Walking in Clouds Read online

  Walking in Clouds

  A Journey to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar

  KAVITHA YAGA BUGGANA

  To my father-in-law,

  who loved books and who would have been delighted

  to read this one.

  And to my parents,

  who raised me with the confidence that a woman’s place is in her home, her office, her studio, her lab, and wherever else her

  dreams may take her.

  Contents

  The Lake and the Mountain

  Travellers, Waiting

  Amid Giants

  Reality Hits

  Other Journeys

  First Camp

  One More Day

  Readers

  Along the Karnali

  As Long As It Takes

  Deities

  Crossing a Line

  Soldiers

  First Sight

  Why We Worship the Gods We Worship

  Dipping, Cleansing

  Lights on the Lake

  Chiu Gompa, the Bird Monastery

  Last Town

  The Mountain of the Gods

  Love Stories

  Pilgrims

  Kailash at Night

  Blue Lights

  Walking in Clouds

  A Stolen Day

  Moon Lake

  Returning

  Transient and Eternal

  Index

  Afterword and Acknowledgements

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The Lake and the Mountain

  THERE ARE A LAKE and a mountain at the roof of the world where the air is thin and the clouds linger on cliffsides. These are places of wonder and the journey to see them will take many days. My cousin, Pallu, and I do not know if we will make it to these places or what drives us to go, but this is a journey we promised ourselves decades ago when we were still schoolgirls.

  In those days we would climb the small, rounded hills that surrounded our school, nestled in a valley. It would take us an hour or two to reach the large rocks near the top. There, we stretched out on boulders as the clouds thinned slowly in the heat. We dreamed of adventures that seemed to lie waiting, just outside our sleepy world. And the greatest of all adventures was a journey to that lake and the mountain that were so far away – so beautiful that they seemed to belong more to the sky than to the earth.

  Travellers, Waiting

  Nepalgunj, Nepal

  Altitude ~ 150 metres

  ON THIS CLEAR MORNING in September, the sun shimmers and heat weaves itself into the dry earth. It’s been four days since Pallu and I left our homes in Hyderabad, but our trek has not yet begun. Perched on a ledge outside the Nepalgunj airport building, my cousin and I wait with the others. Ying has, for the moment, put away her enormous black camera. She carries it everywhere despite her bad leg that drags. Sperello chats with Prarthana, Pallu’s friend from home. Jeff, in his green Buddha T-shirt and wavy blonde hair, darts around the tiny airport lawn chasing a lizard. The scraggy grass and the leaves of the trees are lined with dust.

  ‘So, do you think we will make it to Simikot today?’ I ask Katy, who has found a shaded spot near the garden.

  As an icebreaker, it will have to do. Pallu, Prarthana, and I had travelled together from Hyderabad, but we met the others only last night at Kathmandu airport.

  ‘I think so,’ Katy says. Her smile is quick, but warms her face all the way to her eyes.

  ‘I hear there’s a group that’s been stranded here for two days, waiting to get to Simikot,’ Pallu adds.

  Everyone at this airport is waiting to fly to the tiny mountain town of Simikot. The length of our wait depends on Simikot’s unreliable weather. Simikot is the starting point of the trek through Humla in northwest Nepal. The Humla trek forms the first leg of our journey to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar in Tibet.

  Katy is a Hong Kong Chinese who moved to Vancouver years ago. She tells us she leads a busy life. A trained nurse, she is a hospital administrator and an avid trekker, with a grown-up daughter whose life is even busier than hers.

  ‘How old are your kids?’ Katy asks.

  ‘My daughter is fourteen and my son is eight,’ Pallu replies.

  ‘Enjoy them. The best time is when they are little,’ Katy says, her voice wistful.

  ‘My boys are fourteen and eleven.’ I picture my older son playing street cricket and my younger one sifting through a sea of Lego pieces, looking for the right one.

  Memories of home on the morning of the journey well up: the garden, dark green with grass and dew, and its corner of pink oleander and red hibiscus; the children, their heads still droopy with sleep; Hari, my husband, quiet, as he sips coffee from his white porcelain cup. Though he tries not to show it, he is worried. He cannot understand why I am going to these places beyond the edges of our world. What drives me? How can I leave everyone for so long? What will happen to the family if something happens to me? These are fair questions. I am not sure I have the answers.

