation when I had to get up the third, fourth, and then the fifth time.  I tried to be civil to the neighborhood welcoming committee.

Gelbu made pancakes for breakfast.  They filled me up but didn’t give me any energy.  My arthritic hips ached, my bowels ached, my head was foggy.    I blamed myself for drinking Sonam’s delicious chang and yak butter tea.  I got mostly packed then went to the toilet.  When I returned, Erdine had disassembled my tent although I still had gear inside, and somehow he had pulled apart the tent poles so the elastic cord that held them together came undone.  I came undone.

There was some good news however: the two horses could carry more than the three yaks. Besides, we had eaten a huge portion of the food we brought. This meant we could lighten the loads in our backpacks by at least five pounds.  Our larder looked so plentiful we left treats with Erdine and Sonam.

The horseman, a wiry man in his late forties named Gyeltsen, arrived with his two, chest-high, gray horses.  Like the other men in Tingku, he wore western clothes but kept his uncut hair braided with a red cloth that he wrapped around his head. For a necklace, he wore a polished agate surrounded by two globes of orange red coral, and in each earlobe he wore a stone of turquoise.   His oversized false teeth caused him to have a perpetual smile.

As he figured how much gear we had and how much it all weighed so he could load the horses, Erdine, Sonam, her children, the grandma, and the neighborhood children gathered for photos and to say goodbye.  Erdine told us that when we left Charka, the next town we planned to visit, we would be leaving Dolpo, and so he wished us a happy journey on these last days of our trip through this land, which he called “special.” We thanked him for his invaluable assistance and the others for their wonderful hospitality and, and wished Erdine the strength to persevere with his projects and Sonam good luck with her fields.  I wanted to leave him some money, but at this point Charla, Laurie and I worried we wouldn’t have enough money to pay Gyeltsen.  So all we could leave was best wishes.  As we left the school and our friends, we all had tears in our eyes.

Later, in Kathmandu, I would buy Norbu’s painting of Tingku—a 20- by 15-inch depiction of a harvest scene: yellow barley blowing in the wind, a horseman riding into town following yaks and a herder crossing the bridge. In a cave, on the edge of town, sits a hermit.  The zhong, the stupas, the stone houses, and the hilltop monastery all stand under yellow and tan peaks that rise to billowing clouds and the blue sky.  Everyone is smiling—even the horses, the dog, and the yaks. (See p. 209.)

We walked through the village and toward the river, hiked past a group of old stupas--their white, tall prayer flags flapping in the cool morning breeze—and past a long mani wall with newly carved stones piled on its edges.  The lane wound its way through the communities and fields of Tingku down to the river rushing from the peaks to the east and the Tibetan border.  We passed through the walk-through stupa guarding the wooden bridge that crossed the river, crossed the bridge, ascended the bank on the other side, past a line of old stupas, and headed south towards Charka, which we figured was two long days away.

As we walked along the flat south of town and past the last stupa wall, we noticed that rocks had been cleared from the area and I wondered why anyone would do this.  I guessed someone had started to create a field, but somehow it looked as if someone had tried to build a landing strip. I later learned that indeed, during the early 1960s a Swiss engineer, who had come armed with a gun and a radio, lived in Tingku and had spent a winter clearing an airstrip to serve as a means of supplying the Khampa rebels who roamed the area fighting the Chinese takeover of Tibet.  Through the 1950s and until the 1970s, when President Nixon forged the U.S. rapprochement with China, the CIA had supported Tibetan rebels—a group known as the Chu Shi Gan Druk (“four rivers, six mountain ranges”).  The CIA had even brought the rebels to the U.S. to train them in guerilla tactics. The rebels mainly worked out of Mustang—the kingdom within Nepal just to the east of Dolpo.  The airfield was never used, but during much of that era the Khampa rebels had more political influence in Dolpo than the Nepali government had, and their influence continued until 1974 when the Dalai Lama requested that they adopt non-violent tactics.

We walked and walked and walked up the river valley and.  Red and pink quartz glimmered in the bright sunlight.  I finally caught up with Gelbu, and he apologized for Erdine but insisted it wasn’t his fault—he was just trying to help. I said I was sorry that I had gotten angry.  I didn’t want to get angry, and I didn’t want to be grouchy in the morning, I told Gelbu, but I ached especially in the mornings so much that I couldn’t help it. 

“Do you understand the word ‘cancer’?” I asked.  He said yes and asked if it was cured.  I told him we didn’t know and wouldn’t know until I returned home in the summer.  I began to cry.  I walked on sobbing but had no idea why I was crying except that I was frustrated that I felt like crap on this beautiful day, high in the Himalaya, walking with friends who treated me extremely well, and a Sherpa who is dedicated to making sure we were all comfortable and safe.  Then, I was crying because I made Gelbu feel bad.

We caught up with Laurie, and by noon, the little energy produced by the breakfast pancakes had long been spent, so I convinced Laurie and Gelbu to stop for lunch in a green meadow by the river, even though Charla was far ahead of us hiking with Gyeltsen.  By the clear, swift river which ran over a bed of rose and red quartz, in the warm sun and cool breeze, yellow and pink sub-alpine flowers were blossoming. The mountains above formed low, long barren ridges.  After lunch we caught up with Charla, who had eaten lunch with Gyeltsen in a meadow where he let his horses graze. She reported he was upset and confused that we didn’t stop to make a big afternoon meal.

Having expected a long break, Gyeltsen had unloaded his horses, so I steadied his horses as he reloaded them, and Gelbu explained that we didn’t stop for big lunches because it took too much time and fuel.  Laurie and Charla headed up the trail, and we three men followed. The brass bells decorating the horses’ necks tinkled as we continued up the river.  

Later, I was walking a few hundred feet behind Laurie.  Bored with my own thoughts and wanting to talk, I hurried to catch up to her.  Just as I was almost at her side, my right foot caught a rock and I fell face first on the ground alongside her.  This, of course, scared the daylights out of her, but she was concerned that I had hurt myself.  I hadn’t; I just hurt my ego. Later, she joked that she had never had a man fall for her like that.

As I walked, my right foot seemed to find every rock in the trail—even if it was the only rock in sight.  I vowed to carry my trekking pole in my right hand, which the lesion in my brain had weakened slightly.  In fact, my right side was weaker than my left, and this made my right hand rather clumsy.  As my doctor said, I had become extremely left handed.  Carrying the trekking pole in my right hand, I told myself, would strengthen that hand and keep me more aware of my right foot.  This was a hard promise to keep— I found it so much easier to do everything with my more coordinated left hand.  However, focusing on my right side became my mantra for the rest of the day.

Around 5 PM we reached a flat where the river branched and the mountains spread out to form a broad valley.  We stopped here to camp.  The place was called Khajyang, Gyeltsen told us, and our best guess using the map was that we were at 4600 meters, about 15,000 feet.  We went to the river to wash, but the river’s edge was covered with ice.  I dabbed the cold water on my arms, feet, and face. Charla was more insistent and washed her long, strawberry blond hair.  Horned larks sang in the brush. At sunset a lammergeyer winged over the flat and glided up the river valley. Before dinner, I took out my superglue to repair my disintegrating boots.  Gyeltsen eyed the superglue tube and asked to use some pointing at his false teeth, which had come loose.  At first, I didn’t want to share any because I was quickly using up my supply but decided better.  He expertly squirted a dab or two in strategic places in his mouth and returned the tube.

Another Day, Another Pass—Charka La (5035 meters/17,500 ft)

In the morning, our tents were crusted with ice and Gyeltsen had started a fire with a pile of twigs and limbs taken from the low brush that grew on the hills above our camp.  At breakfast, Gelbu boiled potatoes and spiced them with curry for our lunch, and he teased me about not getting up. “I thought you died,” he said. Yes, I responded, I finally slept through the night, for the first time since leaving Kathmandu, 15 days before.  It had been a perfectly silent night: no dogs, goats, or sheep. No jets.  I realized we hadn’t heard the sound of any engines since we left Dunai, where there was a generator.  The only reminders that we were in the modern world were the Chinese shoes and clothes we saw people wearing, a radio and tape recorder in Saldang, and solar panels running dim lights in some village houses or gompas, and us.

The sun rose over the low ridges and we finally began to warm up.  With our tents drying quickly in the sun, we packed, and we were soon hiking again. In the draws on the mountain sides grew purple brush.  The meadows were dotted with yellow and white cushion flowers.  Black schist—like slate or shale but with needles of sparkling quartz crystals—replaced the red and pink quartz along the trail.  I walked along repeating “om mani padme hum” and when I got bored with that, I repeated Charla’s mantra of “peace, joy, happiness” and when I get bored with that I walked along chanting “thank you, thank you…” with each step.  And when I got bored with that I repeated, “each step counts” or “it’s not over till it’s over.”  Much of the time, I was just walking, my mind blank and focused on each step, the rocks, and the trail ahead.  I wanted to look at the spectacular peaks and river gorges we were trekking by but the trail, while wide, was rocky and each footstep demanded attention.  Each step counted.  A mere sprained ankle, here in these isolated mountains—still five hard days of hiking to any kind of modern help—would be disastrous.

A man and his young son passed us.  Later, when we stopped for lunch, they joined us.  They were going to Jomsom to buy supplies: cooking oil and kerosene. The man complained of a toothache so I gave him an aspirin.  I was shocked when he chewed it as if it were candy or perhaps a magic potion.  Later, a young man on horseback passed us.  He said he was going to supply a yak herder, but judging from the load of plastic bottles on his second horse, we guessed the main supply was chang.

