A TRIP TO A HYOLMU VILLAGE

ROLL OF A DICE

To leave the house and travel around the city bodes an unpredictable day.  A magnum of strength is needed to duck and dive through traffic swarming without rules, past pavement sellers and pedestrians – lots of bottle needed.   You become like a fish swimming through the flotsam of a shipwreck.  There is no separation of people, motorbikes, cars, temples…

This morning Fulmaya left the city behind.  She is travelling with some family in a jeep to Milarepa’s Cave somewhere in Helambu to the north of Kathmnandu.  The journey is rough as some of the travelling is along dry river beds with some of the boulders removed to the side to allow progress.  The ascent is from K’du Valley at over 1,200 metres (4000 ft) to over 2,700 metres (9,000 feet) – over 6-7 hours.

Suffice it to say, I’ve been left behind in Kathmandu and finding work in the ghost-writing industry, pamphlets, articles and forms.  I remember trekking this route before they had a “road” and it took several days to reach Tarkye Gyang.  I was stopped at checkpost by some very surprised policemen.   

They were there more to check Nepalese travellers who may have been carrying arms from Pakistan or opium from Baglung to the north rather than a lone trourist.  They recovered sufficiently to check my trekking permit and stamp it with a government seal.

This was February, the time of Lohsar, the Tibetan New Year, and by the time I reached T G the snow was knee deep in the drifts.  On a meadow at the centre of the village, men and women were lined up facing each other and dancing with syncopated rhythm, the men moving forward and singing in Hyolmu and the women replying in their high voices.

I was offered a room in a house which I took and the singing and dancing lasted all night.  When I woke in the morning, the beautiful Hyolmu Sherpa girl said something in Nepali which I understood and it sounded like, You have to have sex for three days to please the deity.  I don’t know if that was an invitation to a few nights of pleasure or a Nepali kukri across my throat.

No regrets, but if I could have bothered, I would be visiting Milarepa’s Cave with the others.  He’s my favourite guy amongst all the other semi-legendary characters who no doubt lived some time

from the middle of the 11^th century to 1135.  His life in Western Tibet began as a sorcerer and after killing 35 people with a giant hailstorm over an inheritance dispute, he was tutored by Marpa, the translator of various sacred texts, probably from Pali into Tibetan.

I guess what I like about him is the fact that he wrote what is now known as The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa.  This compilation is an epic poem that was inspired by his realisation of the dharma.   

There are lots of legends about the poet sage, but mostly, I like the way he’s depicted with a hand to the ear as listening to an inner spirit that guides him.  Peculiarly, he is usually portrayed in green as he subsisted on nettles.

There are several Milarepa Caves in Nepal, which one they’re going to will have the footprints and hand prints left in stone from the time of his retreat in the cave.

A DAY IN THE LOAF

A DAY IN THE LOAF

LIFE IS HARD FOR SOME IN KATHMANDU

Every day begins the same – a slight chill in the morning followed by a gradual warming of the air.  An occasional, lonely cloud floats by as if searching for its companions.  Noises take on a purpose:  the sound of the sweeper in the garden brushing the detritus from the paths; hacking coughs from the neighbour; the dogs down the road barking at an beggar; the roar of a passing plane; the hollow sound of someone chopping wood; tinkling bells in the breeze; the early morning buzzing of bees around the flowers. 

On the walk to the Boudha Stupa I pass Pigeon Man.  Pigeon Man appears savage and totally crazy.  He lives temporarily on a stretch of earth beside a wall.  He’s plucking a pigeon and I ask him, Are you going to build a fire? 

A fire…a fire!  He looks guilty and shouts at me.  He poses and I take a couple of photos.  Thirty rupees he demands.  I offer ten-rupees but he insists on thirty.  I give him the thirty and pass on thinking the photo of this madman was worth it.

PIGEON MAN WITH PLUCKED PIGEON

At the stupa I climb the steps for a closer look at the eyes.  The prayer flags seem new and were probably put up for lohsar, the Tibetan new year.  

THE EYES SEE ALL

Returning to the house in Chuchchepati, a little girl stares at me.  She’s trying on a pair of adult croks.  Why do little girls do this and not little boys? I wonder.  Her curious, wondering eyes present me with her perfect expression of innocence.

SWEET GIRL IN CROkS

Back to Boudha and I enter a store that sells dvds and cds, all pirated.  The films come in at under £1 but some are as cheap as 25p.  Buy a few titles:  Amour which won the Palme D’or at the Festival De Cannes in 2012; Himalaya, a film by Eric Valli that I saw years ago and remember mostly for the incredible accompanying music to the dramatic scenes around the remote region of Dolpo.; Robin Williams in Man of the Year.  The cover has Robin Williams wearing a ridiculous 17-century wig.  One of my favourite actors, Cristopher Walken, is also in the cast; Kathmandu, well, about a young girl who comes to teach in Kathmandu in the early 90s.  The film is Spanish and is about her discovering the poverty and the disillusionment of the young with the educational system.

ALL THE DVDS

Then back to Boudha to watch the pigeons flying around and eating the grain which is for sale nearby.  These ones, in contrast to the one I saw in the morning, are very much alive.

FLYING PIGEONS

In Boudha around the stupa, tourists, fresh from snowy climes, now lobster-skinned and drooping fat from boobs and moobs and with streams of sweat rivulating over scarlet cheeks, lurch around, looking into shops and taking photographs of each other in front of the stupa.

We pass the big bell where some women are doing their private ceremony inside it.  Then on to Ringu Tulku Rinpoche’s house where we take a couple who have come from Devon and are busy back home publishing and distributing RTR’s books.  We’re shown round the studio at the back of the house where Salga, RTR’s brother produces his art work, then it’s on to my brother-in-law’s house for food.  I try to learn the card game Marriage, but the rules and convoluted and I cannot grasp the logic behind the awarding of points at the end.  Nepalese seem to be addicted to this game and wager high stakes.

Finally, we break up and I finish with a glass of Laphroig and another of Bhutanese whisky which tastes very good.  Must be the purity of the water they use to make the whisky in Bhutan.

ART WORK ON THE GO:  A THANGA

LOHSAR

Celebrated Tibetan New Year at Samye monastry in Eskdalemuir. Managed one nyungne pair: that is, one full day of prayers to Chenrezig, the symbol of compassion of whom the Dalai Lama is said to be a reincarnation. Last drink at 8pm then silence and nothing to eat or drink for 42 hours when the fast is broken with a thin gruel and glasses of water, soya milk and tea. A full meal is then eaten before midday and the whole thing begins again. The text is gone through three-times each day with 108 full prostrations over the pair.

I managed one-pair. Fulmaya is attempting 8-pairs over 16-days.