  At Nepalgunj airport the sun grows stronger. Finally, our guide, Chhiring, a slightly built, wiry man in his twenties, shepherds us into the airport lounge. A Nepali serial plays on the television mounted on a wall. It reminds me of the Hindi television serials from the 1980s, screened by India’s state-owned channel, Doordarshan. This is how all of Nepal feels to me. Its chaotic, honking cars veering around gigantic potholes, its demure women in bright saris and sindoor, the lingering innocence of its people call to mind the India of decades ago. After a while, the anachronistic novelty of the Nepali serial wears off and the tedium of waiting – the untold story of all travel – sets in.

  I hear gasps and laughter. The airport security guard’s two children squeal with delight as Jeff performs magic tricks. He makes grand gestures with his hands and brandishes a card in the air. The boy claps his hand over his lips. The girl’s eyes widen and her shoulders scrunch in glee. Ying and Sperello take pictures. Pallu comes over to watch, and when the children laugh, we laugh with them.

  After noon, when the winds in Simikot have turned heavy, Chhiring tells us it is unsafe to fly today. We head back to the hotel where Pallu, Prarthana, and I sink into our air-conditioned rooms. The ebullient Prarthana is strangely quiet.

  ‘How are the kids?’ Pallu asks Prarthana. Their sons are classmates and their daughters are friends.

  ‘They can watch too much TV, they can eat what they want – why won’t they be fine?’ Prarthana says.

  Pallu laughs.

  ‘We will be gone a long time, but they will be fine,’ Prarthana adds, but I can see that she is less certain than she sounds. While Pallu and I have planned this journey for decades, Prarthana signed up just before registrations closed. Perhaps the implications of this long journey to the remotest of lands and the many days of being away from her family are only now dawning on her.

  In the meantime, the foreigners (we call them that, though we all are foreigners in Nepal; they call us ‘The Indian Ladies’) are undismayed. They set out with cameras and sunhats to go sightseeing in rickshaws. They take pictures of old switchboards with bulbous switches and wires jutting out, fruit vendors, old rickshaws, dirty chicken stores, and stray donkeys. In our Indian towns, these sights are the embarrassing details of the grimy and run-down country we are trying to outgrow. But in their eyes, the falling-apart switchboard is a marvel of ingenious work-arounds; the fruit shop, with its piles of bright red, earthy brown, and bold yellow fruits, arranged in colour-coded geometry, an artist’s delight.

  In the evening, we gather at the hotel’s restaurant. The rectangular structure with over-lit interiors is, I learn, an Indian restaurant. I don’t know why I am surprised since the Indian bo
rder is only a few minutes’ drive away, but my heart sinks. Most small Indian restaurants serve over-spiced, oil-drenched, clichéd imitations of the real thing. I say nothing, as the foreigners seem excited. I don’t tell them that there is no such thing as ‘Indian food’. There is no such thing as ‘Telugu food’, even, or ‘Tamil food’. Each district has its microcosm of culinary traditions that use local ingredients for preparations, and they depend on the seasons, temperatures, and principles of Ayurveda. Therefore, even narrow geographic areas encompass a dizzying diversity of cuisine. My mother’s village, for example, is famed for its tangy, spicy tamarind curries eaten with rice, while in my father’s village they make steaming hot balls of ragi millets. In my husband’s village, a meal without pappu (zesty vegetable dals) and soft jonna rotis is not a meal at all. And these villages are all within a few hours’ drive of each other. In this over-bright restaurant in Nepalgunj, I run a sceptical eye over the ersatz ‘Indian food’ on the menu.