We hiked over snow fields as we headed up to a Charka La, then trekked by some small lakes that reflected perfectly the black, snow-frosted peaks above.  The trail took us over one grassy alpine summit, then over another and another.  Up here, the air smelled like spring: budding brush, greening grass, blooming flowers, melting snow.  To the northeast, the view of mountains piling upon mountains formed our horizon and the border with Tibet. 

As we began to ascend the final pitch to the pass, a long wisp of a rainbow formed horizontally across the perfectly blue sky. It hung over the stair-stepped strata peak that rose from the pass.  Gyeltsen told us the peak, Charka Thara, was a holy mountain to which people come every August to perform a kora around the 19,000 foot peak.  The rainbow, he said, was a good omen.

At the 17,500 foot pass we were greeted by the usual massive rock cairn covered with numerous prayer flags left by pilgrims.  More amazing was the view of Dhaulagiri Himal crested by the 8167 meter Dhaulagiri summit. The world’s seventh highest peak stood less than 20 miles to the south. From this pass, we had a view of the whole ten-mile length of the Dhaulagiri massif as it ran east to west. It was a huge complex that rose abruptly from 11,000 feet to over 26,000 in a mere 8 miles. Above the Dhaulagiri massif hung two, white, flat-bottomed, round-topped lenticular clouds, one on top of the other.  I clicked photos of the amazing view until my camera read “chip full.” This was my last chip.

Although the climb to Charka La took us up a long incline that followed the Keheng Chu, the trail now plummeted into a deep gorge and somewhere below was Charka, our destination for the night.

We hiked down for another three hours beneath the backdrop of the Dhaulagiri Himal.  Lammergeyers and golden eagles soared on thermals.  In the brush, we heard redstarts and warblers singing.  Finally we saw Charka two or three miles down the valley, a large fort-like village spread along the banks of the Barbung Chu.  On the opposite side of the river stood the ruins of a monastery.  Gelbu, Gyeltsen, and Laurie got far ahead of Charla and me, so we were not able to see where they went when they entered the maze of stone walls that formed the town’s narrow lanes.  In an attempt to see where the others went, we decided to hike up to the monastery on a knoll above town.

At the gompa, a horde of children dressed in their best, bright red and gold traditional Tibetan robes met us.  We snapped photos of the enthusiastically obliging children, some who even had newly washed hair. The brave boys shouted, “Good Morning!!!” even though the sun was about to set.  A woman arrived and told us a lama was due to visit the next day, so they had cleaned the sanctuary for the visit. The children were dressed in preparation for the lama’s visit.  We asked if we could go into the shrine, and she said yes, but we had to promise to keep it clean.  In Nepali, Charla promised we would.  A man arrived with the gompa key, he unlocked the door, and we entered the simple, 700-year-old Nyingma shrine with one large plaster Buddha flanked by bodhisattvas and gods.  The walls were painted with the usual demons on the left side and scenes from Buddha’s life on the other.  Like many gompas, the wall by the entrance had a newly painted wheel of life, a depiction of the Tibetan Buddhist cosmos, which shows the five realms that people can be reincarnated into: hell, the land of the never-satiated ghosts (beings with large stomachs but very small mouths), the realm of the animals, the realm of gods (powerful beings that are unhappy because they fear losing their power), and the ream of humans. We left a small donation and exited into the setting sun.  The children wanted us to take more photos, but we had to beg off saying we needed to find the others.  They pointed down the hill towards the downriver end of town; then they showed us how to get to the rock-walled main lane through town.

This lane was half flooded with water from a broken irrigation ditch, and the flood had washed filth and excrement to the sides of the lane, so we picked our way through the rushing water, the mud, and the sewage to the end of village where Gyeltsen found us an open field by the river to camp.  It was a filthy spot, and before we could set up our tents we had to scrape away dog shit and litter. An army of grimy children arrived to watch and to help.  Some begged for candy; others asked for pencils.  One little girl kept pestering us, poking her head into our tents, inspecting any gear left outside, patting the sides of the tents.  After about an hour of this, I could not stand it anymore so I clapped my hands and angrily told her to go home.  An adult came by, scolded her, and the little girl left, but Laurie and Charla were angry at me—“This is their village, and we’re guests” Charla reminded me. I shrugged and walked to the stream where I tried to wash but was disgusted by the filth and plastic caught on the rocks.  I hoped Gelbu would remember to boil the water long and hard that night. 

Sometime in the recent past, an aid group had come to Charka and built a water system with spigots set in concrete stands and fed by plastic pipe that ran from a spring above town.  Now, however, the pipes were broken and the system stood disused.  As it turned out, Charka figured prominently in the making of the internationally acclaimed movie, Himalaya.  Most of the scenes depicting village life and the fields were shot there.  Although people in the area were proud that the movie vividly portrayed their heritage and the region’s incredible scenery, the people of Charka had bad feelings about the movie and its director, Eric Valli, who apparently promised the town’s headman that the revenue from the movie would come back to the town and that they would receive money to build a new school and gompa.  That money never arrived.  Also, people in the area hoped that the movie would cause more tourists to come to Dolpo; however, the government kept in place its expensive fees for entry permits—$700 dollars per week.   Despite that, tourism—especially from France and Germany—did increase in the region for a couple years after the film’s release, but then the political events in Nepal conspired to dramatically reduce tourism: the murder of the royal family and the increasingly violent Maoist insurrection all but shut tourism down in Dolpo. 

People we met during our trek in the area commonly complained that the Nepali government and various conservation organizations had given large sums of money to develop the Annapurna Conservation Area, where droves of tourists flock every year because of the wide, well-maintained trails and the well-developed tourist infrastructure.  But in Phoksumdo National Park that encompasses much of Upper Dolpo, the trails remained difficult, and the government had provided a bare minimum of infrastructure.  Although Dolpo formally became part of Nepal in the early 1800s when the nation-state was formed, the government in Kathmandu had never done much with the area. Taxes were collected through the government in Mustang to the east or through the district offices of Jumla to the west.  Schools were rarely built.  Dunai, the district capital, remained isolated until the little airport 15 kilometers away in Juphal was constructed in the 1980s.  Indeed, it was not until the movie Himalaya became wildly popular in Nepal that the area even entered the national consciousness. When I returned home and showed my slides to Nepali friends, they could not believe that I had taken those photos in Nepal.

As we ate dinner, young men on horses galloped up and down the lane just by our campsite as if they were practicing for a race.  Wonderful horsemen, they had a way of leaning back in their saddle when they rode fast—opposite of what we do in the West.  It was a crowded lane, full of adults carrying farm tools as they returned from their fields, children, herds of goats and sheep.  Because the young men’s squinty eyes and swagger told us they were drunk, I worried that someone would get hurt. Of course, no one did.  Meanwhile, a family was crossing the wide, deep river: the husband helped his young son step and jump from boulder to slippery boulder; his wife followed with a young child clutching her back. A fall could have meant catastrophe at worst, wet clothes at least, but the family nimbly crossed the river without incident.  I doubted I could have done that even with my good hiking boots and no load.

We settled into our tents.  Gyeltsen disappeared to get drunk with one of his lady friends, so Gelbu decided to sleep in the kitchen tent to guard our gear and food. This meant I had the luxury of having the whole tent to myself. As dark descended, the usual din of dogs barking cranked up over the sound of the river rushing by our camp.   Around midnight, I awoke to a dog barking just outside the tent.  I ignored the noise for about five minutes, gave up, stuck my head out of the tent, and shouted, “Shut up.”  Amazingly, it ran off.  

The Edge of the Abyss

In the morning, Gyeltsen reappeared to feed his horses.  Folk from the neighborhood came down to the river to wash and brush their teeth while groups of villagers wearing their best clothes streamed past camp on their way to the gompa to see the visiting lama.  Despite the drumming of yak skin drums and blaring of 15-foot-long Tibetan horns, I could not get Charla, Laurie, or Gelbu interested in going up to see the pageant.  They all wanted to hit the trail as soon as possible.  I considered bolting and going alone to see the spectacle, but I knew that Laurie and Charla were going to return to work late, and because they were both scheduled to leave Nepal within a couple months after the trip, they were looking forward to returning to Kathmandu to complete their projects.  That day we had a very long hike ahead of us. So I packed and headed down the trail with the rest of the crew. 

As we hiked on, I managed to take the wrong trail and ended up on a ridge far above my companions.  I shouted down to Gelbu, who waved up to me, and pointed to a faint grazing path leading down to the main trail.  The soft rock of the canyon wall offered reasonably good footing as I picked my way down. I felt bad that I couldn’t even follow the trail, and when we arrived at a deep river ford that would require taking off my boots to cross the seething river strewn with slippery-looking boulders, I insisted on scouting upstream to see if I could find a better place to cross.  Gyeltsen said there was no better crossing, but I tromped off anyway and soon saw a new suspension bridge standing a half mile up the river, but to arrive at that span would have required climbing a steep ridge.  Plus, across the river, the bridge appeared to terminate at the top of a cliff, which offered no easy way down.  So I tromped back to the crossing, pulled off my boots, and allowed Gelbu to help me ford the cold, thigh-deep torrent. On the other side, Laurie and Charla had already put on their boots and sat waiting to trek on.  I apologized for the delay and they tried to make me feel better by saying they hadn’t want to cross there either. 

