(This dispatch is available with plugins at: http://blog.secretspoteverest.com/2011/06/18/petes-relfections-on-nepal.aspx)


Pete Colgan on Peekay Peak (13,368ft.4096m) in early March 2011

As I sit down to write this reflection of our trip to the Sherpa country of Nepal some 3 months after our return, the past tense seems like it should make sense – but it doesn’t.  I am still there.   Perhaps the trip affected me so because I am at an inflection point in my life.  Drew is off to college in the fall, and Susan and I will soon be tending an empty nest.  Perhaps it’s because the personal connection I feel with Dawa began not when we met in Kathmandu in 2011, but when we met in New Mexico in 2008 during his first trip to North America.  Most likely, though, it’s because the Sherpa way of life is just correct – and has something to teach us all. 

Of almost three weeks...we spent five days in Kathmandu, eleven days in the countryside (of which only a day and a half was in our target village of Gorakhani) and returned to Kathmandu for just a day before returning home to Boston.



Each day is a package of emotions, a collection of people, images, smells and sounds. 

Pondering the itinerary reminds me of not just the physical journey we took, but also of how quickly we moved from judging this “strange” culture, to simply observing it, and then to allowing ourselves to just be a part of it.  You can’t appreciate the essence of a place unless you become a part of it and you allow it to become a part of you.  Because I was able to do that, I am still there – even while sitting on my backyard porch.  It’s in me.



The majority of Nepal’s people live here in the Kathmandu valley.  We are packed together, a few of us very rich and almost all of us without much monetary worth.  Each day is mostly about surviving – but it’s not a struggle against some oppressive outside force.  Survival here is about doing the honorable work that our karma requires of us.  In Thamel, where we’re staying at the Kathmandu Guest House, it’s the tourist part of town and there are purveyors of luxury goods like Coke and cookies and books and $1 DVDs.  There are Chinese knock-off branded goods from the North Face and Patagonia everywhere.  People are engaged in growing and finding food, cooking and eating, staying simply clothed, bartering goods and services for a few rupees, and fixing things that break.  In the streets, there’s pent up energy from constrained movement – too many people for the roads to handle – and the noise of horns honking to warn others (no one honks in anger).  People and chickens and bikes and scooters and cars and cows and carts and goats all flow in chaotic harmony, never seeming to worry about crashing or being run into.  It just seems to work.  Shops along nearly every road are open rooms or an area on the sidewalk packed with the stuff of living:  vegetables, dried fish, rice, cookware, cloth, tools and cell phones.  Chewing tobacco packets hang like German sausages in some stalls for those who have worldly needs, while next door incense and bronze Buddhas and Shivas are there to support our needs for the inner journey.



Hindus and Buddhists, Newari and Chhetri, Brahmins and Sherpas all co-exist, even blend together.  Tolerance pervades the way people interact with one another, although the lingering attitudes of the now officially defunct caste system are clearly evident.  So, too, are the strong feelings that swept the monarchy away peacefully and brought the Maoists into a legitimate, democratically-elected majority of a fledgling government that is trying to hold the country together while squabbling over the constitution that remains unwritten.

We are here, though, not to be a part of life in the city.  We are here to help Dawa’s village and to put plans together for the new primary school that they want. 



So we’re now on the bus to Shangri La, listening to high-pitched Nepali songs on the radio.  Then we’re on the bus again, up and down over the pass through a hundred potentially fatal switchbacks, until the one-lane road ends.  And now we’re walking, higher and to the east, towards the simple life of yaks and rice, Buddhism and Himalayan bamboo, sweat and hard work, Sherpa tea and chang.  Mostly, though, we’re walking towards smiles and happiness, towards contentment with how things are.  On the way, we’re living the daily rhythm of waking at dawn, tending the animals, cooking over the wood fire in the one-room kitchen, hot water, then tea, then rice or potatoes, then spinach and pickled cabbage and peppers.  We’re squatting over a hole in the wooden floor when our body is done with the rice from the day before, and we’re burning incense in the morning for the Buddha.  

Palms together, we say “Namaste” a thousand times along the way.  We say it with a genuine smile and eye contact connection with happy strangers, each of whom takes to heart the fact that “Namaste” means “I recognize the God in you,” and realizes the profound significance of that statement.  Each evening we sleep in the bedrooms that our guesthouse host family have happily abandoned in exchange for the opportunity to earn a few rupees for hosting us.  Each morning we awake to hot tea and happy service. 


Ang Dawa Sherpa

Dawa is an amazing human being.  He is not just guiding our trip, working out logistics with the porters and guesthouse hosts.  He is sharing his world with us, introducing us to his friends and family, and worrying about whether we are OK with the simplicity of the rustic lifestyle of his homeland and people.  He is apologetic at first, but soon figures out that we are not worried or grossed out or judgmental of how things are.  We are there with him and Phill and each other and the people we meet along the way.  That we are together is more than enough.  It is what it is.  The fact that where “it” is happens to be on the other side of the globe and a million cultural miles from home is irrelevant and wonderful.



