A Western View of the Sacred Mountains of the Himalaya

Machapuchare, a sacred peak in the Annapurna range

 

Reasons I, like so many humans, like mountains:

Mountains are a powerful symbol of nature dominating over man, of endless, relentless apathetic power. The mountains don’t care, they simply exist at the will of the earth and its tectonic plates beneath. In this ancient Himalayan culture, a number of mountains are held sacred. Mt Kalish, a Tibetan peak, is sacred to the Hindus along the Ganges plains hundreds of miles south. According to Hindu myth, Shiva resides in a cave at the top of the peak. To Buddhists, Mt Kalish has a historical significance as the location of the beginnings of tantra. Machapuchare (“Fishtail”), in the Annapurna range of north-central Nepal, remains a sacred peak banned from climbing expeditions. In 1957 the British climber Wilfrid Noyce failed to reach the treacherous summit by only 50-200m (accounts vary). Nepalis banned the peak from future ascents.

 Many other mountains are held sacred by locals. Often Western wanderlust is the only thing driving the Nepali guides and porters to eschew their sacred beliefs to make money to support their families that are increasingly influenced by globalization in the forms of Western clothing, cell phones, and packaged foods. These porters will leave offerings along the trails, thank-you’s to the mountain for a safe passage. In the animist Bon religion, more ancient than Buddhism, spirits are everywhere and must be placated. All along the tallest trails in the world, from Everest to Annapurna, Tibetan prayer flags, Lung Ta, drape from cairns and sway in the breeze. Both Nepalis and foreigners leave them to spread good fortune along the path, and the wind will carry this good fortune to all it touches according to Mahayana Buddhist belief.

The foreigner’s relationship to Nepal’s environment is inherently different. We don’t have thousands of years of history of spirit offerings. We cannot see them. Yet the fantastical pops up despite religious or spiritual differences. Foreigners still found the supernatural in the Yeti, findings which arose when Westerners began to explore Nepal’s mountains in the 20th century in great numbers. But what is sacred in the West? North American groups have declared many sacred spots, but the US government, in its complex relationship to Native American land management, has determined which groups have remained in their ancient homes and which have been forced to relocate, abandoning their sacred spaces to oil companies, national parks, or private land for houses. Is there a future for the sacred in the West?

The Farm (Part 1: The Food/Rant about Organic Farming)

Food and life are not separated in rural Nepal. Food is life and life is food. The farmers work to plant and eat and live. Subsistence farming is an entirely different relationship to the natural world than modern America has with its ubiquitous desk job lifestyle. Many of us easily remove ourselves from the natural world by forgetting that food means plant, land, and farmer. The organic movement embraces this cycle and urges people to understand the origin of their food. At Reep Republic, I lived these virtues and fully seek to enact them wherever I may travel.

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Chitwan, Dherai Garmi Chha (It's too hot)

A moderate heat is the worst kind of heat. It tricks you, letting you dry and cool for a brief relief before bringing you back to the inevitable swelter. It is an array of ebbing and flowing unpleasantries. It will lie to you. The constant, humid, tangible, sauna-like heat of the jungle is a different beast. It never pretends you will feel comfort in the form of dry skin, or slow, deep breaths. It is honest and cruel. The sweat will fall from forehead to eye, from nose to ground. You will taste the salt of your body on your lips. It will never cease. But this itself becomes a respite: your expectations are always matched. This is the way of life in the summer heat of Chitwan National Park.

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Entering Nepal (Again)

I’ve seen the sunrise almost every day. The sky lightens just before five, the haze lifts, and the car horns begin. This morning, the hotel owners next door began their day with a dose of Nepali pop music that drifts from their open windows. Street dogs bark back and forth, call and response. Believe it or not, this---the courtyard of the guest house, tucked far behind the main roads---is one of the quietest spots I’ve found in the city.

The climb to Swayambudanth temple was embarrassingly difficult. After climbing the city’s hills, its 263 steps from the base to the top where the stupa sits is a hearty challenge. Near the top of the stairs, just below the stupa, a man blocks the path almost entirely with baskets of seeds and spices, colored power and necklaces. He is performing a puja, a worship to Shiva, whose statue sits across from him. I walked past him, clockwise following the other worshippers spinning prayer flags that line the circular base of the stupa. It is covered in the multicolored prayer flags of Tibetan Buddhism that spread good fortune through the air that passes through them.

While shooting a video of swaying prayer flags above, a monkey steals my water bottle. I go after him. He’s a baby, and futilely tries to attack the screw-off lid with his teeth while I growl and lunge in hopes he will leave it. Instead his mother, watching close by, growls back with barred teeth. I retreat; the baby has won. Soon she gives up on the bottle and it rolls down the hill into a pile of trash that I assume was also stolen from other unsuspecting humans.

I spend another day at the Bouddanth stupa, alternating between walking around it in the traditional clockwise fashion and hiding in cafes when the rain hits. With feet full of new-shoes blisters, I hesitate to risk much extra walking. Earthquake reconstruction has finally finished, and the stupa is once again adorned with its golden spire whose buddha eyes stare across at worshippers. At a rooftop café, I watch a number of men climb a ladder up the dome to the base of the spire to hang prayer flags. Even as the rain and thunder hits, one man continues with his armful of prayer flags. He dutifully hoists them in the air while I hide under the café roof, taking his photograph from afar.

The city feels familiar. Fighting street dogs, goat head vendors, lounging cows, ruthless taxis, deformed beggars---it doesn’t feel as rough as before. I walk without the anxieties of a newcomer.