Here the trail split:  the main trail led to the east and the kingdom of Mustang, a district of Nepal with its own monarchy.  That trail forked to the north to Jyanche La (5534 meters, 18,000 feet) at the border with Tibet—just 7 miles to the northeast.  It was over this pass that the Buddhist monk, Ekai Kawaguchi, secretly entered Tibet in 1899 to collect Sanskrit texts on Buddhism, and thus became the first person from Japan to enter Tibet.  He managed to stay in Tibet for two years before he was caught, considered a spy in that closed country, which tried to seal itself off from foreigners, and expelled. 

We took the less-used trail heading the south, which climbed a steep ridge some 1000 feet above the river, and at noon we stopped for lunch on a sunny meadow high above the confluence of the Barbung Chu and the Thajang Chu, which we had just crossed and which we would follow for the next two days. As we ate our  lunch of fried chapattis—Sherpa bread—and cold, boiled potatoes coated in curry powder, we took in the view of Charka La and Charka Thara —the pass and the peak that seemed so large the day before. Now they seemed distant and insignificant against the backdrop of the huge surrounding peaks.

We trekked on over a trail strewn with large rocks that seemed to enjoy tripping me whenever I didn’t pay close attention to each foot step, and we passed stunning red cliffs that dropped hundreds of feet down to the Thajang Chu.  On this eighteenth day of walking, I had thought about everything I could possibly think of to distract myself as I plodded on.  So, I walked trying to concentrate on my right side—the side weakened by the two-inch-long lesion in my brain that doctors attributed to multiple sclerosis.  I attempted to remain super aware of where I placed my right foot so I would not trip.   Because I had kicked so many rocks with that foot, my right boot was disintegrating: each time I had kicked a rock, the super glue and the rubber holding the worn-out boot’s toe together scraped away.  If I was not more careful, I feared I would walk right out of that boot before the trip ended. As I concentrated on my right side I realized that I was not using my right eye, so I squinted my left eye and tried to equalize my strength and effort. I still stumbled along, but this effort caused my thoughts to wander less as we hiked up the spectacular valley.

I might have felt that I was struggling with my pack, broken-down boots, and weakened right side, but watching Gyeltsen made me realize that I had it pretty damn good.  That wiry, maybe 50-year-old man packed the large dhoko full of kitchen gear while leading his two horses.  He and Gelbu did not get along well especially after Gelbu found him going through his gear early the previous morning.  Now, Gelbu called Gyeltsen “Bhote,” a derogatory term for hill people, who the fastidious Sherpas often looked down on because they did not like to bathe. But we found Gyeltsen to be a loyal, hard worker whose knowledge of the trail was unfailing.

We hiked on into the evening as long gray fingers of clouds filled the sky, but Gyeltsen said it would not rain.  As we continued up the canyon, which flattened into a broad valley, we passed herds of blue sheep grazing on the hills high above us. Some of the large rams had horns that arced nearly three feet above the crowns of their heads.  Hiking through the radiant afternoon, alone behind everyone else, I had a vision of myself floating through the ethereal landscape as a set of lips attached to expanding and contracting lungs that were suspended over skeletal legs and feet.

At rest stops and at dinner, our talk now turned to what would happen at the end of the trip—still at least four or five days off.  We did not know what trail we would take to get down to our trekking destination, Jomsom, where we would take an airplane to Pokhara and then to Kathmandu. But the flights from Jomsom were notoriously over-booked.  Gyeltsen said the route we wanted to take was too steep for horses so we would have to travel through the southwest corner of the Mustang.  Our map showed the trail we planned to take but showed nothing but contour lines where Gyeltsen said we should go. We did not have the required permits to travel in Mustang, which cost $70 per day, and we had no idea how carefully the trail would be patrolled, but Gyeltsen said not to worry: no one from the government was ever on that trail.  There was nothing to do for these uncertainties. 

The evening’s trek took us through rolling mountains and up to a high plain full of purple brush beginning to bud out.  Under snow-covered peaks, not far from a yak herder’s camp with one large, black yak wool tent, we stopped for the night.  White, yak dung smoke filtered through the tent’s ceiling; like the homes in the area, it had no chimney.  As far as we could tell, we were camped at nearly 16,000 feet.

It was Mother’s Day, and in my journal I noted that I missed Jeannie and sent prayers of good wishes to my 83-year-old mother back in Minnesota. After 17 days of trekking, my hands and feet were a mess.  All my clothes were filthy and dusty.  When I went down to the icy river to wash before dinner, I saw again why people in Dolpo did not seem to care much about their dirty hands and faces—you washed and you just got dirty right again anyway.  Plus, the water was so cold and the brisk wind had such a sharp bite, that washing was not all that pleasant. I had not washed my hair for over two weeks now.  From experience I knew I could deal with my filthy hair as long as I did not start to scratch my scalp, which would cause me to break through the crust and make my scalp itch even more.  Happily, the cold kept me from sweating and this made my dirty hair bearable.

I sat eating dinner with Gyeltsen and Gelbu outside the cook tent, admiring the fiery red sunset and bright setting Venus, while Laurie and Charla ate in their tent to stay out of the cold.  The yak herder from the neighboring camp joined us.  He kept his calloused hands busy spinning yak wool on a wooden spindle, wore a tattered chubba with a yak fleece lining, and carried a foot-long knife in his belt along with an awl he had carved out of yak bone that neatly fit in a yak-bone sheath. Like so many of the people we met in Dolpo, this drokpa, a nomadic yak herder, had wildly long hair, a self-assured smile, and a calm weather worn face.  I admired his quiet self-reliant manner, independence, and his ability to sustain himself and family in these high, rugged, mountains.  Gelbu, Gyeltsen, and the yak man shared some rough chang, which they offered to me. I drank a little, and then told them they should enjoy it for me. 

The next morning, the wind was frigid, but Gelbu was up just after daybreak making tea, breakfast, and lunch.  The sun quickly rose over the low mountain ridges, warmed us and dried our frosted tents, so we got an early start.  A relatively easy day lay ahead, we thought.  According to our map, Thuje La stood just a short distance and a steady but not steep climb away, but Gyeltsen insisted that the most direct trail route was too steep for his horses, so we still didn’t know how we would descend from the 16,800 foot pass.

The morning hike proved pleasant—through open alpine tundra so for once, the trail was dirt rather than rocks, boulders, scree, or mud, and this made for easy walking.  The air was high, clear, and pleasantly warm. The sky was lucid blue.  While stopped for a short lunch in an alpine meadow, Gyeltsen explained that with the coming monsoon the barren, tan mountains that surrounded us would all turn green.  Then, people would bring their yak herds from the lowlands to these high pastures until the weather turned cold and dry again in September. The tinkling of his horses’ bells punctuated his words, and that sound along with his exuberance, which needed no translation, made it easy to picture the happy scene of nomad families lounging outside the yak wool tents in the summer sun. When we asked about the pass and our trail for the afternoon, however, he answered with such vague words that neither Laurie nor Charla could figure out what lay ahead.

We hiked on.  Guarded by 6000 meter (20,000 foot) snow peaks on the north and the massive, glaciated 7000 meter (23,000 feet) and higher summits of the Dhaulagiri Himal, the pass gently rose through a broad tundra that appeared to fall off the edge of the earth somewhere ahead.  As we marched across the tundra, I mused that the ridge to the north would be easy enough to climb, and despite my tired legs, wished we had the time to climb it just to see the view.

As we approached the pass, we spotted a small group of people arise from the abyss of the pass ahead—the first travelers we had seen that day.  As the group moved slowly towards us, we could see that the people all wore the purple robes of Buddhist monks.  When we met, we realized the group consisted of five nuns who had just ascended the pass’s other side.  Each looked exhausted, dazed, and frightened.  One woman wearing down parka was limping, barely able to walk.  The horseman with them who was hauling their food and belongings looked worried.  We had hoped to learn a little about the pass, but they answered Charla’s questions with a just few words and staggered down the trail, intent on reaching some shelter below that nearly 17,000 foot tundra. So, we never learned what lay ahead nor did we find out where the nuns were going.

Finally, we passed a large rock cairn marking what our map called Thuje La (5120 meters, 16,800 feet).  I was looking forward to descending: my legs were tired and cold the wind was cutting into my face.  But instead of heading down into the gorge, Gyeltsen led us to the north and started up a steep, no very steep, trail that headed up to a notch on a ridge that our map marked at around 5600 meters (18,400 feet), nearly as high as the pass we crossed to enter Upper Dolpo.

We were climbing a distinct trail up the ridge I had earlier lusted after, and the prospect of a great view coupled with climbing high energized me.  The ridge was gravelly so the trail sloughed off underneath each footstep.  In places, the ridge fell away at a 45 degree angle exposing us to over a thousand foot fall into the gorge below. Charla, of course, happily met this challenge, but the exposure made Laurie slow down and I walked with her. 

As we ascended—step, step, inhale, step, step, exhale, the trail steepened, the exposure worsened, and the head wind increased dramatically. Some gusts buffeted us so violently that they stopped us in our tracks, and other gusts threatened to blow us off our feet.  For nearly an hour, we continued climbing—step, inhale, step, exhale—making sure each step counted in the soft gravel. In the worst places, I looked only at where I was placing each footstep.  Looking down the thousands of feet of exposure made me dizzy and a fall would have surely brought disaster. 

