02/04/2008
This should have been the last day of trekking, in my program: I had to leave for the long descent (an altitude of 1700 meters) up to Malemchipul Bazaar where to take the bus to Kathmandu the next day. But this morning there is a great sun, this family and I like to get straight back into chaos and pollution of Kathmandu I did not really want. So I decided to stay here a few more days until that will celebrate Losar so with this family and their relatives should go instead to giracchiare Boudhanath (the Buddhist-Tibetan district of Kathmandu) as I thought.
So now I'm here to enjoy the sun in the courtyard of the house and I write the memories of these last days before they fly away like the prayers written on the flags flying around here lungta tune.
After a few hours to write the sun going for a walk. Prior to the gompa, the only open four of the village. The door is approached, but an old beckons me to come in, watch and photograph a bit 'images of yidam ("gods" Tibetan) then enters an old woman who seems to bring upon himself the entire history of this village and I indicates smiling decision, the offering box to which I add my contribution.
Then count to walk for a while ' up to a large golden statue of Guru Rimpoche a few kilometers from the village and back.
A couple of hours of silence and profiles of mountains at sunset.
the evening I have dinner with the family and they tell me that the statue was brought there by helicopter very recently thanks to the offerings of the faithful and Japan has yet to be inaugurated by a lama of the village below, who now lives in America and no one knows well when he returns.
I tell other stories, like the tourist who has been lost in 43 days in a snow cave near Gosainkundh and e 'was later found by his relatives who were seeking him in a helicopter with a guide Tamang and then as this guide was obtained as a thank you an invitation to go to Australia has been afraid and withdrew at the last moment to the point of boarding the plane for a country unknown.
And again the crash of an Airbus of Thai crashed years ago in these mountains and how the park guards and the military, are authorized to do the research, we are especially dedicated to finding gold and dollars among the charred remains of what the remains of the passengers, with few results, it seems, except for someone who was not then seen again at work.
02/05/2008
The day, at least one half, continues with reading in the sun, apart from a chat with Mr. Kanchha Lama, the landlord, while the cooks babar, fried rice for Losar when they should get many visiting relatives.
Later, again with Kanchha Lama, come from a farming family nearby to look for if you have honey bees in their wild or wild, which in my travels I always try being a little honey in the 'essence of a place.
While we leave the house is an old man of the village which is an hour that barks and shouting well two days ago when I arrived because I did not choose his lodge, seems to be drunk or insane. My host told me that the old man was a talented artist as there was no one else in this area: all the statues or paintings of the gompa around here are his work and was also a great painter tangkhas (sacred images). He had a shop in Kathmandu, but the son was always around to have fun and spend all the money until one day it was killed in a motorcycle accident. Another son emigrated to the U.S., but not sent him any money. So he has not held up in these shots, must have had some kind of run down and began to drink a lot: a virtually certain now that there is always barks against anyone who passes by.
The family from which we were rather poor, the old is very "ethnic", with several necklaces and rings on her, barefoot as her husband looks like a hobbit and shortly after arriving from the forest with a red hat by smurf and a beautiful smile back at home while her three buffaloes.
They built the new house, of stone and corrugated iron roof, with the money that the son has made going to work in Ladakh (India) in the mountains by the bearer for the Indian army.
not have honey this season, but I do see the hives: they are pieces of tree trunk (perhaps the very ones where already on the wild hive) inserted into the wall of a building that serves as a stable for goats, from some holes in the wall you can see the bees coming and going.
They recently bought a hundred goats for Indian traders, but they seem to have taken a big scam, unfortunately: the goats have a disease the eyes and gradually become blind, they are already dead more than sixty that four thousand rupees (about 45 euro) each, in these parts - and for a family like this - is by no means little. For the rest
cultivate crops of potatoes, as well as some vegetables and a little 'fruit itself. Here is too high for rice and also for barley, they buy them from the plain and have a mill stone that turns on a stream for grinding. Hailed
family, we go further, to the village of Chumik, to find relatives of Kanchha Lama.
