The bus swayed from side to side as we drove the three hours back from Malemchi Bazaar. Cosily wedged between the baggage and packages on top, I had a panoramic view as we returned to the medieval city, Kathmadhu. Behind us, the Himalayas gleamed, roseate in the late afternoon sun.
An air-conditioned coach bearing tourists, passed the other way, its passengers peering out at the Breughel like scene, causing much merriment with the happy band on the roof.
We were to have a celebration party with our expedition team and sold our climbing gear, then returned to India. It was there we repaired for a week to Hodal, a garden hotel on the road between Agra and Delhi. I was nursing a hacking cough and some altiitude sickness which I treated with some efficacious over-the-counter medicine. From Hodal we made a brief foray to the Taj Mahal, then turned to home back in Dubai.
It was ten days before, at Holi, Lord Krishna's birthday, that we flew into Kathmandu. We had immediately applied for trekking permits and, during the three days it took to process, hired bicycles and toured the Kathmadhu valley.
We did the tourist stuff -- visited Freak Street, where a few Amex-carrying, spaced-out hippies still hung out; sat in at a (yellow hat) Buddhist puja; saw the temples in the southern city where Hunuman has his eyes blindfolded to save him the embarrassment of the erotic statues; ate at Aunt Jane's, a hippie hamburger joint where notices on the tables encouraged us not to smoke our hash pipes.
High up in her temple window we caught a glimpse of the living goddess, Kumari, a reincarnation of Durga/Shakti, the divine mother. We strolled through a Kali temple where an inept thief attempted to pick my pocket. All this, with Holi devotees throwing liberal quantities of red and blue dye at each other.
We set out by bus to the northern edge of the Kathmandu valley then, with our Sherpa guide and three porters, my wife myself and two teenage children started the steady climb towards the mountains. The first days were a switchback climbing steadily higher, but temporarily descending to cross the Malemchi Khola river by a rope bridge. We passed through Tamang villages and a rhododendron forest. At one of the villages, a gentleman asked me if I would care to purchase some tea bowls -- his son was sick and he needed the money. They were antique and I really didn't need them, but seeing his plight, paid him a fair price. I have them still. I hope his young son became better, he would be thirty-eight today.
The going was tough and the children sometimes complaining but always grateful for our meal at day's end. One evening, while camping at a small school at the head of a vast hanging valley, I tore pages out of my notebook and made paper planes for the children. They were well made and stayed aloft, it seemed for hours, suspended in the aura of the setting sun. I watched as a figure strode up the trail towards us. It was the local teacher, bringing milk and a request that I not encourage the children to destroy their exercise books.
The views the next day, as we hiked through the forest towards our far-point of the trek, Tarke Gyang, were stunning.
We walked through flower meadows, past fields of barley, corn and potatoes, stopping only to leave votive offerings at the Buddhist shrines. We passed Melamchigaon where Padmasambhava, Guru Rimpoche, had meditated while on his way to carry the Dharma to Tibet. We pressed onto Tarke Gyang.
At Tarke Gyang, my wife rested with the children. Situated on a meadow hanging over a precipice, the village lay in the shadow of Malemche Puri. The mountains were so close now, at night we could see the stars in the spaces between them. This truly was the home of the gods.
The Buddhist family with whom we stayed taught us how to be observant of the household Buddhas and shared with us butter tea and an almost lethal rice drink, rakshi. Technicolor dreams as the stars rotated in their great course around the sky. We took it in turns to circle the great prayer wheel at the local village monastery, we napped in the high meadow, we washed our clothes...
In the following days, my family rested and my younger daughter played hopscotch with the local chldren, while I and my Sherpa guide pressed on close to the Langtang valley. While climbing Yangri (16,000') we stayed with a goat herder, also a Buddhist who read me the Dharma in Tibetan -- I remember the herder was tending a goat with a broken leg.
After this all too brief sojurn, we turned for home and returned to Kathmandu.
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