At the pass, we were greeted by an even stronger wind that was ferociously whipping and snapping the few prayer flags and prayer scarves tied to the cairn marking the summit. Gyeltsen, who had ascended quickly, had already left the pass with the horses—the thin air made them weak. Gelbu also wanted to leave this frigid, high pass quickly.  Despite the wind, I preferred to linger, snap a few photos, and take in the fantastic views of the snowy, glacier-covered Dhaulagiri Himal, just 15 miles to the south. Although we couldn’t see the whole himal, we had a view that extended from the 8167 meter (26,794 feet) summit of Dhaulagiri down to a broad valley below, which the map called “Hidden Valley,” and to the gorge below, which at around 4500 meters created a huge relief that totaled nearly 3500 meters (12,000 feet). I was hoping that we would have a first view of the Annapurna Himal to the east, but a red rock, 20,000 foot ridge extended from the pass to block the view.  It felt like standing on the edge of the world.

Going Down, Down, Down

The trail down was steep, but soft snow and scree, mushy in places from recently melted snow, provided good footing. My tired legs were happy to be descending, and the scree ridge offered respite from the fierce, blasting wind.  Charla, Laurie and I quickly descended to an ice-covered river called Sough Phedi.  Here, at 5100 meters (17,000 feet) we stopped to eat a snack while we admired the huge pass we had just crossed.  We all felt relieved that this last high pass was not too difficult, and we wanted to camp here at this pleasant high meadow.  But Gyeltsen and Gelbu had gone ahead, so we shouldered our packs and headed down the trail, which contoured the ridge.

As we walked along, the trail became less distinct, and soon it climbed steeply towards a tiny notch at the crest of the ridge.  We stared at the vague footpath, the steep climb to the north, and the rocky notch in disbelief, wondering if somehow we had missed the main trail into the gorge to the south.  There was no trail down.  There were, however, horse hoof prints in the trail heading up.  So, up we climbed.

The sun was beginning to set, and we hadn’t seen Gyeltsen or Gelbu for some time.  Charla and I worried that we were lost, and I wondered what it would be like staying up here without any gear for the night. We each carried our sleeping bags and all our clothes, but we had no tents or tarps, so sleeping on this high ridge exposed to the wind would make for a very cold night, especially since there was nothing to start a fire with and we carried only a little food.

We reached the notch (marked on our map at 4990 meters—16, 400 feet) and surveyed the incredibly faint trail that plummeted precipitously and crossed a steep scree slope above hundred-foot cliffs.  The gravel, which had earlier provided sure footing, had become loose shale that was broken into long shards reminiscent of petrified wood.  We started down. With each step, the rock slid and rolled like marbles beneath our feet, gained speed, and cascaded with a clanking metallic sound down the slope.  The exposure was a horrifying 1000 plus feet. We poked around a sharp bend hoping to see Gelbu or Gyeltsen, but the trail disappeared around a cliff.  Being on this steep scree slope so late in the day worried me, but before I had a chance to voice concern Gelbu appeared.  Smiling as if we had nothing to worry about, he took Laurie’s pack and encouraged us to keep moving so we could get down to camp before dark.

Charla—ever the trooper—led the way.  Gelbu held Laurie’s hand to assure her and helped me pass some tricky places around cliff bands.  With each step, shards of shale tumbled and clattered down the steep slope.  How, I wondered, had Gyeltsen ever gotten the horses to descend this slippery rock face?  Later, Gelbu told us that he and Gyeltsen had hobbled each horse’s front legs, then led them down step by step.

Finally, having reached some less precarious ground, Gelbu hurried on down to the campsite to make dinner.  The sun was setting and the snow-covered Annapurna Himal glowed pink some 20 miles to the east.  We followed the shale trail down and finally reached a tiny, grass-covered knoll upon which Gelbu and Gyeltsen had perched our camp.

Above us stood the cliffs and steep shale slopes we had just clambered down.  A waterfall cascaded and roared past our camp and down the cliff below. In the growing darkness, we could see the next day’s trail—a cliff and canyon hugger.  But how we would descend and how we would cross the gorge and the huge, glacier-fed river below was anyone’s guess.  Gyeltsen didn’t want to talk about it.

My digital camera ran out of battery power at the day’s high pass, so I asked Charla and Laurie to be sure to take lots of pictures of these last days of our trek. We ate dinner in the dark, and I went to bed wondering how I could have figured that this last pass—a pass that our guide Gyeltsen did not want to talk about—was going to be easy.  Then, considering that Gyeltsen did not want to talk about the next day’s trail, I worried about what lay ahead.

Songla to Songda

The next morning we arose before the sun climbed over the serrated crest of the Annapurna Himal.  Of course, the pre-dawn 15,000 foot, clear air was frigid, but Gelbu made a large breakfast and served up lots of tea, which we drank in the warm morning sun. Soon we were trekking down the mountainside into the gorge of the Lungpa Chu (River).  As we descended, we entered small groves of juniper and for the first time in over 20 days smelled the sweet scent of pine trees.

The trail was steep and the footing treacherous.  After an hour of descending the north side of the canyon, we arrived at a flat where the trail forked: the trail to the left looked promising because it did not lead to the cliff and gorge faces, which loomed to the right.  Gyeltsen scouted it for a few minutes, returned, and led us to the right along an improbable trail that crossed a yellow cliff face headed towards the precipitous gorge.  Amazingly, the trail was not nearly as bad as it appeared from a distance. For the next two hours we hiked down and down the steep canyon wall. A pair of traders passed us, leading a horse each, and again I was amazed that they could get their animals up and down this ridiculously precarious pass.  By 10 AM we crossed a small metal bridge over the Lungpa Chu.  In two hours, we had descended 1200 meters (4000 feet).

Then the trail took us back up nearly 1000 feet and along the south side of the canyon rim.  Mostly the trail was rocky but easy to follow and provided good footing.  In places, however, the exposure was tremendous and required hiking across washes of loose rock, where a slip would have been catastrophic. We kept our eyes focused on the trail ahead and planted each footstep with care.  After 20 days of hiking, I had trained myself to picture Jeannie and her smile when we came to difficult spots in the trail.  That image encouraged me to keep going.

Charla and Laurie started to cross one of these washes, but half way across Laurie froze.  Despite Charla’s attempts to help, Laurie was too frightened to take another step forward.  I came up and gingerly helped her back to a wide spot in the trail.  Gelbu and Gyeltsen arrived. Without even considering the danger that seemed so apparent to Laurie and me, Gyeltsen led his horses with a quick trot across the bad spot:  they slipped and churned their hooves in the loose rocks, which cascaded down the precipice for hundreds of feet. Then Gelbu took Laurie by the hand and they stepped carefully in the gouges the horses had left in the loose rock. I felt sure about crossing the frightening wash, but Gelbu returned to help me.  In the worst spot, we both slipped but scrambled to help each other catch solid footing.  Then we all trekked on.

The trail contoured on high above the river through windblown hoodoos of eroded reddish yellow rock.  Each time we crossed a creek, the trail descended sharply to a ford and then ascended.  Many of the creeks were muddy with glacial till.  Somehow, I managed to keep up with Charla in the lead.  We arrived at a rock outcrop where someone had strung an old, red wool blanket across the trail.  Charla feared this was a marker for the Maoists, but I assured her it was just a gate to keep yak herds from following the trail up too high.  We took the blanket down, walked through the “gate,” and put it up again, figuring Gyeltsen would know what to do.  Soon, we met a herd of about 100 yaks grazing the steep canyon hillsides.  Even the massive, hump-shouldered, long-horned males gave way as we passed. 

Sangdak, small village without a gompa in the southwest corner of Mustang came into view.  Perched on the canyon rim, its twenty stone houses had flat roofs made of flat stones covered with gray mud. A single tree grew near the village—the only greenery in this canyon where the brush had yet to leaf out.  The others had passed me long before so I was trailing far behind. I sat on a stone bench built for porters to rest and watched the others as they trouped though town to a building at the village’s far end.  When I caught up about a half-hour later, I learned they had stopped at the village school and the teacher said he was glad to have us spend the night there.

In the teacher’s kitchen, Gelbu set up his stove and started making rice.  Laurie and Charla set up their tent in the school yard, a 30-foot square surrounded by the one-room school and a high stone wall.  Gyeltsen put his horses in a stone wall pen adjacent to the school and found someone to sell him fodder. I had the great luxury of sleeping on benches in one of the stone-walled classrooms.  Gelbu started cooking dinner—his famous momos with our last can of chicken.  I asked him to take a break, a 20- minute break.  He laughed and asked, “Is that all?”    It seemed he never stopped to rest even for a minute the whole three weeks of the trip. He was an amazing man—full of energy and always ready with a smile to help with the next task.

A few townsfolk came by to visit.  Because most of the people were still in the winter village, down in the canyon and on the sunny, south-facing side, Sangdak was nearly empty.  They would return in two or three weeks, at the end of May, when they had finished planting their crops. One old man wanted me to buy his traditional yak skin boots and his knife with a yak bone handle.  He was disappointed that none of us wanted to buy them even though the knife handle was nicely etched with Buddhist symbols and his boots were beautifully stitched and embroidered.  Someone had chang, so Charla bought some and shared it around. 