As always, the housewife prepares us immediately of tea on the stove. I listen to them a little 'chat in their own language, in the meantime I have learned not to be as their Sherpa, while passing under this name in the guides, they are not really sherpa. For me it was a kind of plot twist: the sherpas are the inhabitants of the Solu Khumbu while they, the people dell'Helambu, - though they are erroneously called Sherpa guides - were Hyolmo, called Lama from Nepal. They, like all the previous inhabitants of the villages that until now I believed Sherpa!
To me they seem more or less all Tibetans, as for their Italian, English, Greek and Norwegian are all European (and even for Americans, Australians, New Zealanders are no different), but with a little 'in attendance, some shades of difference become clearer. Here, compared to the Sherpa of Khumbu are a little more "nepalizzati", both in physical traits in food and clothes in the Khumbu is in fact an area of \u200b\u200bmore recent, albeit secular, immigration from Tibet, and also the language, while similar, is different.
However, it is equally incomprehensible to me, so that, while they speak, and sipping tea, I focus on the beautiful antique dresser in dark wood inlaid with dragons and other symbols Tibetan, great to take a whole wall of the large kitchen.
Kanchha Lama note my attention and we'll talk a bit ': son not become more mobile, the kind of wood is not can no longer be cut here in the Langtang National Park and in any case there are craftsmen who make these works. So a young couple set up home is not to buy a new one. But since it would probably not even here, as we in the 60s, young people want things modern campaigns for their new homes.
And even here, taking advantage of ignorance, glare of the products are consumer and low self-esteem for its cultural roots, have already arrived smart antique dealers, often Western, who come to "liberate" the original families of the villages these "old things" pagandogliele what to them seems like a good deal (like 100-200 €) and get real works of art in Europe will yield at least 10 to 15,000 euro each.
Obviously I do not miss the opportunity to make him out: that with a value of this furniture in their West here you could buy a nice house.
02/06/2008
The night was difficult night birds? But no, most likely of the mice, got under the tin roof of my room and have engaged in a series of raids, battles, social events together with a lot of squeaks and bumps between the plate above and below that my ceiling I have made it virtually impossible to sleep. To lucky bamboo panel that separates the room from the roof was fixed well enough to prevent his passing .... or maybe it was they who were not interested.
five o'clock in the morning bustle is over, but there remained much to sleep.
In the morning I took the batteries in the camera to load the next village, Chumik, the last point yet where it comes from the power line. A half hour walk. He accompanied me Karma, the son of mr. Kanchha Lama.
are following a course in basic computer use in Kathmandu and would like to open an internet point in Boudha, where there are still few iperturistico unlike the district of Thamel. Would you like to do something
in and for his country, he says, but his father does not help in this: that he prefers to go abroad to seek employment in some countries richer, as did her sisters in Israel and many in these parts - which also send a bit 'of money home. Let
batteries and charger to a family that has the light, at least when he comes back, because right now there is no power - no wonder: there is also in Kathmandu for several hours a day.
In the afternoon a long walk over the pass above the village to see the mountains on the other side.
In fact I find myself having to see them overcome yet another mountain saddle which, however, the path that goes down to another village, not leads.
through it the same as hoping for a side branch, a secondary path, and then I find that it gives me, once the path to the top, the views I wanted.
the evening, on returning, I find my host family, intent on making all those who remember, in return, our Christmas decorations. But here people seem to know even the symbolic meaning of each object and the exact way to prepare it, or at least I know the head of the family to which all refer to know where and how they put everything.
There is a spear covered with kata (white scarves for good luck) bowls with fruit, water and rice offered to the various manifestations of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the pot with sweets at the banquet to invite the souls of missing relatives. And incense and yak butter (the "purest") in profusion.
The whole family has been involved in day to prepare food and little stands in the tradition: There is something of a "Christmas at Cupiello" in Tibetan style, but it seems devoid of all drama and backstage ... it may be because already the tantric iconography Good and evil are complementary and not contradictory?
However, mice that night seem to have found something better to do, or at least ... elsewhere.
