26/01/2008
It 'a pretty lucky that I found this house, like a bar, as an inn in the village of top Mulkharka, l' last house.
very lucky that they have a bed on which they can leave. Them, a young married Tamang family with two children, sleep under the shop, so if 'you can' call. Perfect! They we earn something and I avoid entering the dark along the path.
Not only that, but just entered the room that serves as living room, warehouse, kitchen, home, well, now I feel the characteristic smell of tungbha, the traditional drink of the people of these parts made of fermented miles to which they are particularly fond of.
Actually 'and it' a variant, a light distillate Raks or perhaps so they call 'the guy says the house to make me understand why' is not the classic Raks, distilled rice Nepali very strong, but is' a variant light, vaguely similar to sake '. See if they are doing so right now I come and I will let you try a glass warm. So 'I get the idea: I do warm up a pot in order to have a little' hot to drink.
As I climbed the path and I was sweating, moaning with my thoughts on many things, I reproached myself for having brought with me all this stuff that makes the backpack is too heavy. But now, as soon as I stopped, the real outside temperature is expressed, along with fatigue. And so, 'now, as I begin to talk with Pedrone home, I salt and cold, one after another, I have to wear any clothing that I have with me. The Raks
hot creates a sense of relaxation and have found a place to stay for a while.
Man and 'young, maybe a little more' wife's looking. He's doing the cooking for miles to the Raks on a wood fire under a canopy outside the back of the house. Do not drink it, sell it only says, but 'a drink you can trust, not like that stuff they sell in June' to Kathmandu.
inside the house and 'bare dirt floor as well as the smooth walls, the fireplace in one corner, with this unfortunate Himalayan system which does not provide an exit for the smoke. The ceiling, wood, and it 's all blackened: there is no' hand, if the smoke has to find 'its way in some way from under the roof, and meanwhile it completely fills the house, crouched on the ground only save one.
I have left the floor (ie 'the room) above, giving a clean to read: everything good, there's no' go for the subtle, the alternative was a path down the dark unknown.
Upstairs we go after, when it's time to sleep, while I sit down to write out on a table for customers of the shop-bar, the only one in the village. To enjoy the last light of day.
But do not write for long. My host wants to talk. He speaks enough English: was born in this village, but the only one of his family to be left. Her father died eight years ago, his mother remarried and sisters, also married, who live elsewhere in Nepal and those in India. He also lived in India, Delhi, Calcutta and Darjeeling, where he studied for two years in college, he says, and I sense a note of regret: it's a smart guy, intelligent and capable of initiative, if he had been able to study .... .
He built this house three years ago is different from the rest of the village, all painted green, with a kind of balcony all around the room upstairs with a shared bathroom clean, everything plastered with cement.
It is studying anyway. Today it is home because it is Saturday (public holiday in Nepal, where Sunday is working), but during the week he goes every day in Kathmandu for two months. Do a course Korean language, organized by the Embassy of South Korea for those who want to go to work there, if one passes the examinations with a good score and get a free visa is inserted for the available jobs.
It makes me see the book of exercises with Korean characters and tells me that the big numbers they use Chinese characters, "as you Italians used to write the English alphabet."
I can not help but point out that although the British (like their children history, Americans) have dominated the world in the last few centuries, if anything, are they who take the alphabet as we gave her that when they were still hordes barbarian came from the steppes of us was for centuries a thriving civilization ..... as there was already a lot 'in India (which then came up to here) at a time when we still made fire with sticks. However
while it was dark and, by the fire, we travel just below the house to warm up with what the peasants who worked the near field have just left.
alive with the type of weeds and tells me not to put the larger pieces of wood that are not yours.
I asked the Euro and the European Union and gradually we speak - in English surface - the expected end of the monarchy and the rise of the Maoists in Nepal, the danger that the promises new elections are postponed, the politicians who are lying all over the world and always eat, instead of the tigers, he says, he does not hurt anyone, only to goats, and then that of mobile phones in the village now have it all, here is the ultimate place to take the first line of the mountains, and that selling those Chinese in Kathmandu to 15 € and more of the fields and life in the city and village.
