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 11th 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.