07/02/2008
The next morning the atmosphere that recalls the work of De Filippo continues in the same way: the children go get the blessing from his father, who sticks a piece of yak butter on the forehead.
This time I ordered for breakfast is not what I want, but I also eat what is offered them, especially for the Losar.
I'm happy just to a certain point to tell the truth because, yes, the desserts are good and similar to the frappe a mandarin was a bit 'who do not eat, but the spicy potato curry with goat meat and the tasteless fried rice flour can not find it just raised its maximum and also the endless series of cups of "tea" salted with butter - a series that will not end until late in the evening - it was honestly one of those things that just accepts a courtesy - also more than due given their great hospitality.
After a little 'back to the nearby village to recover the batteries, but when I get there they tell me that unfortunately the current session, since yesterday morning, only for an hour, from which I infer that for today I will have photos of only what that remains of the last two batteries a little 'positions (- ... and then luckily enough).
Among other things in this village atmosphere is not very happy today: last night a woman died elderly in a house below and tomorrow, rather than the Losar will be celebrated at his funeral.
When I return home I find the family, some relatives have appeared around the blade - again, in plain clothes - who is conducting a short ceremony to bless the new lungta which were lifted yesterday. Then you drink and eat something and go with the blade to find other families where the same ceremony is repeated with a little entertainment 'in conversation, tea, salt, butter, cakes and milkshakes type Raks. After a while
'Kanchha Lama returns home, but I'd recommend joining a group of revelers and deeper into the village, Indeed, it seems that a lot of fun going from house to house where they play, dance and eat the same libations, but at a more abundant and a knife, this time with clothes from Monaco, flags and blesses people.
I recommend going there: there are more lively celebrations. He will not come.
The village is divided into groups with regard to the celebration of Losar, but is not so much: there must be some person who does not want to meet him in that group.
Anyway I approach and now an old man with a beard by Lao Tze invites me to join in the festivities. The music, played with tamgnin the chitarretta that I bought Kutumsang, is minimal and dance, all together in a circle, one step forward and one step back, holding for life, is the repetitive rhythm of the song. A song in Hyolmo old, whose words are meaningless unintelligible to themselves.
course soon, as a visiting foreigner, becomes the object of attention by many people, particularly young group and old man with a beard who speaks no English and continues to introduce his grandchildren and son.
Young people are here, like the sons of Kanchha Lama, came to Kathmandu from where they study the Losar. Particularly to the nearest of the great stupa of Boudhanath where he lives most of the immigrants of the Buddhist religion in the capital. They are students, some hotels management, who's painting tangkha.
The son of the old Dawa Lama and instead 'a grown man, a painter and teacher of sacred Buddhist art and Tibetan and Japanese style (he also practiced in Japan and Malaysia) and sacred sculptures. There are styles that it takes a long preparation, not only to know the techniques, but also all the complicated details of symbolic tantric iconography: in fact, tuti the thousands of details that are in a tangkha, the author can not make up nearly nothing.
He lives in Boudha, where many gompa has a lot of work in the area, particularly in the community hyolmo (every ethnic group has its own) where he invites me to visit him when they returned to find both in Kathmandu.
He tells me that another ten or fifteen years ago for the Losar village was full of people, many still lived here and those who had gone to live in a city still did not fail to return for the occasion, and it was a big party.
Today even more migration to Kathmandu seems enough, many people went to find work abroad and the village have remained only a few of the old and new generations are about to visit for the occasion.
I say that is probably an unavoidable step, which is success everywhere. In fact, life is hard here and it is understandable that someone wants to look elsewhere for ways to change their condition. But I hope I like him, that sooner or later people will come back: after all, albeit in very different contexts, we sometimes even the descendants of ex-farmers have returned to live in a country now foreign to them away from the city, once certain basic services became available outside.
Indeed, with some minimal comfort in the most (sometimes not depend only on the money, but also the mentality) do not see how you might prefer life in a crumbling and heavily polluted district of Kathmandu to that in a wonder a place like this.