  Everyone else enthusiastically places their orders: mutton maharani, butter naan. Jeff, Sperello, Katy, and Ying have spent time together before we met them, and already have an easy camaraderie. Pallu, Prarthana, and I are more reserved. Before we started out, the three of us had wondered about our fellow travellers – Sperello, in particular. Would he turn out to be a hedonistic playboy with a distinctive fashion sense? Perhaps he would be a hot-tempered male full of machismo and unrestrained hand gestures? But he has proved to be far removed from any of these stereotypes. An astrophysicist from Florence, Sperello is punctilious in his grooming, careful with his words, and formal in his demeanour. The waiter appears with a tray of drinks.

  ‘Cheers!’ Jeff says, and takes a swig of his beer.

  The waiter is still pouring the drinks. With a smile and raised eyebrows, Sperello points to the waiter and tells Jeff, who is cheerfully sipping his beer, ‘In Italy, we know to wait till everyone is served.’

  ‘Right,’ Jeff says, nodding. ‘In Australia, we know it too. We just don’t give a shit.’

  Everyone laughs.

  Soon, the food arrives. It looks like standard Indian restaurant food, but, happily, I am completely wrong. The mutton maharani is redolent with rich, subtle and finely balanced flavours. The dal is perfectly spiced. The naans are hot and buttery. Everyone serves themselves seconds. We order more mutton, more naan.

  ‘Watch this!’ Jeff says. He picks up a spoon and, using it as a lever and his hand as a piston, pops off the cap of a beer bottle. Everyone claps. Jeff is obviously a man of unusual talents.

  I hand him a bottle. ‘Jeff, can you teach me? I want to show off this trick at home.’

  I practise opening other people’s beer bottles. Before long, caps fly off with quick flicks of my wrist. My husband and kids will be impressed.

  After the plates have been cleared, Sperello opens his laptop and shows us pictures of his biking trip along the Silk Route. The journey from Italy to China looks spectacular. Temple grottos nestle in Chinese mountains, and Central Asian steppes of endless beige end in lakes of endless blue. Each carefully composed shot is accompanied by a small story.

  Pallu leans over and says softly, ‘So different from the people back home.’

  In our upper-middle-class bubble in Hyderabad, life is a set course of education, marriage, children, money to maintain a certain standing in society, and then retirement. But not for Sperello, Jeff, and Katy. They have their day jobs, but they also have their other lives, spent biking across continents, hiking in the green mountains of British Columbia, climbing the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu.

  ‘Wait, wait!’ I say, grabbing my notebook from my backpack. ‘What was the name of the Chinese cave temple, again?’ I take copious notes, though I am not sure why. Maybe I don’t want to forget a single thing because some day I, too, will bike across continents.

  I lean over to Pallu and say, ‘I think we have found the right people for our trip, no?’

  We are stuck in this town, not knowing if or when we will ever fly out, yet the beer is flowing and our laughter rings in the night.

  Amid Giants

  Simikot, Humla, Nepal

  Altitude ~ 3,000 metres

  THE ELEVEN-SEATER AIRCRAFT FROM Nepalgunj is the smallest one in which I have ever flown. A Chinese talisman with red tassels dangles on the cockpit window and it bobs and shimmies as the plane wobbles in the wind. While commercial airlines cruise at around 38,000 feet, we are at around 13,000 feet – the lowest altitude at which I have ever flown. As far as I can see, mountains and more mountains rise like giant frozen waves of earth. We glide over a green slope; I see small houses in clusters of twos and threes, and lonely single structures scattered here and there. The houses lie on acres of ledges cordoned into rectangular fields, and on terraced fields carved into slopes. Aside from these clusters, there is nothing – not a single house nor a single soul.

  The people in these villages are tribal farmers. They work these difficult lands, tend livestock (primarily yaks and goats), and trade in forest produce and herbs in the plains below. It is a hard existence of isolation, without electricity or modern amenities. I try to imagine my children growing up here, and I cannot.

  A sudden gust of wind makes the plane shudder. It flies suspended, its engine shaking against the force of the wind and the pull of these immense mountains. I hold my breath – it’s a long way down. Small planes cushion you in false comfort with their steel and their loud engines. But when they are darting around mountains, what are they but inconsequential little things that can be flung against the face of a jagged rock, like an eye-fly that you could flick with your index finger, if you were so inclined?