The school teacher, whose name was Udaya Nepali, told us he came from Pokhara (in central Nepal), and here at this little school, where he had contracted to teach, he had no students.  He said that in the school’s history, only forty percent of the few students who had attended passed the tenth grade test that qualified them to teach or go to college preparatory classes in Pokhara.   In this little mountain school, which had classes for only five months each year, tenth was the highest grade.  Without students, he was bored and depressed. To pass the time, he told us, he slept a lot. I asked if he had ever hiked up to the mountains above—a spectacular ridge of 5-6000 meter (16,000-20,000 foot) peaks that rose over grassy hillsides.  He never had gone out hiking and had no idea what the peaks’ names were. Depressed, he wondered what he was doing in Sangdak and wished he could return home.  But, he said, there was nothing for him to do at home either.  Could he get more books to study, I asked. Yes, he said, but he didn’t see the point.  The dirt floor schoolroom had three tables, a bare cupboard, a small chalkboard and a few benches, along with a pile of worn books, an English reader, and some posters showiing the Nepali alphabet, the Nepali flag, basic arithmetic, and a skeleton of the human body. Hanging from the pole-beam rafters were yellowing signs printed with slogans encouraging people to wash their hands.

A group of men appeared on the trail coming from Jomsom.  At first they looked like western tourists because of their backpacks and brightly colored jackets.  It was difficult to imagine that we might have to share this place with other westerners, but when they started jogging down the hill, we quickly realized they were Nepalis.   Later, we heard that these men had come from Pokhara to gather yartsa gumbu.

Just below the schoolhouse stood a spigot in a concrete post into which was scrawled the date 2000. There before the sun set behind the mountains that we had just crossed and before the town was plunged into the evening’s cold shadow, I washed up for dinner.  As we ate in the schoolyard, we enjoyed a fine view of the previous day’s steep pass, the treacherous way down, our previous night’s campsite, and the glorious high ridge of glacier covered peaks above the village.

The next morning as we packed, some local men in traditional Tibetan clothes sat in the sun watching us. The previous night, Laurie and Gelbu sorted through the food and decided we could sell some here, so Gelbu offered to sell some powdered milk, rice, and a kerosene jug to the men. They spent a few minutes dickering over prices, came to an agreement, and quickly left with their loot. We left a gift of rice, hot sauce, and oatmeal with the teacher and gave him some money for letting us stay in the school. A night sleeping on the flat benches—off the ground for the first time since Shey Gompa—helped ease some of the back pain caused by sleeping on the ground and carrying a backpack.

We left Songdak at 8:30 but before we departed, the teacher told me he wanted to die.  So much needed to change but nothing was changing and he couldn’t make things change.  His sad, tired eyes told me the young man was truly depressed.  He needed to leave this isolated, primitive town and return to the comforts of Pokhara, but I guessed that would cause him to lose face and lose his government pay.  I wanted to help him but didn’t have the means and didn’t have any great suggestions for solving his plight.  As I packed, I told him change had to come from him.  He had to do something, anything: take a hike, get some books, make new lessons, go home, do something to feel productive.  He kept saying that he had no students—that he was alone.   

Heading up the steep, barren hill above Songdak, we took in views of the previous two days’ hikes and hit the substantial trail that stayed high above the canyon before heading down to Jomsom and ultimately to Pokhara.  Mainly the trail stayed high and wide—in just a few places had it washed out.  My eyes wanted to look at the mountains, the purple wildflowers, the steep draws that ran down to pine forests and green pastures below, the moraines and glacial features above, and the wind-formed hoodoos we sometimes trekked around.  But my feet wanted me to pay attention to the trail.  In places, stepping off the trail—as on so many days —meant a bad fall, broken bones, and possibly death. Yesterday’s trail had been so frightening that Laurie felt wobbly, so Gelbu stayed with her to make sure she was all right. But this day’s trail was well used and grew wider, providing better footing as we progressed. We had entered the Annapurna Conservation Area, and the wide, nicely maintained trail—so much better than any of the trails we hiked in Dolpo—exemplified why people in Dolpo feel ignored by the government in Kathmandu. I walked along chanting om mani padmi hum to myself—a footstep for each word.

At lunch, we ate in a meadow not far from a camp three Nepali men had set up.  They had modern camp gear—cast-offs from trekkers.  Although near a stream, they picked an exposed, windy spot to camp.  They were not too talkative, almost impolite, and they all wore red t-shirts, which made me think they might be Maoists getting set up to extract tolls from yartsa gombu collectors, but Gelbu said they were collectors who camped on this grassy hillside to stake out their collection area.  Their unwillingness to talk contrasted dramatically with the consistent friendliness of the Dolpapas we had met on this trip since Ringmo. 

As we walked along the ridge, views of our previous days’ passes became better:  the high pass, the steep pass.  At first, Gelbu doubted we had come down that incredibly steep mountain face, but when I handed him the binoculars to look, he could see bits of trail down the scree slope.  From here, with the foreshortening of distance, the descent down the precipice seemed impossibly steep.

The high rock ridge above reminded us of the Canadian Rockies—glacier covered peaks, black spires, crenellated ridges.  Far to the north rose the dry, dusty, yellow dome of the Tibetan plateau and Mustang.  To the east rose the Annapurna Himal—mountains crowned with improbably huge snow-covered peaks and the summit of the world’s tenth highest peak, Annapurna I at 8091 meters (26,545 feet). 

At the last ridge, we came to a large cairn of quartz rocks, marking the low pass where we would start to head down to the Kali Gandaki River and Jomsom.  I took off my pack, sat down out of the wind to take in this last view of the high country—of Dolpo—and to write a few notes.  Ahead, the wide trail led down to Jomsom, where we hoped to catch a plane.  Below, we could see electric lines coming from a hydroelectric dam, broad irrigated barley fields, and the wide Kali Gandaki River, which formed an immense canyon cutting between the two 8000 meter himals of Dhaulagiri and Annapurna. I wanted to tarry, but the others were far ahead.  So, I found a nice piece of white quartz, touched it to my head and threw it onto the cairn.  It bounced, rolled, and stopped near the top—an auspicious place for my prayers once again. 

At the canyon’s bottom arced a wide flood plain, through which the broad river meandered. As we descended, we smelled the ripening deep green barley, we heard crickets chirping, we heard the willow leaves rustling in the wind: sounds, sights, and smells we had not experienced for nearly a month.  And the fields were green, green stands of waving grain. 

And in the End...

I plodded down the trail alone, behind the others, and although each step ached, I felt as if I were soaring among mountains.  On a flat protected from the wind by shrubs and boulders, I found my companions resting as they ate a snack.  We had breathtaking views of the Annapurna Himal.  Charla and Laurie, however, were not happy with me because I had taken so much time at the pass.  They were hoping to hurry today and reach Jomsom, but now it was late and we wouldn’t make the city before dark, so we would have to spend the night at one of the villages just below, where the trail met the river valley.    Secretly, I was glad.  I was not ready for the trip to end, the hassle of airplanes, the inevitable rush of traffic and noise.  Besides, my old legs were tired and my feet ached.  I could not lift them up and put them down the steep trail any faster.  I couldn’t say om mani padmi hum any faster. 

The descending trail was so broad and unimpeded by stray rocks that I couldn’t help but stare at the massive white peaks rising above us.  Their beauty and grandeur gave me energy.  Somehow, our little party got separated.  Laurie, Gyeltsen and Gelbu had met a farmer who offered his home as a place to stay for the night, and they went with him into his village.   Unaware of the new plan, Charla  trekked past the farmer’s village towards the next village, perhaps a quarter mile away.  From the trail above, both villages looked like walled forts that containing mazes formed by the stone houses, above which waved white prayer flags that were attached vertically to tall poles rising from the flat rooftops.  The flags flapped in the wind and seemed to form a happy cloud over each village. At the edge of Phalyak—the stone-walled village into which Laurie and Gyeltsen had disappeared—Gelbu returned to the trail where he waited for me. Then he and I waited for Charla who had disappeared into the next town’s maze of stone walls.  Finally, she re-emerged from the town. As she tromped back across the creek, we waved and shouted to her so she would see us.  After a nine-hour  day of hiking, she was disappointed that no one had told her about the unexpected change in plans  and tired.  In Nepali, she complained angrily to Gelbu that we had let her walk so far, and for the first time he got upset but said nothing. “What’s done is done,” I reminded her and commiserated with her wasted energy and sore feet. 

The three of us walked briskly along the cobblestone lane outside the town’s whitewashed, stone walls, which made the place resemble a fortified medieval village.  As we approached the town gate, which was crowned with a line of three bronz prayer wheels, Laurie emerged and we followed her through the maze of streets.  People stared at us as we passed through squares that surrounded water spigots.  The whitewashed stone walls of the houses formed narrow, crooked lanes, and passageways, above which they had built still more stone houses, so we walked through dark tunnels on stone walkways smoothed with age.  I asked Charla and Laurie if they’d ever seen a village like this.  They both agreed it was strange. Charla said that there were a few similar villages in the area, but none had such an extensive network of tunnels. 

I had no idea how Laurie did it, but after ten minutes of walking through this stone-wall maze, she managed to lead us to Gyeltsen, who was unloading the horses in an animal pen nestled between stone houses.  At first, we thought we would have to set up our tents in this pen full of dung and wondered how Gelbu would ever find a decent place for his kitchen.  But then, the owner came and explained that we could sleep in his family’s house and that Gelbu could use their kitchen. 

Amazed at the rare opportunity to enter a village house like this, we hauled our gear inside. The wooden doors led to a small courtyard and animal pens.  Sheep and goats were bedded down and a couple of chickens wandered about.  We climbed a set of wood steps to the second floor and took off our boots before entering the living room—an 8-foot by 12-foot room lined with four beds.  At the end of the room was a Buddhist shrine:  a photo of the Dalai Lama, a poster of his palace, the Potola in Lhasa, a row of brass bowls full of water, and a thangka portraying Buddha.  The other walls were lined with photos of the family and photos of Nepali movie stars, which the teenage daughter had collected.

