We are tired. But at least I slept well. Laura almost didn`t sleep. And then Babu appears to have decided to walk seven hours today. Long, tough day. A lot of wind. Really a lot of wind. We see the most beautiful landscapes, I take many pictures. But we are tired. It`s yesterday that has made us tired.
Jomsom is a place where you rather don`t want to arrive, certainly not when tired.
The guesthouse is not cosy and the woman unfriendly. A tough off-day.
What goes up…
Jomsom to Kalopani
The bodies are still tired. The minds are ok. Better than yesterday and we`re happy that Jomsom lies behind us. We eat lunch made by a transvestite who makes the best dal ever (dal is a typical Indian/Nepali dish made of lentils). We walk in a good rhythm. A good, normal day that ends in Kalopani that can be called a paradise after Jomsom. The warm shower is being welcomed, the food as well, the company as well. All is good. Long live all.
Kalopani to Tatopani
Kalopani was a heaven compared to Jomsom. Slept well, ate well (Yak cheese!) and did yoga in the morning with the Israelian girls we met on our first day.
Today we walked again around seven hours.
I discovered today what already exists since ages, what has always been under my and everybody`s nose, as if I have read a book that I`ve read a million times before without understanding, I had an age-old insight. I was in the now.
Nothing more or less. What a tremendous energy!
What a burden that suddenly disappeared. What a simple happiness. Afraid to lose it? Impossible, it`s always there. And it`s so simple.
A river only flows now, I hear her only now, the step I am taking is now the only step I am taking, worries about money, about Belgium, about future, they are not there now, because I am taking a step and then another step and then another step. Every moment the possibility of this insight. No way back.
Talking or not talking, doesn`t matter. I don`t have to be alone in the now.
I don`t mind sharing this.
What an energy that`s being released.
No effort in walking.
And getting there back? That`s possible at any moment. Just breathing and waiting and nothing else.
And listening.
The whole world is in this moment.
Only now.
All the rest has passed or has to come and I don`t have the least control of that.
The only thing I can do, I can do now.
And being happy is being happy.
Being sad is being sad.
Being tired is being tired.
Nothing more. Without blame. Without intention. Without a monkey on your back.
That is what truth is. Now.
All the rest is a little bit of a lie because passed or still to come. And who can control what has already happened, who can know exactly what there is to come? That`s why now is the only truth to which I want to live.
To which I want to act.
Acting is living in the now in concentrated form.
Tomorrow will be a tough day. For the moment (now) I am ok. Still 3 more days to go. We go.
Tatopani – a day off as a surprise
How clearly you begin to see signs when you open yourself to them. Life is full of them. We`re only sometimes too preoccupied to see them.
Yesterday night I went to ask for the key of a room where we could do yoga in the morning. Had to wait. A man started talking to me. It turned out to be the same man we passed twice yesterday on his motorbike. He was a westerner who wore a blue shirt and a tie. That`s why he drew my attention. Most westerners you see here wear a backpack and walking sticks. He appears to be engineer and is building a school here. Already for ten years.
He told me that we could impossibly leave Tatopani without going to the hotspring. Tomorrow early morning he would go there for meditation. We agree I would join him.
A nice meeting.
At 5.25 am I see the flashlight of the engineer and we head in the direction of the hotspring.. He gives me a sari that I can/have to/want to wear to go in the water. The hotspring should be good for aching muscles and the skin, the engineer tells me, whose name is Douglas from now.
It`s still dark, I close my eyes and try not to think about too much. It works for a few bright seconds. Eyes open and it`s light. Wonderful when that happens. Meditating on the edge of night and day. And above that in a natural hotspring. In the Himalaya`s.
After the hotspring, yoga. The idea arises to take a day off here. This spot begs for it. Again a very powerful place.
The yoga went so smoothly. The whole body more flexible than ever.
