NO PATHS TO PARADISE

17^th March, 8.45pm 

Every step is an effort and every breath never seems to suffice. It is 4am in the morning and the temperature is -30°C with windchill and I’ve been trudging along an escarpment for the past three hours, the muscles in my legs in relentless torment, when the halogen beam of my headlamp flickers and the battery dies in the biting cold. 

I dig my walking poles into the snow for each tremulous step forward, my eyes searching in vain for a portion of the gravel trail that has not yet been effaced by whiteness. There is no longer a path and my only compass remains in the glint of the torches of climbers ahead of me and the discretion of my own steps as I totter alongside sheer 1,000ft drops. It is an extremely painful feat for me; my body unaccustomed to the arctic chill and raw violence of the winds, the altitude that has my heart beating against my chest in startled vigour, its protest a rhythmic pounding in my brain. I try not to think about frostbite or the perils of altitude; bloodied lungs and cerebral edema but my mind drifts to the equally daunting Thorong-La Pass 17,763ft in the heavens that I must cross within the asylum of early morning before the sheer solidity of the winds in daybreak render the crossing untraversable. From the top of the pass is a 13,120ft descent through the deepest valley in the world to the sacred pilgrimage site of Muktinath. 

It is only when my headlamp fails do I realize how reflective a full moon really is unencumbered by city lights, its luster nearly as bright as candlelight and in its luminescence I pause at the incredible beauty before me, the landscape an alien terrain of rock shimmering crystalline under the coated sheen of ice. I am bearing silent witness to the greatest peaks in the world, the Himalayas, an eruption of granite, sandstone and schist between the sultry heat of the Indian plains and the beige and taupe palate of the Tibetan plateau, millenniums-old glaciers encircling their crests like a necklace of diamonds. How incredible it is that before my eyes the milky way glistens in a myriad band of stars and Mars is a sanguine orb that shares the same sky. Then the thought that this place was once under a body of ocean and that before we came whales swam through the valleys between these peaks, their secrets fossilized in the schist, is a beauty nearly too difficult to bear alone. I start to cry and at first I do not understand where these tears pour from as well as where my exhausted body has mustered the effort to cry. The tears moisten the scarf I have wound across my nose and mouth, the wind instantly turning the cloth hard, a droplet hanging from my nose-ring turns to ice. I remove the scarf and gasp in the freshness of the wind; snowflakes melt on my warm lips and I am suddenly able to place this feeling, I strangely remember it from before when we were together in a place entirely different.

It was that night when we both slept on the beach under that short tree, sand on our backs, our legs, between our fingers, both too high to move and we were talking as the waves met the surf. You had your head on my chest and I felt my entire being overcome by an inimitable feeling of Gratitude. It was not the kind of selfish gratitude that comes from becoming the beneficiary of events fortuitous or the gratitude of owning something you like or the happiness that comes with seeing your wishes fulfilled. It was a gratitude, transcendent, that comes in simply knowing that such goodness and beauty exists somewhere and even if it were not yours to own, you know that grace would rise in the dawn of every day in the exact same way. And in the light of that gratitude withers all else you previously held important. As I now know what the peaks of the Himalayas look like as dawn kisses their peaks and I have known the nearness of you.

March 24, 2012, 9:01pm

15^th March, 9.10pm 

The slow melt of the Ganagapurna glacier forms a lake and on her banks I sit watching a fox tread the surface ice, a thin ice blue crust above the blackness of her winter’s depths. The cold runs deep and I think about the Thorung La Pass, a high crossing in the Annapurna range and a gruelling 7000ft climb from my current bearings that I will have to surmount in the next 2 days, a crossing that has to be made in order to begin my descent out of the mountains. A storm ferments in the sky, a nebulous bowl of rolling clouds murmur with a promise ever-darkening, the brief parting of their curtain reveals peaks with snow billowing in the gale of their stature. I feel their temperament in the altitude that punishes my body but at this point there is no other way out of the mountains than onward. I think of you again, your gaze warming in the sunset, your trust as patient as a glacier’s melt.

March 22, 2012, 4:30pm

14^th March, 9.35pm

It’s been a week since we’ve been climbing into the Himalayas and today we left the cobbled streets of Chamhe and made the crossing into the high glacial basin of Manang, where at an elevation of 11,318ft above sea level, the strains of altitude start to manifest in headaches and an accelerated heartbeat as your body gasps for oxygen, attempting to acclimatize to the thinning atmosphere. There is a foreboding mystique in the buffalo skulls hung from the wooden doors of homes in the village, shopfronts full of Tibetan text and yak butter, the streets delineated by rows of ancient prayer wheels, the perennial mantra, ‘Aum Mani Padme Hum’ inscribed into their brass frames in Sanskrit. Himalayan yak and wild stallions graze freely in the basin that is flanked in all directions that the eye can see by white encased peaks. The titanic snowscapes of Gangapurna and the Annapurna massif that by moonlight become the silhouetted sentinels of this land, the mountains that all at once become Brahmā, Vishnu and Śhiva – the Preserver, Protector and Destroyer of its people. In the distance I catch the reflection of the waning daylight in the gold stupa of a Tibetan shrine perched on a cliff, overlooking the village of Manang. I roll a joint and start a brisk climb towards the gompa on a rocky pathway, an accent made more arduous by the vehemence of a wind that blows unimpeded through the vastness of the land. The façade of the sanctum depicts pastel paintings of the Goddess Tārā, incense and a baritone incantation seep from under the gleam of the monastery roof where inside the structured mandala of the gompa, maroon robed Tibetan monks sit in prayer. I stand in the doorway and a monk turns to look straight at me, the contours of age running in his face like tributaries leading to an ocean, both his eyes the opals of age. For a moment I wonder if he can see me but it feels as though he is not looking at me through his eyes.