Down the hall, Gelbu got to work making dinner in the spacious, immaculate kitchen: kerosene stoves, clean white linoleum floor. Impressively large, colorful posters of the Potola in Lhasa covered one wall.  The other was lined with shelves full of food, spices, pots and pans.  We all were amazed by the well stocked kitchen and its cleanliness, which was so different from the spare, sometimes squalid conditions in Dolpo. After dinner, the daughter guided us up a cobbled lane to a place at the town wall where we could go to the toilet.

In the morning, the housewife took care to make sure we had slept well and served us yak butter tea that we drank with the porridge Gelbu made for us.  We then climbed up the notched log ladder to the house’s roof to take photos.  The roof was lined with firewood, solar panels, and pots full of blooming geraniums and herbs.  From each house rose 20-foot tall wood poles from which fluttered white prayer flags that flapped softly in the light morning breeze. From this rooftop vantage, the village and the next looked like a thicket of poles sprouting white prayer flags.

Before departing, we left the family some medicine—Tylenol, Ibuprofen, and throat lozenges—along with a few hundred rupees to pay for the room.  The son told us he would go to high school in Pokhara and his sister would follow.   After packing gear one last time, we showed Gyeltsen the food and supplies we had leftover and that he could return home with: rice, flour, kerosene, a few potatoes.   It was not much: Gelbu did a good job planning.

We walked through the five- or six-hundred-year-old town, over its smooth cobble walkways, and under dark tunnels to the town gate. Then we headed down the trail, but because the horses didn’t have to pack the food, we loaded them with our packs. Hiking without my heavy pack at first made me feel naked, but my feet and back felt such relief, I felt as if I was floating along the trail, which led down to the river.  Still, as usual, the others walked faster than I did and soon they were far ahead.  So, I walked alone on the rocky floodplain terrace above the river.  As I hiked, my trekking pole grazed one of the millions of gray fist-sized river rocks in the trail.  There was nothing special about this rock except that my eye happened to catch words on its smooth face carefully penned with a black marker: “I hate you.”  I stopped and stared at it.  Some sullen traders rode by on horseback.  I bent down and turned the rock over.

The 21st Century

The trail led down a cliff to the broad Kali Gandaki River, which we hiked along towards Jomsom. The loose, round, uneven river rock made a difficult surface to walk on. The rocks poked through my boots’ worn-out soles and jabbed my feet.  I promised to throw out the boots as soon as I reached Kathmandu.  As I trudged along, wondering when we’d get off this river rock and feeling sorry for myself, we met a scrawny Hindu sadu (holy man) walking up the river bed to the famous Hindu and Buddhist shrine at Muktinot, where natural methane escapes from the mountainsides, and which is lit to offer perpetual, sacred flames.  The sadu wore a flimsy yellow robe, and he carried a wooden staff topped by a rusty trident, the symbol of Shiva—the destroyer, creator god. His long black beard and shoulder length unkempt hair fluttered in the gusty river wind as he steadily marched towards us.  He was barefoot.

Then we passed a group of European tourists—Italians who were chattering nervously while carefully stepping along a wide, gravel trail that led down to the river.  Afraid of falling, they clustered together until their guides arrived to help each one down the incline.  They seemed ridiculous with their tight shorts and shiny Lycra shirts.  Later we passed other tourists, some Russians heading to Jomsom, who looked pathetic as they gingerly took each step with their severely blistered feet.  

As we approached Jomsom, we passed the large Nepali army base and training camp where soldiers learned how to fight in the mountains.  A group of soldiers relaxed by the river, bathing and washing clothes. Jomsom had been surrounded by Maoists for a couple of years:  if the government were to have lost the town, it would have lost control of the Annapurna region, which would not be a fatal blow, but it would be tremendously demoralizing for the government and immensely energizing for the Maoists.  As we entered the town with its large, brick and concrete administrative buildings that had modern windows and that sprouted radio and TV antennas, we heard then saw a tractor working a field and a Cosmic Air plane take off from the airfield, the first engines we had heard for 20 days.

After a short, two hour walk we reached Jomsom, where the main street, a broad flagstone path, buzzed with activity and even a few motorcycles. Donkey trains with their clanking neck bells strode up the lane as their drivers whistled and shouted to keep them moving. Shopkeepers stood in the morning sun chatting with shoppers or neighbors. I caught up to Laurie and Charla so we could walk through town together and sign in with the park officials and the national police.  Because no one had ever given us an official permit to enter Upper Dolpo, we had to lie about where we had been trekking.  I obtained the permits to be in the Annapurna Conservation Area, but because we entered the park from the Dolpo side, our permits were not stamped with an entry date.  So, Laurie and Charla concocted a story about why we didn’t have that stamp.  Gelbu and Gyeltsen had walked ahead, which we figured was all right, because if the police saw that we were with Gyeltsen, who because of his Tibetan garb obviously hailed from Dolpo, that might raise suspicions.  On the other hand, we worried that Gelbu or Gyeltsen didn’t understand that we lacked proper documents for having traveled in Dolpo, so if they were to tell the officers where we had been, that could blow the whole thing.  The fines are expensive—thousands of dollars per person.

So we acted stupid, which for me was easy because I was feeling disoriented by all the people, the caravans of mules with loud, clanging neck bells, and the heat.  Yes, heat.  For the first time since we flew out of Nepalganj, we were below 3000 meters (9800 feet) and the spring sun was scorching.

When we arrived at the checkpoint, Laurie who was in the lead and who carried our papers, walked right on by as if unaware that we needed to check in.  Accustomed to tourists who were oblivious to the rules, the park guards and police whistled and shouted:  “Hello, hello!”  Then she stopped, as if surprised, walked back to the checkpoint where we took off our packs, which we had retrieved from Gyeltsen’s horses before we entered town. As we dug out our papers, the guards asked where we had been.  Laurie answered in Nepali.  When they asked me, confused about what we had agreed to say, I told the guards I had gone to the pass, but Charla and Laurie shouted, no, no, we were up at the shrine.  Oh yes, I mumbled, the shrine.  The Nepali guards looked at me as if I were a doddering old fool, stamped our papers, and let us pass.

So into town we walked with three things on our minds: 1) Seats on the airplane to Pokhara so we could return to Kathmandu—Charla and Laurie, already five days late, needed to get back to work.  2) A shower.  3) Beer.

Charla had tickets for us with Cosmic Air (really I don’t know where the Nepalis got these names for their airlines), so we strode up to their office, dropped our packs, entered the modern glass door covered with stickers for various travel agencies, and Charla asked about seat availability.  “ALL FULL,” they told us.  Laurie did her best to convince the man that we needed to get back to Kathmandu the next day and Charla mentioned  her job at the USAID.   No seats, the office manager told us.  We should have left earlier that day—they had three planes and the last one had plenty of room.  The next day, they had two full flights and not enough people for a third.  In English, the office manager told us that it would be nice to stay in Jomsom for a day.  He took our names and we thanked him.

Now, I felt bad, really bad.  If I had just walked a little faster the day before, we could have arrived here the previous night and we would have been on this morning’s flight.  But no, I had to take my selfish, old, slow time. 

But as we started to walk out the door, the office manager said that not all the passengers had checked in. Thus, there was a chance that all the people with reservations would not arrive in time for the flight, which left at 7 AM.  We should check back late in the afternoon, he informed us. We checked into the Om Hotel adjacent to the Cosmic Air office and told the manager we were doing that.  Previous experience had shown that spending money at the airline manager’s hotel never hurt.  The hotel was clean and quiet with fancy in-room toilets and showers—even TV. The restaurant was a sunny room overlooking the main street.

Next, we had to find Gyeltsen and Gelbu.  They had headed through town to another hotel that Gelbu knew.  As we walked down the town’s broad flat-stone street, we passed shops and hotels. Nearly all the tourist shops were shuttered closed as were about a third of the other shops.  The Maoist insurgency and their control of the countryside between Pokhara and Jomsom had scared tourists away.

Gelbu had already checked us in at his hotel but we assuaged the hotel owner, a big woman wearing a white apron, by ordering lunch and beers.  Oh, that cold beer tasted good, although it brought back memories of the sweet, tasty chang Norbu’s wife served us in Tingku.  The food was fine: different from but not a lot better than the fare Gelbu provided each nights.

We headed back to our hotel to settle up with Gyeltsen and wash: a shower finally after 22 days was going to feel exquisitely luxurious. And I was looking forward to shaving my scratchy beard.  In one room, Laurie, Charla and I huddled to count our diminished piles of thousand rupee notes and make a pile for Gyeltsen. We figured we owed him the agreed upon 2000 per day for going to Jomsom plus 5000 for his return trip home.  After we counted the bills and made a pile for him, we invited him into the room and handed him the stack of money.   He counted it and said it was not enough.  That just paid for the horses, he argued, his perpetual buck-toothed smile gone. He needed 500 per day for his time.  We counted out another pile of bills.  He counted the wad but wanted still more.  We reminded him of the food we had given him.  That amounted to nothing, he said.  He, Laurie, and Charla palavered in Nepali for a good fifteen minutes and agreed that he should receive an extra 1000.