Laura gratefully accepts the rest-day-proposal
Douglas joins us for breakfast together with Bhuwan (the owner of the guesthouse) with whom we talk for hours on end. About traveling. He agreed that it is important to see the world to see things in a broader perspective. Although I start to wonder if that is really true. The more I learn, the more I see, the more incomplete it all appears to be. As if you chop some pieces out of a thick glacier to get a glimpse of what is underneath. But at the same time, because of the chopping,the ice you are standing looses its stability. Something like that…You lose more when you think you`ve won something. Only loosing isn`t always such a negative happening as we think.
A beautiful day. A rest day. The first day of spring (in the West). All is good. Long live all.
Douglas showed me the last version of the manuscript of the book he has been writing for over 23 years. `Time Travel Rabbit`. On the occasion of the telepathic relationship he had with his pet, a rabbit, that, after it died, appeared in his dreams to dictate him the book. About metaphysics, about traveling in time. A man to remember. Again. What kind of meetings on what kind of a travel…
The signs are just lying there to be seen.
The next morning we took a tired dip in the hotspring and started the tough 8-hour walk up to, apparently, the most beautiful view of the whole trek.
Tatopani to Gorepani
Up up up. No mercy. Only the weather was good. Enough clouds to keep the worst heat away. Eight hours up. We slept in `super view guesthouse`.A kind of dollhouse. The view was fog. Super. But anyway were we too tired too say more about it than `hm, ironic`, to nestle our feet again against the stove and half an hour later nestle our bodies in the dollhousebeds. Tomorrow to Poonhill. To see the sunrise above the Annapurna massif. Not alone apparently. And after that to begin the last day of the trek that would be a very tiring descent to Birektati.
Gorepani/Poonhill to Birektati
We get up at 5am. One hour up. Together with around 100 others with the same goal : seeing the sun rising above the mountains. Difficult to enjoy it with so many morningchatting people around. But still, took some pictures to look at them later alone and in peace.
After breakfast we descend, all the way to Birektati, the final village. We see many many people in the other direction. We are happy that`s not us.
It makes you realize how intelligent the mind is. It is focused on this day being the last one and a descending one. If we would have continued for five more days, then our mind and body would`ve saved some energy. But today all the energy can go out. No problem. And secretly we`re happy that it`s not us climbing up, but them.
Babu leads us to paradise. Green view guesthouse. With view on the river, delicious food, a terrace with the moon and stars above. I cry. For the whole trip. For every step, every misstep, every thought, every frustration, every relief, every shiver, every little pain, every mountain, every view, every insight, for every second I cry gratefully without any blame.
It`s over. 16 days of trekking. 14. Two resting days. The end of a long trek. The end of a long travel with Laura. The end of our ups and downs. The end of a search. Of a beautiful struggle, of a recognition.
The beginning of something new.
How many experiences can a human being have in a short period?
That many.
Taxi to Pokhara
The body is tired. As well as the mind. They can let everything go now. It`s over. Both have kept strong, have worked together to bring us to the end. Now it`s over. They know that and they act like that. I can only follow and let it happen. I can`t do more. Nor less. I sleep. Now.
Pokhara – not even an orange
In Pokhara., trekker- and touristparadise, in full tiredness of mind and body, sauntering between the stalls with 100% yakwoollen shawls and other things you buy, with aching calfs and muscles of the front of my feet which I wasn`t aware of before, realized to the fullest, between the masses of British, Germans, Israeli`s, seated on cosy terrasses, 100% western with asian touch,
that I am in need of nothing, but of absolutely positively nothing. Not even an orange.
Then I went to sit at the lake, where it wasn`t per se clean, but I didn`t mind. Then I went to the hotel because it got dark. Then I ordered a herbal tea and ate two digestive cookies, I read in the biography of Gandhi, went to sleep but couldn`t because of the heat and the mosquito. And still I was in need of absolutely nothing.
As if I had swallowed a mountain.
This morning I was nervous because of the beginning of something new, but underneath the nerves, underneath them are mountains now, lakes, creeks, moons and stars and silences that have always been there. And a new, old peace.
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