Chatter on the world in this air and a few drops of cold rain, with the embers and the darkness that remained close and the lights of the Kathmandu Valley that people that far.
At 20.00 back light (which in all of Nepal, where there is, and including, capital is rationed, at times - some say because of the freezing winter of some of the reservoirs of hydroelectric plants, some because the government sells the energy to India under the table ...) and eat. Cold rice and dhal (lentils) with two fried eggs over cold ones as well (there is no problem: it is always the talk of the alternative, as above) and another bowl of hot Raks.
Despite the extreme simplicity of the house - where everything is done on the ground, according to custom - not without a color TV with DVD player and a refrigerator, brought up here on the shoulders of a carrier.
not it is getting late in the evening Mulkharka, we are in bed at 21.30.
The floor is above the ground, blackened by the smoke over the boards, the walls are posters of some Indian actors of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan, applied to a racing bike with the face of harsh landscapes and some of those type that like the Swiss countryside so the Indians adorned with phrases such as "The Highest wisdom is kindness" or "If better is possible, good is not enough".
in my sleeping bag, under the trapuntona, look at the ceiling, roof made of galvanized steel on which a rat runs from time to time and I think my host, who was born and lived in this mountain village, which prepares for its consideration under to be among the Korean people for a bit 'ourselves every day to work in a factory in Seoul ..
(By the way, preparing a sleeping bag, I found a knife under his pillow - and he made the bed a little earlier - but I do not think there ready for letting us have when it comes to cut his throat last night: it seems a good guy and then, if it ever takes him from below - that this is not even sharp!).
27/01/2008
arrived in Chipling. Ling Tibetan means in place. I do not know if Chipling means "on top", but that would be more appropriate.
were just those four homes that were seen long ago on the crest of the mountain that was very questionable as it occurred to these people to live in a place that is more exposed to winds you can not.
The family of this lodge is Tamang, and the progeny descended from Genghis Khan to which some people blame Tamang is well suited to the landlord whose mustache and whose frown would not disfigured at all between the lineage of the great Mongol conqueror.
least I hope that the cold night that the site promises to induce the rats to local councils milder than last night that raged along the roof beams above me and knows me well over the bed once.
In the great game of Nature there is room for everyone, for heaven's sake, and everyone has the right to make their life the way that is proper. So the rats did not deny the right to eat certain the food and run around him at night, but I'm sure they know that I too have my own, to lay around a bit 'of poison, as I do, at least at my house.
morning the day was playing well, usually as part of a day, very prosaically, to the bathroom.
Crouched on the toilet "Turkish" (I wonder why they call it? E 'used by all peoples of the world - at least those who have it - but us Westerners and can not be said that the Turks were the first people outside of Europe with which we Italians are enrati in touch, perhaps the first of which we have used the toilet? are those mysteries that historians generally do not deal to reveal ..... the history of hybridization between the sanitary habits among people. Yet these things are important, just think about the age-old cliché that the British do not use the bidet or the East-West controversy about the use of water or toilet paper, or not to give the left hand etc. ...).
Well, anyway, just squatting there, in one of those moments that, given the state of waiting, they allow the mind to pause for a moment the habit of looking for an apparent certainty about the state of our consciousness constantly following a line of reasoning (which, if they really were to follow, we would see that in reality is a bit 'nonsense where seems to him) observed the concrete wall pulled in front of me and I noticed that it was made with sand particles larger and contained more granules gleaming here and there.
In Italy a further layer of concrete would look a little different. Even in the most anonymous and uniform surface, irriconducibile to any particular culture or tradition material, it is the diversity of the world: if the cement industry and could perhaps be the same everywhere, there is always the sand that says the earth, land where you are, in addition to the styles of local masons.