Gyeltsen took this, added it to his pile of 1000 rupee notes, and counted the pile of bills two times, then another time, then another, as if counting the bills over and over again would magically cause more bills to appear.  He asked for a headlamp, but we each needed ours so we said no.  He asked for a backpack, but at this point we didn’t have an extra. We gave him another 1000 rupee note and said that was all we could afford.   He slowly counted the stack of bills again and Gelbu got him to leave.  I went out with him hoping we could have a friendly parting. After all he had done for us, I wanted him to feel good about the $550 we paid him, which we considered to be truly a generous sum.  As he, Gelbu, and I walked towards the hotel door, Gyeltsen asked again for my backpack. I started to consider but before I could say a word, Gelbu gruffly said no. Gyeltsen walked down the steps and out of our lives.

Shaving felt as good as I hoped it would, but as I looked in the mirror I saw that my face and ears were covered with dark splotches—bad sunburn and windburn, I assumed from Dolpo’s intense high altitude weather.  Gelbu laughed and said I was turning into a Nepali.  When I emerged from my long, hot shower and looked in the mirror I saw that I had washed those spots away.  They were nothing more than a three-week accumulation of Dolpo’s dust mixed with the sunscreen I had applied each morning.

That afternoon, we lounged around Jomsom. Charla got a massage. Laurie and I drank tea and ate snacks in the sunny restaurant while I got caught up writing my journal.  I did a little shopping, although I didn’t necessarily mean to. Near the hotel, an old Tibetan woman—a refugee she told me—had a nice shop full of Tibetan jewelry and religious relics.  A necklace similar to those that all the men in Dolpo wore caught my eye: a black and white polished stone strung between two red coral beads. The white circles in the black bead, the woman informed me, represented the eyes of Buddha and the stone was real agate, she said, promising me the amulet would bring good luck.  Even though I was pretty sure the black and white “agate” was actually a glass bead, I bought the nicest I could afford, which wasn’t very much, after giving nearly all my money to Gyeltsen.

            We returned to the Cosmic Air office late in the afternoon. The airline manager found one seat for us but said we should arrive at the airport at 6:30 the next morning when it opened. He thought he could find seats for all of us on the first flight.

Before daybreak the next morning, we trouped down Jomsom’s the flat-stone main street to the airport’s gate, where we were first in line.  After the usual security check by the armed soldiers, we entered the airport, where we met the airline manager, who despite the early hour was all smiles.  He had seats for the four of us. A bell rang announcing that the first plane had taken off from Pokhara and 30 minutes later the plane landed on the cement runway.  We climbed aboard, the plane revved its two prop engines, the plane shook and roared, the pilot released the brake, we lurched down the runway, and the plane took off. It seemed that my new amulet was bringing good luck.

As our little 18-seat plane dodged around billowing monsoon clouds and jounced through the turbulent air between Dhaulagiri and Annapurna (the world’s seventh and tenth highest peaks), I tried to readjust to my abrupt re-entry into the modern world.  I realized all the problems that seemed so worrisome at the beginning—the Maoists, the snakes, the frightening catwalk around Lake Phoksumdo, the dizzying heights of the passes, my medical problems, my age and slowness—all that amounted to nothing, just worries.

Then my thoughts turned to the tough, resourceful people of Dolpo. Will they find a way to prosper? Will their Tibetan culture survive the onslaught of the modern world? Will the modern world succumb to an apocalyptic holocaust?  Will the hidden land of Dolpo somehow remain as a seat of culture while the rest of the world crumbles?  I tried to make sense out of my twenty-one days of hiking through Dolpo: the ethereal light on the mountains, the austere life of the people who lived there, their generosity and kindness, the amazing good fortune of my adventures. I could not make sense of it all but resolved that the best way to give the trek meaning was to tell this story.

A Buddhist

“Are you a Buddhist?” 

That was what the well-known Nepali thangka painter, Romio Shrestha, asked me one evening in Kathmandu’s Pilgrim Book House, a fabulous book store with an extensive collection of books in English dealing with Asian religions and all topics Nepali. He strode into the store as I was looking at a folio-sized collection of his work, which he enthusiastically signed, hoping I would buy the $200 book.

  “I’m trying,” I answered. 

“Well,” he responded, “just do it.” 

I would like to just do it, but I’m too full of doubt.  I firmly believe desire causes pain.  I can accept the idea of impermanence: that these words, that my house in Idaho, that the great cities of the world, that the vast Himalaya will all change, will all disappear.  I have grown to accept the fact that my body, which has given me so much pleasure and so much pain over these 60 years, will someday soon disappear.  And I’ve come to realize that clinging to this body will only cause me more pain and sorrow than just letting go.  But I’m not sure what will happen to my mind. I’m relatively certain that it’s not a soul bound for hell unless I accept Jesus as Christians envision or the blessed memory living with God that Jews envision.  I’m pretty “empty headed” so maybe my mind is already the clear light of emptiness that Buddhists envision.  Maybe they are right. 

Maybe whatever you believe is what happens.  Maybe it’s just us non-believers, us doubters, whose souls end up dying with our bodies. Maybe it all ends at death and this business about a life after death is just a fear-ridden story to give our lives meaning.

So I have doubts about reincarnation.  And I cannot quite get my mind around the idea that everything is empty, although I sometimes get glimmers of this.   From learning to meditate and studying Buddhism I have learned that there’s really only one thing I can control: my mind.  And to control my life, I must control my thoughts, and I can control my thoughts, my consciousness to some degree, which helps me be more aware of my body and what it is telling me about the environment around me. If I work at it, I can focus so I remember to be a little compassionate, a little patient.  But I still have desires and get angry, and I still feel the swell of tears when I talk about events and opinions that I hold dear. I still forget to have compassion for those around me, for the world.  And I still loose my patience. 

It’s all like trekking:  Step. Step. Step. Step. Breathe. One step, one breath after the other. Look where you put each step. Focus. Take a step.  And then another.  Look where you’re going. Be aware.  Be compassionate. Be loving, Be patient and equanimous. Be happy.  Each step, each breath counts. 

After Word  

            It’s been over two years since we trekked through Dolpo.  Since then, Laurie successfully finished her dissertation and earned her Ph.D.  She returned to Nepal, where she worked for the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights.  During those two turbulent years of civil war in Nepal, she lived in Pokhara, interviewed people who had been abused by the Nepali government or by the Maoist insurgents, and attempted to help the UN to make people safe from the atrocities both sides committed.  She tried to keep soldiers from attacking people during the political protests of the 2006 people’s movement that brought down the king’s government, and she worked to address the human rights abuses the Nepali armed forces and the Maoist insurgents inflicted on the Nepali people. She had an important,  dangerous, frequently very dangerous job. She met the challenge with her usual positive, thoughtful attitude

            Charla returned to the U.S. and she married, as planned.  She now is back in Nepal, where she is endeavoring to adopt Tessiera, a beautiful Nepali baby girl.  While she works to sort out the bureaucratic tangle that the Nepali government has created to make adopting Nepali orphans more difficult than it was previously, she’s doing consulting work for the U.S. Embassy.

            Purna and Shuvas continue to work in Kathmandu. They both were involved with the People’s Movement and led protests against the king’s government that forced the king to capitulate.  Purna was arrested a number of times but was never beaten.  When I saw them in fall, 2006, they were hopeful that the interim government would hold elections in May, 2007, that those elections would lead to a constitutional assembly or a new parliament that would force the king to abdicate, and that would create a democratic republic for Nepal.  The Maoist leader, Prachanda, and the political leaders of the Nepal had declared a truce, and they were meeting and attempting to reach some kind of compromise. Because of the peace, tourists were flocking to Nepal and the economy was surging.  But May came and went without elections, and as of this writing, the politicians of Nepal are still “fighting like dogs and cats” about how to move toward those promised elections.

            Gelbu continues to work as a guide but at the age of forty, he’s finding it more difficult to get jobs.  The new road to his town of Bandar has brought a few trucks to his village and he hopes that he and his sons can take advantage of the influx of tourists that new rode is sure to bring.

            I remain in relatively good health. The lesion in my brain has not grown so I have not lost any more strength or coordination.  The hormone treatments continue to control the cancer.  After going to Mt. Kailash in Tibet and visiting Gelbu’s village in fall, 2006, I wanted to return to Dolpo.  But the rabies vaccination I needed after getting bit by the dog in Tibet took too much time.  So instead of going to Dolpo,  Gelbu and I trekked around Annapurna.  We had a wonderful adventure, visiting all the gompas, shrines, and high mountain lakes that we could.  I now can sit in a half-lotus position to meditate, with one foot resting on my opposite knee but I’m far from being able to accomplish the full lotus, with each foot resting on the opposite knee.

          Gelbu’s sons regularly send emails, but Nepal seems far from me now and Dolpo like a dream.

Bibliography

This bibliography covers all the works published about Dolpo (excepting some technical articles on geology) and works I consulted about Nepal’s history, Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism.  I’ve also added some short annotations.  

Aitken, Robert. 1982. Taking the Path of Zen. San Francisco: North Point Press.

Avedon, John F. 1994, In Exile for the Land of Snows: The Definitive Account of the Dalai Lama and Tibet Since the Chinese Conquest. New York: Harper Perennial.

Baker, Ian. 2004. The Heart of the World. New York: The Penguin Press. (An exciting account of the first descent of the Tsangpo gorge along with great explanations of Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan culture, and Nepali culture.)

