Chapter Ten

     Thursday, April twenty-eighth around ten-thirty. Downtown Yuksom at the Gupta Restaurant, Yuksom Bazaar, West Sikkim, 737113. At the round table for four at the side of the asphalt lane. There are no scheduled departures in a shared jeep or any other vehicle headed for Khecheopalri Lake. All I can do is sit here and sip coffee and wait for some unexpected vehicle to slowly pass by or somehow show up that I can flag down and see how close they can get me to the Lake. A friendly yellow dog rests in the shade at my feet under the table.

          Saturday, April thirtieth, nine in the morning at the Limboo Homestay garden. Going back to Thursday morning at the roadside where I’m asking around for options on how to get to the Lake, a young Indian fellow at the next table speaks up. He also wants to go to the Holy Lake today and suggests we go together and share expenses. Anish is from Mumbai and speaks fluent Hindi and talks with different drivers and we have plenty of time to wait for the best deal to materialize. Anish finally gets his hotel manager from down the road to drive us there, and wait for us, and also enjoy the spirit of the Lake. We’re all out there from something like two to four, saying whatever kinds of prayers we want to say, for that is what kind of place this is, ringed with low lying and deeply forested hills. More prayer flags than a person could count along the trail leading from the car parking lot to the Lake. Not an overly crowded place, but there is a steady stream of visitors. I light some incense sticks for the intentions of my family and dearest friends, and all of my relations, as the Native Americans would say, and slowly pour through my fingers the sand from Mexico given to me by my Toltec brother, Mali, into the waters of the Holy Lake shaped by the footprint of Tara. The lightest sprinkling of drops from the sky fall to the waters. We walk the trail back to the car, and our driver takes us on down the road to Pelling where Anish and I can access an ATM. The rains increase into a steady downpour as we twist along the winding road. Pelling, as it turns out, is like a little Gangtok built into the hillside, with tourist hotels lined up along the streets, and all my thoughts for coming here to visit are evaporated. I vastly prefer my little Yuksom and its kind. The skies are heavy with gray clouds and the rains continue throughout our drive back to where we began, and I am returned to the Limboo in time for a shower and dinner. Anish has been a delightful person to spend this day with. He is an avid photographer and my little sand pouring puja is wonderfully captured by his discerning lens.

     In the Limboo dining room for dinner, are a middle-aged couple from Cornwall and their eighteen year old daughter who has been teaching English in Andhra Pradesh since September. As we wind our way through our get-acquainted conversation, we find vast tracts of common ground, and as Pagans, they take an avid interest in the pictures and words and themes in my book. Ian and Bernie will take a copy back to Cornwall, and Elsa will take her copy to Andhra. Between meeting Anish and enjoying his company on our shared journey to the Holy Lake, and meeting my new friends from Cornwall, Thursday was a journey through sunlight and rainfall towards discovery and fulfillment.

     Then there was Friday, yesterday. After breakfast with Ian, Bernie and Elsa, as well as Michael from Israel, I sit at the sheltered table in the garden transferring and organizing photos from my camera to my laptop. Michael joins me there, and his Android allows me to access the internet and pay a bill. We use my computer to help him transfer some of his photos from one of his devices to another, and he shares some travel info sources with me. Until my computer battery runs out. Public utility electricity shut down last night, so recharging is not now possible. Michael and I walk the late morning road to the three side-by-side roadside restaurants, the Norling, the Yak, and the Gupta. We meet Neomi, a brilliant, smiling and compassionate young Israeli woman, whose voice and English pronunciation are melodically perfect to my ear. She and I and Michael had a late night conversation in the Limboo dining room two nights ago, going on and on till midnight, so we three share a familiar spirit. Neomi is sitting with Eliot, who is new to me, at the Norling. I see Anish sitting over at the Gupta and walk over to greet and sit with him. He and I need to follow up on our experience at the Lake from the day before, share photos, and seal the sense of brotherhood we began from the moment of our chance encounter when we were looking for a driver. He and I walk the road to his hotel, which has some generator electricity, and I recharge my laptop and upload some of his mountain pictures from his visit to North Sikkim. Finally say our goodbyes around four. He is leaving tomorrow.