In the end, with a few liters of tea with butter and a number of cups of Raks hot body, and after a brief visit to the house of Dawa Lama and his painter son, I return to my room, while the last two or three veterans still staggering around in a dance lungta highest affectionately holding his arms behind his life, singing, a step forward and one step back tenaciously.
02/08/2008
Today 's time to leave, to take back the streets.
I greet new friends and allotment
Of the children shouting tourists
but the little green bird does not move in to see me.
Who is sitting to milk a cow and
Who to watch the sky.
As a family celebrating a funeral
a bit 'deeper.
passing clouds in the mountains of
Sermantang.
________________________________________________
Sometimes you walk up
sometimes nimble.
But always, even downhill,
thoughts run more '.
practically go down a vertical drop of over 1500 meters in three hours. With the weight of the backpack is really a great effort: the effort I do to stop at every step the pressure down, I would fall, tends continually nerves of the legs start to shake if it was not the same effort of self- to contain its effects.
Since the end of the trek are my instincts of rebellion against the efforts of these two weeks are loose and I can think of a series of sarcastic and ironic invective against the local population that has made the paths (which, considering seriously, are carried on a heroic job for generations) and who put the various stones in some way more appropriate, but now seems to me, the most appropriate way to make me as uncomfortable as possible and to act to make me slip each step. Some jokes are funny and make me go a bit 'with a half smile on my lips as I'm careful not to trip. And I regret not write them both to save time and because both the context of the whirlwind of thoughts, feelings and physical sensations in the sense that it would be impossible to reproduce in words.
Anyway, eventually coming down to the valley, the village of Tembhu really destroyed almost ready to advocate the shim qualechessia mountainous ground on Earth and the abolition of the word "trek" from the dictionary. A
Tembhu is the road, and with it the bus that travels to Kathmandu: a miracle of technology than the world I've lived so far in these mountains. Only the bus, two boys are washing with a rag and a bucket of water to which I head confident and happy to finally be on a relatively smooth and nearly horizontal surface, is not going to leave: I take the bus will arrive between two and a half hours from the capital (hopefully) to start immediately.
Okay, okay, rather than walk all over again. I wait two hours and a half, I raise my shoes and socks and dip your feet in the stream from which the boys take the bucket with water to throw on the bus at rest, but soon after I remove them due to a feeling of almost freezing. Shortly after, while I started to read and munch on a bit 'type of sweet frappe of Losar Sermantang's family gave me to take away, I see one of the two boys bus strips and heavy buckets of lava thrown at the same water stream. What can I say? Sometimes there are things on which even the relativists have their reasons! Once
come on the bus and that this party is a type I struck up a conversation and said he was three years in Malaysia to work in a factory of table lamps for export to the French market. So far a further sign of globalization as an ivy that climbs up over these mountains ... just before falling informs me that the journey to Kathmandu will not last four hours as I thought, but six or seven, making me get there about nine o'clock at night when almost everything is closed and, having said that, down to about his business and let me say that the road is bumpy them an undeserved compliment to the music and distorted and booming from the speakers that seem to make the joy and consolation of the poor fellow to whom I wish the driver to never come to know that There is also the power steering until the day when he can not use it on his work.
The landscape of the Nepalese countryside on the other hand is amazing, even though there are several scenes that border on the true misery through the paesucoli encountered along the path.
During the trip at one point jumping out of a cell phone forgotten already dropped by a passenger. Are locked in a heated argument between a guy who tries to argue that the phone is sitting in his and other places around here that knows that is not true and removed him from the hands. One of them looks at the book and call up some relatives of the owner and then puts it in communication with the driver because agreeing to retrieve the phone.
Also we would be like this ?..... Who knows?!
finally arrived in Kathmandu, taxi, hotel, restaurant, evening room - not really hot, but absolutely necessary.
to be back in the same hotel in Thamel are not very happy but I left here the rest of the baggage and it is now too late to look elsewhere for a room. Trovero 'alternative in the coming days, perhaps near the great stupa of Boudhanath.
For now 'gone more' than good!
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