Mountain Adventures

Saturday is the Nepali weekend - no school, no work - and halfway through our stay in Dolpa, Hillary and I decided to take the opportunity of a day off from teaching to hike down to the Bheri River in the valley below Juphal. It's perhaps 2000 feet down by my estimate, and being the smart hikers that we are, we chose the paths that went most directly down the mountainside. Fast, sure, but not exactly easy on the legs. We were rewarded with a very different vista from what we had grown used to in Juphal: the river is wide, freezing, swift, wild, and very muddy because of the monsoon rains. We sat by the bank in the roar of the water and waded a bit - the first time our toes had touched water in days. Down the river a quarter mile or so, we found a suspension bridge and crossed to the other side, where we said hello to some grazing buffalo. It was disappointing to see that from this vantage point, the walls of the valley did not look nearly so impressively large as they did from the roof of the lodge. We were too close, and their tops were hidden from view. Slowly, and a bit painfully, we made our way up the mountain again, in our infinite wisdom still choosing the steepest and shortest route, and the mountains grew again into cloud-shrouded giants.

This same Saturday was the first day of the fourth Nepali month, Shrawan. Just as it was beginning to grow dark, at about 6.00, our host Tarak called us outside onto the mud roof. His mother was lighting small piles of fragrant wood all along the edge of the roof, and looking around, we saw little glowing flames jumping from the roofs of every house in the village. The air was soon full of pungent wood smoke, and the darkness was lit by hundreds of fires like little stars outlining each roof. We could see the other villages, too, sparkling up and down the valley. Tarak instructed us to grab a bit of burning wood and hurl it off the roof as far as we could; with this gesture, we were throwing away our illnesses. Slowly the fires died and the families clustered on their roofs drifted inside for dinner, leaving the village only a bit smokier than it had been before.

On our last day of teaching, afternoon classes were canceled for our farewell ceremony. After tiffin, the three of us volunteers were given seats of honor next to the principal, and with a few words of thanks, he put tikka (red powder) on our foreheads and a white scarf and a garland of marigolds around each of our necks. Two of the school's founders (including Tarak), the town's postmaster, and the teachers followed suit. Then each student came forward and gave us a flower, and as it began to rain, the older students also gave us tikka with our flowers. Soon we were dripping with red powder and flower petals. Some of the students sang and danced for us, and we were asked to join them. I'll always remember that one Wednesday in July, covered in tikka and thick with marigold garlands, in a schoolyard high on a mountain in Dolpa, we had a dance party with Nepali students to a traditional song sung by the school's principal.

The day after our farewells at the school we made the short trek upriver to Dunai. We passed over mud and sand and packed earth and loose rocks, through hamlets and past steep green mountainsides and under an ornately painted chorten. We passed the junction to Phoksundo Lake, of The Snow Leopard fame, and rounded a bend in the river to see before us a low town hanging with colored flags. Dunai felt like a true metropolis in comparison to Juphal. While it is also devoid of all wheeled vehicles, it boasts streets paved with flat stones, dozens of shops, even a money exchange. It is also muddier and darker, clustered tightly on the banks of the river with the mountain rising steeply less than half a mile from the churning water. Across the river from the town is a small stupa strung with prayer flags. Walking up to it means coming out of the chaotic world of the town and into the pure air of the mountains themselves, even though the sounds of the town can still be heard below. Inside the stupa are two gold Buddha statues, butter lamps, dishes of marigolds, and shelves of books wrapped in cloth and silk. These are Buddha-relics, the Buddha's teachings, sacred words. I was honored to be allowed to step inside to see these treasures. It was so clean and beautiful, in such a contrast to the town itself - a tight, dark, muddy, sad place, it seemed to me. But at sunset, as Hillary and I sat beside the water and watched the sun dip between two mountains to the west, and the moon rise slowly in the east, I thought that perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps this town had just as much mountain splendor as the monastery, in a truly alive kind of way.

Next morning, it was back to Juphal - slowly but surely we moved through the heat and up the steep mountainside. We took a break at a small sandy beach and put our feet into the water, feeling Himalayan stones beneath our toes and listening to the roar of the river drown out every human noise. This was our last taste of nature's pure noise, for back in Juphal, the sound we most hoped to hear was the growl of the airplane, signaling that the weather was good enough to allow us to leave our hillside home. Luckily, on Saturday morning we packed our bags into the nose of the tiny plane and found ourselves flying between the arms of the valley once again.