Along the way to Gorakhani, we celebrate Shivaratri, Lord Shiva’s day.  It is a day of huge celebrations in the Hindu world.  While we are out in the country, there are bonfires at every street intersection in Kathmandu.  It is the only day each year where ganga is legally smoked, and we are missing a WILD celebration by being out here.  Our Newari host in Tatakhoche, though, builds a fire, and we are happy to do our part honoring Lord Shiva with rum and Cokes brought in for the occasion.



We celebrate Sherpa New Year (Losar) at Phill's Secret Monastery.  We start the day with Tibetan bread and honey, apple, sweet biscuits, and – oh yes – a special batch of chang that had been aging for three months for this very occasion.  The Sherpa culture requires an ever-full glass of tea or chang, and to refuse a refill is tantamount to saying, “I’m challenging you to make me drink until I explode!”  There is no such thing as “no” on Losar, and we are pretty buzzed by 10 AM.  It is from this place, though, that we get our first really amazing views of the Himalaya just to our north, and the exhilaration from that fuels us through the hangover that tries to slow us down during our long journey that day to the high point of our trip, Peekay Peak.



I’m on Peekay Peak with my sons, Tom and Drew- my adopted son, Chhiring Dawa Sherpa, and Phill.  The boys have bonded, Chhiring happy for the company of other kids in his age range and the opportunity they brought to make a little money.  The fact that Tom and Drew have carried baskets has made them an oddity – no one sees Westerners carrying baskets with the porters – and endeared them to their compatriot porters, Chhiring, Gelging, and Dendi who is Chhring’s father and our soon-to-be host in Gorakhani.  From Peekay we can see Everest.  It’s nice to be able to say, “We’ve seen Everest.”  But even nicer is the fact that, from Peekay Peak, we can also see our destination – Gorakhani.



Finally in Gorakhani, we are at Dendi’s home.  His wife Lapka is happy, silent, dutiful.  I wouldn’t want to play Poker with her.  She’s wonderfully nice but hard to read because, I think, she is focused on the work at hand – always.  I feel like we’ve arrived home.  Before we descended into Gorakhani, Dendi showed us his “cow house” high on the ridge above the village where he lives with his cows during the monsoon.  If he is not already there as I write this, he will be soon.  In Gorakhani, we finally see where he keeps his cows and goats during the rest of the year.  He milks them, and showed us how he makes the dry, smoky, hard cheese from their gift.  He loves them.  We see his potato cellar, filled still from the fall harvest.  We smell the dried, shaved radish that lies in a 3-meter wide pile under a tarp in the downstairs room that also is home to a shrine to Buddha that is visited and refreshed every morning. 



Upstairs, the main room is mostly dark, lit by the one window at the peak of the roof that is also over the sink.  A black pipe brings water from the hillside to the sink; another carries the grey water down to the terrace below the house.  The home now has power, and is dimly lit by a single LED lamp.  The walls are dark with pitch from years of open fire smoke from the hearth that is the center of the room, the heart of the home, and the point where the family’s attention is focused throughout the quiet ritual of meal preparation that takes place twice a day.  Hot water.  Tea.  Rice.  Vegetables.  Hot water.  More tea.  Cleanup.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat…



We are now at the school, which we first see from the hillside far above it.  Most of the kids are already at Urgin Sherpa’s home, but five kids decided to come to school first.  We’re greeted from far below by the headmaster, who has had the job for some 39 years.  The school is way nicer that we expected – because someone had brought money and school supplies the year before!  It became very clear, though, that while the school is in decent shape, teacher training is a real need, and we’ll focus on that in the future.



At Urgen Sherpa’s home later the same afternoon, we are greeted warmly with chang, tea and smiles.  We hand out the pencil sets that Mrs. Arakelian’s Lance School second grade class collected.  We deliver the other school supplies, too, that the Bedford High School interact club and the girl scouts in town helped collect.  It seems like so little, but the gifts are received thankfully by the kids.  The parents are delighted.  The teacher receives his supplies as well, and Dawa explains to all in the Sherpa language where the supplies came from and why we came at all.  We receive white and cream katas in thanks from many of the villagers.  They are so thankful for so little, and I am feeling that there is so much more to do.  This little bit, though, is so much because their needs are modest, and they appreciate the heart with which the help and gifts are given way more than the actual gifts themselves.  I am high on the love.  These people get it.  They don’t know what they don’t have, they are happy to have what they do, and whatever we do to help them moving forward will be done with an unwavering commitment to avoid screwing that up.


Ang Dawa Sherpa and Phill Michael...Founders of the SherpaSchool.ORG

Phill’s quiet intensity has brought us all here.  He is Motomanchi (Big Man).  He walks slowly, but with purpose.  He thinks big, but smoothed out all of the small details, too, that made the trip possible.  While he thinks of himself as something of a Laughing Buddha, his impressive persona enables him to work with great authority in the situations that require that.  He is committed to the goal of helping our friends in Gorakhani while preserving all that makes the village the uniquely wonderful place that it is.  As a result of our trip together, my family, Dawa’s family, Phill, and the people of Gorakhani are connected in a way that transcends time and distance.  I am still in Gorakhani, in fact, and plan to remain so forever.   I hope you’ll come visit!

Namaste

Pete Colgan
A True Supporter of the SherpaSchool.ORG