  A few days ago, as we waited for our flight in Kathmandu airport, Chhiring had told us about a Buddha Air plane that had recently crashed on the way out. ‘All the passengers died,’ he had added.

  ‘Were they all going to Kailash-Manasarovar?’ Pallu asked.

  ‘Yes. And they were all Indian pilgrims.’

  To the more than 1.5 billion followers of the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Bon faiths, Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar are amongst the most sacred of sites. To Hindu pilgrims, Kailash is the abode of Shiva – the God of Destruction – and Manasarovar is a holy lake created for Shiva’s worship. A dip in Manasarovar cleanses all sins. To walk in Kailash is to walk in the heavens.

  ‘Every year some Indian pilgrims die on Kailash,’ Chhiring told us that day.

  ‘Really? What do they die of?’ I asked.

  ‘Some die before they get to Kailash. Others die on the mountain because they fall sick and refuse to turn back.’

  ‘Why do they refuse?’ I persisted.

  ‘They would rather die than turn back. They are happy to die on the mountain, with Shiva.’ Chhiring shook his head. ‘Can’t understand, can’t understand.’

  Neither could I. The desire to die for a god is particularly baffling to me, an atheist. When Chhiring told us about the pilgrims I wanted to go back in time, grab those pilgrims by the shoulders and shake them till their teeth rattled. What good was their devotion? They had died anyway. Was it worth it? I wanted to ask them, was god worth dying for?

  As I looked up at the sky over Kathmandu Airport, I thought of the crashed Buddha Air plane. I envisioned the debris of the shattered aircraft and, all around it, the familiar, everyday things of the pilgrims: masala peanuts, family photographs, a woman’s dupatta. I pictured them scattered across the ground like lost dreams.

  Our little plane to Simikot has regained control. The engine hums evenly and the plane continues its flight in a confident course. Below, the mountains are spaced further apart. The wind is gentler. The plane curves gently around a slope.

  The valleys are narrow and shadowed, and rivers and streams etch their paths through the rocks. The clouds – some of them wispy tails, some, white cotton – touch the rocks and waterfalls and trees on mountain slopes. These places seem unreal, almost magical. I put my hand against the window glass. Soon I will be wal
king in them and the clouds will touch me too.

  We begin our descent. Tin-topped and red-roofed buildings appear on a mountain. This is Simikot, we are told. Where is the airport? I spy something that looks like an airstrip, but it cannot be much more than half a kilometre long. It appears dangerously close to the edge of the mountain. If we overshoot, we will end up hundreds of metres below, in the meandering river I had just been admiring. At one side of the airstrip lies the broken debris of a small plane, its tail pointing up. I press my nose to the window. This can’t be where we are landing. Where is the airport building? Where is the runway? There must be some mistake. I press my nose harder against the window.

  As the plane descends, its engines begin to groan. The pilot turns to Jeff, who’s sitting directly behind him.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the pilot says, with a reassuring grin. ‘Nobody die. Nobody die.’

  A small shake, a few bumps, and the plane grinds to a halt on the runway. Later, I learn that when there are no planes landing, the airstrip is used as a playground and cricket field. Inside the plane, the red Chinese talisman is still. We snap open our seatbelts and grab our backpacks. The pilot was right. Nobody died.

  People rush on to the airstrip and a crowd watches from behind a barbed-wire fence. Nestled between mountain peaks and pine forests, Simikot could be a picture on a postcard. This town of about two thousand people has a school, a small hospital, a few shops lining a dirt road, and an army camp nearby. Roads to the town are still being built. Though tinier than the smallest town I have visited in India, it is one of the biggest towns in Humla, and the headquarters of the Humla region.

  Porters grab our bags. Shopkeepers and old women eye us curiously as we walk through the town. Chhiring is from the area, and his aunts and cousins greet him with big smiles and a pat on the shoulders. We meet the crew of workers. A small bespectacled man – a teacher in a village school – will be the assistant-guide. A lanky young cook examines the cooking vessels. Three sturdy men, who are to be our workers and assistants, tend to the mules that will carry our tents and portable chairs and tables. A few dogs sniff around us, and the children eye us with curiosity, giggling.