After a tea with some biscuits I greeted the family and are distributed. I did not even ask their name, now that I think, nor have they asked for my .... but there was no need: we are all human beings, and all passing each other in our lives.
beginning a couple of hours of climbing, but I have endured better than yesterday, maybe because they are entered into the spirit of the trek, and only yesterday the day had started in confusion and in the relative comfort of Kathmandu. Maybe because I saw yesterday how they work moods: if the road is hard, life is bad, negative thoughts take precedence, and while there is one other are already queuing. When the path can proceed safely, life is not so bad and this trekking can be a great experience after which I have some good ideas on what to do.
And then, apart from everything else, there is also reality, the external environment, the mountains for which I'm walking. And sometimes this is powerful.
There are moments where the beauty blinded the thoughts,
them shut up and remain only the leaves of the trees covered with snow
Yes, it appeared while the snow fell during the night. Not much, at times, but enough to require attention when, climbed the first step, the path begins to descend, there are stone steps and is easy slide, if snow is a bit 'more ice (which I happen soon, fortunately without consequences).
After a few hours, stop for a tukpa (Tibetan soup) Chisopani where to meet Nicholas, a young Tuscan and two Canadians. These
the opposite of the first: they're doing for two months trekking in Nepal mountains, Annapurna in the first twenty days, then a week of waiting on the lake of Pokhara, and another twenty hours in these parts. Hours are from Langtang and have taken the step of Lake Gosaikund the snow that came to life and a storm of wind chill. Canadian well-equipped and accustomed to the cold.
Nicola started one day ahead of me for my own journey - much easier - dell'Helambu; spent the night at Chipling (where I am now writing) and this morning he left for Kudumsang (the next stop), but after an hour and a half hours on a few inches of snow was left with just his shoes adapted and light cotton pants all wet, too cold, and decided to leave. Now he's coming back and wants to be in Kathmandu for tonight in a good room and under a hot shower. And I think that will do it: by the time I said on the steps seem to walk faster and the rest has a light backpack - is precisely why we must return: it has brought with it the necessary clothes.
It 's a shame that you come back, we would have done the same path, you a nice guy and I think would be a good traveling companion. We also think a bit, but then stay the decision. After trekking
he needed to spend a week before flying to Delhi wants to return soon in Himachal Pradesh, in the Parvati Valley. "Here in Nepal," laments "the smoke is not 'good. You 'when you're in Italy can' go too, "he says," but when you get used to the real charas .... is another story. "
The time it takes to prepare both my tukpa (and 'a simple soup, I just asked to do soon) and the dhal bhat (rice with lentils and curry) of Canadians makes me think of a strategy to lead us to stop there for the night, since they also have rooms, but it's still early and finally off again, Nicola and Canadians to Kathmandu and I for the next villages.
The trail continues - for the series "Life is Beautiful" - broad and flat enough for an hour and a half and then ... the trouble starts. After a group of houses with a small part of a stupa tortuosissimo steep uphill. A real "appetite," as they called my parents when they brought us into the mountains to my brother and me to be small (I sent a text message to my mother tonight - my father can not 'receive most unfortunately - to thank them for this Who knows if I'd be here now if they did?).
They said even the Lonely Planet, Nicola and Canadian Chipling before there's a big "appetite" (even though everyone said it in a different way).
beginning of the path there is a small lodge-shop where I buy a bottle of water from a very light-skinned girl and learned a lot from China. The price is more than double that in Kathmandu, but I can understand them: here everything must be carried over the shoulder e. .. okay that's Sherpa dell'Helambu, but things weigh the same.
I begin the climb. I stop several times to put on and take off my jacket, the second path is more or less exposed. At one point I put on my headphones and turn on the iPod: In some cases it takes that little 'charge more that music can give.
I move between narrow strips of terraced land, but on one side of the mountain so steep that the higher the stone walls that support them than they are wide strips. Every so often there is a farmer who goes on a wooden plow attached to a water buffalo, children who play leading smocciolanti grazing a few goats, an old woman with a big brass ring that passes through the nose who smokes sitting on the path laughing with a friend.
In this context, I need something that has the spirit of Italy, too, when was a farmer, even when we are all terraced land needed in the mountains, I need the music and energy that emerged from this effort by this necessity, this reality: I put "Taranta Power" by Eugenio Bennato and go up, for the climb.