Bezruchka, Stephen. 1997. Trekking in Nepal: A Traveler’s Guide. (7^th Ed.)  Seattle: the Mountaineers.

Bauer, Kenneth M. 2004. High Frontiers—Dolpo and the Changing World of Himalayan Pastoralists. New York: Columbia University Press.  (An excellent ethnography and thorough socio-economic history of Dolpo.)

Childs, Geoff. 2004. Tibetan Diary: From Birth to Death and Beyond in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal.  Berkeley: University of California Press. (A fascinating ethnography of a community near Manaslu (eighth highest peak) in an area east of Annapurna.)  

Chophel, Norbu. 1983. Folk Culture of Tibet. Dharamsala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives.

Dolpo and Tarap Valley (map). 2002.  Kathmandu: Shangri-la Maps.  (The map we used on the trek—a good map but it has its faults.)

Doyle, Timothy. 2003. Going to Dolpo. London: AARK Arts. (A short memoir about an unhappy trek through lower Dolpo.)

Fisher, James F. 1990. Sherpas: Reflections on Change in Himalayan Nepal. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.

von Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph. 1975. Himalayan Traders. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Hutt, Michael. Ed.  2004. Himalayan People’s War: Nepal’s Maoist Rebellion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Jest, Corneill. 1998. Tales of Turquoise—A Pilgrimage in Dolpo. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications.  (Engaging Tibetan folktales framed by a pilgrimage though Dolpo by a leading French ethnographer.)

Gyatso, Palden. 1997. The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk. New York: Grove Press.

Gyatso, Tenzin, Dalai Lama XIV. 1997. My Land & My People: Memoirs of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.  New Delhi: Srishti Publishers

Gyatso, Tenzin, Dalai Lama XIV. 2001. Stages of Meditation. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications.  (The explanations of Tibetan Buddhism here are excellent.)

Keown, Damien. 1996. Buddhism--A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  (An excellent introduction to complex material.)

Lieberman, Marcia R. Shangri-La without the Frills.  New York Times. Section 5 (Travel) pp. 3,8. May, 3, 1998. 

Lama, Tsewang. 2002. Kailash Mandala—A Pilgrim’s Trekking Guide. Kathmandu: Humla Conservation and Development Association.

Lopez, Donald S.(Ed.) 1997. Religions of Tibet in Practice. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Matthiessen, Peter. 1978. The Snow Leopard. New York: Viking Penguin/Bantam Books.

McCue, Gary. 1999. Trekking in Tibet: A Traveler’s Guide. (2^nd Ed.)  Seattle: The Mountaineers.

Norbu Lama, Tenzing. 2004. Secret of the Snow Leopard. Toronto: Groundwork Book.  (A beautifully illustrated book by the thangka painter from Tingku, Dolpo.)

Norbu Lama, Tenzing. 2002. Himalaya. Toronto: Groundwork Book. (A beautifully illustrated book whose plot replicates the 1999 movie with the same name.)

Ogura, Kiyoko. 2001. Kathmandu Spring: The People’s Movement of 1990. Latipur, Nepal: Himal Books (Himal Association).

Ortner, Sherry. B.  1989. High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Patt, David. 1992.  A Strange Liberation: Tibetan Lives in Chinese Hands. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications.

Powers, John. 1995. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications.  A through, lucid explanation of Tibetan Buddhism.

Reynolds, Kev. 1997. Dolpo: A Trekker’s Guide. Kathmandu: Pilgrims Book House. (A very short, minimally useful guide.)

Richmond, Keith. 1998. Wanderings in Lower Dolpo—Reminiscences of a ‘Gonpa Thief.’ Francestown, NH: Typographeum.

Rinpoche, Namgyal. 2005. Dolpo, The Hidden Land. Kathmandu: SNV/Nepal.  (A booklet  written by the amchi we met in Dunai and published with the support of the Dutch Development Organisation. Provides useful details about Dolpo and some good photos.)

Rose, Leo E. & Scholz, John T. 1980. Nepal: Profile of a Himalayan Kingdom. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Schaller, George B.  1980. Stones of Silence—Journeys in the Himalaya. New York: Viking Press.

Schell, Orville. 2000. Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-la from the Himalayas to Hollywood. New York : Metropolitan Books.

Snellgrove, David L. 1989. Himalayan Pilgrimage: A Study of Tibetan Religion by a Traveller through Western Nepal. Boston: Shambala Publications.  (The earliest account of a Western traveler in Dolpo.)

Snellgrove, David L. 1957. Buddhist Himalaya: Travels and Studies in the Quest of the Origins and Nature of Tibetan Religion. Oxford: Bruno Cassierer Ltd. (reprinted by 1992, Kathmandu: Himalayan Book Sellers). (An early version of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan Successors with a great narration of his 1956 expedition in Dolpo.)

Snellgrove, David L. 1967. Four Lamas of Dolpo: Tibetan Biographies. Oxford: Bruno Cassierer Ltd. (reprinted by 1995, Kathmandu: Himalayan Book Sellers).  (A translation of biographies that Snellgrove found in Dolpo.  The introduction gives a wonderful description of his 1961 expedition in Dolpo.)

Snellgrove, David L. 2002. Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan Successors.  Boston: Shambala Publications. (A detailed explanation of the many facets of Tibetan Buddhism and its origins.)

Stearns, Cyrus.  1999. The Buddha from Dolpo—A Study of the Life and Thought of the Tibetan Master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press .

Sturgeon, Phillip (with Forrestal Judith). 1998. Himalayan Echoes—A Septuagenarian’s Traverse of Mustang and Inner Dolpo.  New Delhi: Book Faith India.  (A travelogue.)

Valli, Eric & Summers, Diane. 1994. Caravans of the Himalaya. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society.  (This and the next works by Valli offer fantastic photos of Dolpo along with some good narrations. Valli, who directed the movie, Himalaya, began visiting the region in 1981.)  

Valli, Eric & Summers, Diane. 1986. Dolpo—Hidden Land of the Himalayas. New York: Aperture.

Valli, Eric and Anne de Sales. 2001. Himalaya. New York: Henry N. Abrams.

Valli, Eric; Summers, Diane. Himalayan Caravans.  National Geographic, Dec93, Vol. 184 Issue 6, pp. 128-142.

Valli, Eric.  Life in Dolpo reflects rugged simplicity--as it has for centuries. Smithsonian, Nov85, Vol. 16 Issue 8, p128-143, 16p;

Whelpton, John. 2005. A History of Nepal. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. (A useful account of Nepal’s surprisingly complex history.)

Zeppa, Jamie. 1999.  Beyond the Sky and the Earth: a Journey to Bhutan. New York: Riverhead /Penguin Putman Inc. (An engaging, romantic story about a Canadian living and teaching in Bhutan.) 

Added Ziskin, Joel F. Trek to Nepal's Sacred Crystal Mountain. National Geographic, Apr 1977, Vol. 151 Issue 4, pp.500-517.

Glossary of Tibetan and Nepali Terms

1. amchi—a Tibetan Buddhist herbal doctor
2. arag – a clear, strong liquor made of rice, barley, or millet
3. Bardo- the intermediate state between death and reincarnated life
4. bodhisattva—an enlightened being who, rather than going to nirvana, keeps being re-born in order to guide others to enlightenment
5. Bhoti,-- a derogatory term for hill people (Nepali)
6. Bon-- was the magical, animistic, shamanistic religion of Tibet
7. chang--locally made barley or millet beer
8. chorten--Tibetan word for Stupa
9. chubba--a Tibetan overcoat
10. dhal bhaat,-- rice and lentils
11. dharma—Buddhist doctrine
12. dhoko—cone-shaped wicker baskets used by Nepali porters to carry loads with a tumpline across the forehead
13. drogpa-- a nomadic yak herder
14. Dolpa-pa—person from Dolpo (“-pa”means person/people in Tibetan).
15. dzo -- a cross between a cow and a yak
16. dzi beads—an amulet bead made of glass or agate, black and white, the design in which forms rings representing the “eye of Buddha.”
17. gompa – Buddhist temple or monastery
18. himal—mountain range
19. japaties—thin flat bread
20. kata—a  prayer scarf, usually white silk
21. kora--a pilgrimage that circles a mountain, monastery, or group of holy sites.  Buddhists circle shrines in a clockwise direction; the Bon circle in the opposite direction.
22. la - pass
23. mani stones—flat stones inscribed with Buddhist prayers or scriptures or Buddhist icons
24. metta—selfless love (Pali language). 
25. monal, a large purple, blue, and red pheasant; the national bird of Nepal.
26. nan—Indian, Nepali flat bread
27. nirvana—realization of emptiness
28.  puja—a religious ceremony
29. roti--flat bread
30. sadu—Indian, Hindu holy man
31. sirdar—hired leader of  a trek or expedition
32. stupa—a Buddhist monument, often containing a lama’s remains
33. sutra— Buddhist scripture and text written after Buddha’s death but based on his words
34. tantra—mystical (sometimes magical) Buddhist scripture that was “discovered” long after Buddha’s death; scripture associated with Tibetan Buddhism
35. “tashi delek”—Tibetan greeting
36. thangkas--religious paintings on cotton
37. thorma— a sculpture made of dried dough used for ceremonies in gompas
38. tsampa—roasted and milled barley
39. tulku—a reincarnated lama
40. yartsa gumbu-- a combination of a caterpillar and a mushroom that is sold as an aphrodisiac.

MAPS (from Bauer, 2004)

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From Bauer, 2004