March 22, 2012, 1:15pm

12^th March, 10.00pm

The path is a steady uphill climb from Dharapani that I set off on before dawn. A few hours after daybreak I walk through a vast rhododendron forest, mist still hanging in the vessel of morning as sunlight gently streams through the canopy upon the forest floor, growing purple flowering trillium weeds. Tired, I sit on a giant twister root coloured in moss and lichen. The mist is a slow drift to the east and the forest is mostly silent if not for the occasional rustle of the wind flowing between the leaves of my awning. There is a movement from the undergrowth and from behind a tree trunk a horse materializes in my periphery. He looks on straight towards me, our gazes locking and I notice he has no bells or markings on his body. The vapours of our breaths punctuating our stare, the morning mist wafting through soft beams, it was one of the most peaceful moments I’ve experienced. In my ears The Flaming Lips play,

“as the dawn began to break,

I had to surrender,

the universe will have its way;

too powerful to master…”.

March 20, 2012, 7:54pm

9^th March, 11.20pm 

I met someone who said that the stars are the eyes of the universe and we are meant to learn to look at ourselves in the eyes. I’m thinking about you.

March 20, 2012, 7:51pm

7^th March, 4.10pm

Men are playing carem on well-chalked boards at teashops, rolled cigarettes in the corner of their mouths, tendrils of smoke rising above their game. Tibetan prayer flags are strung through the Kapok trees that line the streets of Besisharhar and the children are hiding out in alleys with colour in their hair, conferring in a hushed mischief that is nearly palpable in the air of Holi. Mobsters with fistfuls of magenta powder and an artillery of small water grenades clutched in mercilessly deft hands ready to launch their guerilla attacks, defending their dominion. I am passing through the town, on a trek that follows the Marshyangdi River to its source in the mountains, through a narrow path cut into the cliffs of the deep gorge that the river has carved into the fortress of the Himalayas. Occasionally the sunlight catches itself in the iridescent blue plume of a Kingfisher dipping into the surge of the river. As we climb higher into the foothills of the Himalayas the path meanders through other villages, its people tending to the terraced fields of maize, barley and potatoes, goats tethered to wooden posts, the children playing between cowsheds and women carrying weaved wicker baskets of hay upon their heads with an elegance so crisp you are nearly sure there is something transcendental in the mist of these mountains. Himalaya, which translates from Sanskirt to mean, Abode of Snows, the home of Shiva clad in tiger skin and a necklace of skulls, his body blue from serpent’s venom, his matted dreadlocks coiled upon his head from where flows the Ganges, the earth borne from the divine of his navel, the cinders of consciousness behind his third eye. I walk for hours on a tapering path with steep drops into the ravine below, a path that is wide enough for only one man to pass at a time, I often stop overwhelmed by the low hum of the wind passing through the gorge, the waterfalls that break from the face of the cliffs I walk along, cascading down into the river below. I feel I am slowly coming to understand that all things know their path. I stand on a swaying wooden footbridge on the outskirts of Taal before I descend into its valley where I have decided to rest the night. The waters of the great Marshyangdi resounding in its flow against the canyon walls, its power trembling in the wooden planks I stand upon, its violence beautiful, carving time into granite the way the harshness of the elements have etched the faces of the people of the mountains, their beauty incredible.

March 20, 2012, 7:48pm

25^th February, 6.45pm

I am sitting on the rooftop terrace of the Panorama View Lodge, a small cottage at the highest point in the hills of Dhulikhel, a three-hour drive out of the Kathmandu Valley. In my hands a cup of Nepali milk tea that has just been brought up to me, a little too hot to drink but dutifully warming these fingertips that have forgotten wind this brisk. The sun has set and most of the sky is a studded bowl of deep blue, the auburn in the horizon though now only a faint hue, still tints the peaks of the Himalayas in the east from where the sunset clearly must still be in view. Mountains look different in every changing light. To the west, lies the light clusters of the many homes in the Kathmandu valley. This is the first time I’ve written or taken a photograph since I’ve left home. How does one faithfully describe beauty anyway? I have resigned to only hoping that I might be able to faithfully describe how I feel. I miss you. I guess I could chronicle my travels as a map of the places I’ve been, as a picture book of moments experienced- but I prefer not to. I rather write a set of letters to you.

February 29, 2012, 7:26pm