E 'one foot after another, always in diagonal, zig-zag path than to soften the slope, the road stretches like that, but it is also friendship. And it's better because it is a friend who asks a lot. There would be willing to give up, the backpack is heavy, but it's too late to go back to this point and there are those four houses up there (but we made them do just there?) I'm a bit 'a threat and a bit' a promise. And then the Mountain What if you do not win against ourselves? Protect us against our common to all the hard work necessary in Nature? Against our escape from life after all?
Come to the mountains for any reason or for no real reason and when we are there, just at the worst, we know that we are there for that to fight, to learn that there is no escape in life: c ' is only one step after another.
Who can stand it straight to them straight, maybe within a meter of snow, as the two Canadians, there are those who make them change locations, such as Nicholas, I will do diagonally, sideways, zig-zag stitching "not right" and then "not left", correct it and contradicting, always changing approach, changing the way in, never in a unilateral way, seeing the two aspects, without go straight and never lose sight of the goal to which I am going.
And here I am now here in Chipling therefore, on the balcony of one of these four houses with stones and axes from this family Tamang to warm a cup of tea with milk and sugar so much, who knows a bit 'of wood smoke as it certainly All kitchen where they have prepared.
begin to write these notes in a hurry, with the last sun, but then I can continue in room - After dinner with the usual dhal bhat almost cold - thanks to the light bulb powered by a solar panel unexpected Recharge your patience during this day of slow walking.
01.28.2008 Today is the first sunny day, clear sky and the first sight of high mountains and snow.
I have breakfast in the farmyard on a wooden table placed under the lungta, high vertical flag with Buddhist prayers written above by use Tibetan as the mustachioed master of the house and some friends enjoying the sun on playing cards meadow behind me. After breakfast
allotment, a little 'climb and after a couple of hours meeting rooms sitting out three wayfarers a home-shop and one of them drinking a Coca-Cola beckons me to sit down to drink one too. but decline the offer and go on. "Dear friend" I think to myself "you know these mountains, but I know the Coca-Cola gives you a moment of pleasure and thirst for more after you first" and for me it is not the case, since there I carry either a supply of water not from the weight - so every few hours is always a village.
Then the trail descends on a small settlement, Gul Bhanjyang, where I see some women Tamang busy with their daily occupations, but so typical, so "ethnic" with the colors of their clothes and ornaments, I regret a bit 'of the climb did not have the nerve to photograph them regardless if they agree or not. I lose a lot of pretty pictures to take home for this kind of respect (or shyness?), But how do you go from total stranger to a village where everyone is used to know each other for generations and have their ancient customs and interacting mark the space and mutual respect, and without even stopping to have tea and have a chat, draw his camera and illegally steal the exotic that we find in everyday life of others? Eventually I will comfort
buying a beautiful photographic book in Kathmandu, and those people that makes them come here on purpose, maybe we are months in the villages, and probably they will agree to pay for the photos - and in fact always find the ideal image, who knows how to do it? - Or do not know if they have the hair on my stomach to take pictures of arrogance ..... I do not have it - and I have not even a telephoto lens to take those back.
But soon the self-condemnation and self approved are shown to be a luxury that consciousness can not afford the effort of the climb while the calls to unity with the body. It is again a step behind the other on the steep, worse than yesterday, which now stands at times and sometimes not, and you have to guess and do not confuse it with the path of the stream semiasciutto formed by melting snow. Step
refuge for some of shepherds abandoned for some lodge closed in low season, from time to time. And the space in front, made to give way to the tents of the trekkers, and 'a brief moment of peace with a little horizontal' of grass on the ground and the immense boundless view all around.
The distant peaks with snow, untouched, ever expect higher, and the terraced mountains, carved by the country as soon overcome stubborn tenacity. The Tibetan prayer flags dotting the perimeter as long rosaries and converge at the center of the square on the tip of the high end.
is always a spontaneous bow to this band represent the teaching by which we know that at this present moment we can bow ..... without a reason.
Fatigue ... fatigue ... continues to go up this path and if there is a fork you can not go wrong: the right one is always the most uphill, that goes right up to the top, not what the bypasses.
always forward, then straight ahead. No, zig-zag, otherwise the top will not be round.
After much hard work,
taken the step, an immense satisfaction
....
and go over (and over and over and over again a bit
Ky Ky So So Largyalo!)
The top and 'a bit? In our mind, and perhaps in the form dlla rock, but the top is the huge space, the total view, 360 degrees, and that leaves you speechless: it contains the pace for the direction and step sideways.
Finished!
Now you go down, slowly, a bit 'of snow, be careful on the rocks and rhododendron forest and Himalayan oak trees all around.
slowly coming to the new village: Kutumsang, the first belonging to the Sherpa community, the people most mountain in the world, a sort of aristocracy of the rocks, cold, wind, snow and steep trails of large loads on their shoulders , all brought with energy, dignity and joy.
point immediately what from afar seems the most well-kept home of the other, "Namaste Lodge": great!
I accept an old man with three teeth and three hundred years (apparently), but still energetic shows me a small room with wooden floor and two large windows overlooking the mountains and instructs me to wait downstairs in a sort of dining room while he goes away, probably to call someone who speaks a bit 'of English. In fact, soon to arrive a little boy with the air of those who know far, more than anything else, or that are used to relate to young backpackers - invariably with the air of knowledgeable.
speaks English pretty well, tells me that the room it's free if you eat them (this is quite common here in the mountains) and are also a hot shower with solar panels.
I do not want to believe! Even in a guest house where I was in Kathmandu I could have it for sure: I want to make sure of what is actually "hot".
Be ', we say that it is enough, and above all that I really need a shower, so that by the cube of concrete that contains it and began to undress. I would never have believed a little while ago, while the last section of trail windy increased layers of coverage, that a little later I would have stripped naked in the midst of these mountains, but "you from sorpresas la vida" and a shower and clean clothes often enough to change in an instant perception of life.
Just so little? I would say, in reality often, for better or for worse.
So I take off: with trust (more or less) to arrive this blessed "hot water".
After the shower for something warm inside. Nor do the tungbha
here. They pero 'chang (like another local drink), who make a difference with the corn than it was in Ladakh, where they do it with barley.
asks him a hot cup and invite me to sit with them in front of the kitchen stove and a long low typical Sherpa and similar to those used in Ladakh, only here are not decorated. As well as the kitchen there is a long and rather dark room with a long sideboard overflowing with dishes, glasses, pots, etc. ... many of aluminum, copper anyone. There is also a bed where they sleep at the bottom of the spouses at home.
The old man who welcomed me smiles at me, I'm the nice, we can not speak, but we can share the warmth of the stove, which heats while also chang cups that have supported us over.
The son of the old boy's father, is a thin man, tall and lean, with the classic black beret Nepalese semic but in this case. Farmer and violin: Tam Gnin builds, small four-stringed mandolins Sherpa (the two single sides and a couple at the center). The sherpa is not music that excites me honestly, but the object yes, I have some hanging from the ceiling and I do see one. Small and lightweight Tam Gnin is all decorated with Tibetan symbols of good luck and the end where you pull the strings in the form of a carved dragon head: I will continue to first saw and looked up to ask if I sell one and increase so still a bit 'my load (if ever proof were needed).
The wife is one of these wonderful Sherpa women: beautiful, strong, open, friendly, cheerful and decent, if necessary even harder, he decided, always active, always working and always ready to smile and sing, as well as to remain silent before the fire. With their eyes and long hair Mongols blacks for me to command respect, admiration and desire at the same time. I'm so good at staying in place as to take them to the other and both are jovial and friendly.
A blessing for their men.
The rest of the family and 'composed of these two guys (one before and one younger, because my backpack, I offer it as a carrier) and two other missing children: a married daughter who lives with her husband in the contiguous region of Langtang and older males who studies how the blade of the settlement of Tibetan refugees in the monastery of Bylakuppe, near Bangalore in Karnataka, South India, where there is a kind of great Buddhist universities.
The interest in the musical instrument and played a few notes from my host led me to go to the room to get my flute that I have in the backpack and then let him see the instrument that I play and make them feel even a few tunes, Italian or down there. The flute
collecting some interest: everyone is looking a bit 'of play - which, of course, can not start so well, let's say, just a little' better than my hints with gnin tam.
Let's go on a bit 'after dinner, between sounds and words to the ceiling, while the boys smoked cut into strips and then put out to dry over the stove a piece of buffalo meat from people who have just bought a nearby Tamang village. "We" say "We are Buddhists and do not kill animals" buy them slaughtered by Tamang, a Buddhist too, but at a lower end in aristocracy of the mountain.
At one point the couple just starting to get ready for bed, in the same room where the boys are still talking and I, and so I think I should go to sleep.
The night passed well enough, the cold did not suffer, even if Chang is a fermented beverage, which, a little 'can not fail to be heard ....
29/01/2008 Kutumsang is a few houses on a ridge that climbs up the mountain terraced fields, and many semi-vertical (be ', not really, but quite steep) on both sides.
Kutumsang is the name that the Nepalese government or its editors have made maps of the village whose name is actually sherpa Taa Kor which means "the place of the traps for tigers" (more or less) because once (no longer) here there were many tigers and people defended the traps. So well that now there are not any more - and frankly (pace of animal city) well I would say fortunately because I want too that tigers do not disappear, but with them remain uninhabited forests and mountains that can be a good habitat for them and possibly vast national parks for us where we can go to see them eventually, but knowing that going to them and equip them accordingly. How it could also very well all areas of the left only to them and other wild animals because it is not written anywhere that every place should be explored, every thing "known" - then what environment we can really know if "there never gets wet in the same river twice? If everything is so complex and so changeable?
However, where the men live in their villages, with their animals and their fields (and where well maybe sometimes we can move on to someone else do the walking) is normal that there are tigers in their own risk because everyone has the right to live and own way, but that is the subject of mice: the tigers have a right to kill and eating men and animals, people to kill them to get away from their territory. This is justice for those who live there in Nature, though perhaps not for those who talk about living in the city (remember the farmer who years ago taught me to prune the trees once said, "Oh, I'm fine with the recovery of wolves, but which protected them in their offices where they work, "referring to animals). What I really do not have the right to exterminate the species is living until they disappear altogether (as has happened for many unnecessarily) by denying the possibility of destroying the environment in which there are suitable to live. This is the real issue, and is something many people contribute to make even indirectly, without realizing it, but following a lifestyle which, multiplied by a mass level has precise consequences, as the blow of a scythe on the grass.
However today I decided to take a day off in this' trap for tigers, "a day devoted primarily to wash my clothes and wait to dry (not a quick thing) before the wind and then in front of the stove .
After washing them I'm a bit 'look at the family home while the potatoes planted on narrow terraces below. They have piles of dry manure and compost worn with panniers on the back and upside down in long rows on each terrace. The man shakes the earth with the hoe, the wife spreads the soil and sow the seed guys. I look at them sitting outside the house while my hands were frozen and the water you take a cow grazing scampanante me around.
Later two other trekkers arrive, a couple of university students in the Czech Republic that make my own path and found my tracks on-book accounts of the lodge above where they are stopped too.
Their country is to adopt the Euro and talk about, among other things, a little 'of it. He says that the euro could rise still very valuable if some oil-producing countries (Iran has already spoken several times) chooses to list their petrlolio in euro. I tell him that it would be World War III: the U.S. would not allow anything, find an excuse to make war, perhaps for the freedom of quotation of the currency free from any real data or anything else - after all Iran is not by chance is already under fire. It
chiaccera a bit 'till the evening, until it was time to go to bed, here comes very early, the 21 is already up late.
meantime, I am made an agreement with Dawa, the younger of two brothers, to hire him as the bearer of my backpack just for tomorrow, the day being the most hard: 1200 meters in altitude uphill in the snow. Thousand rupees, about eleven euro, or about twice the normal day for a carrier, but then he also has to go back (though I imagine that will be enough in a couple of hours).
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