     I walk back to the Norling. Michael is still there and the table has grown to include a  Spanish girl, Lala, and three other Israelis, Alon, and two women. This group is making inquiries about getting a group trip to the North together. So far, the results are prohibitively expensive. I throw my hat in the ring as a possible additional traveler. Neomi comes back to the table from wherever she has been, and would be part of the group as well. Besides English, Hebrew is the lingua franca of this group, and no satisfactory arrangements for a trip are made. There is a dog curled up in the corner whose leg was broken by a jeep this afternoon. It’s being as well cared for as can be by the company here. Pain killers are sought after and calls being made for a vet to visit. Neomi especially is expressing her feelings of empathy for this unfortunate animal, and our best hope so far is that a vet can come over from Gangtok tomorrow. Neomi has seen Anish’s photos of me pouring sand into the Holy Lake, and asks me what that was about. I tell her the story of how I met Mali in Pondy, that he had given me a small plastic bag of sand from Mexico, with no directive about what to do with it, and how I decided to pour it into Khecheopalri Lake. I bring out a copy of my book to show her, and she really likes it! Turning the pages one by one, looking closely at the pictures, reading some of the verse and speaking words like beautiful, while recognizing the images of Nut, the sky goddess of Egypt, speaking of her own understandings of ancient mythologies, and understanding how I am bringing these images into today’s world with this book. She even asks me if I have any extra copies, little knowing that this copy is already hers. She will carry it with her along with her small collection of things she reads along the way in her travels. She shares her pictures of her visit to the Rumtek monastery, and I share my pictures of my visit to the Tashiding monastery. As evening shadows lengthen, she takes leave to walk back to the Limboo. I order a cup of tea and sit with the restaurant resident kitty in my lap. Walk the asphalt lane back to the Limboo, shower and go down for dinner with Ian, Bernie, and Elsa with whom, amongst other things, we talk of old books and how we treasure them.

     Sunday, May first in the garden around ten. Walked to the bazaar to the Gupta late yesterday morning for a cup of coffee. All of the tables are vacant so I imagine whoever might otherwise be around is out on their daily excursions.

I poke my nose into various shops looking for the kind of small notebook I like and finally find one. Walk up the hillock of a knoll on my guest house side of town to a small gompa, to walk around, admire the flowers, and climb a metal spiral staircase to the rooftop of the porch where I can snap some overview pictures of the town. Nobody else around. Time to sit and watch the prayer flags ripple, wave and flutter through the fluctuating breeze. Not entirely sure I’m up for a long walk this day, but what else to do? And there is the nearby ancient gompa at the summit of a steep climb that every visitor around here takes, so now is my time to see what that is about. That climbs around here are steep is taken for granted.

When is it Said they are steep, you can bet it will be very much so, and it is. The rocky trail is hand crafted, and rest stop concrete platforms every hundred yards provide catching of the breath space. The pinnacle gompa dates from 1701, and there is only one young caretaker monk on the premises to monitor visitors and collect the twenty rupee entrance fee. I arrive a bit after two, and for a while watch other visitors come and go until all have come and gone. I then have the meditation hall all to myself. Not very large as gompas go. I can imagine the space as occupied by about twenty chanting monks arranged along the parallel benches. Up a wooden stairway to the floor above where Dakini’s and Heruka’s dance on the painted walls, from how many years ago? - hundreds? – who knows? A candle burns before the statue at the wall, flanked by other statues that look as ancient as the deities they represent. Empty wooden floor, a wooden box with a rug to sit on. Three hundred fifteen years worth of silent emptiness, and the voice that comes from within.  Downstairs, take a seat at a bench along the wall, to watch the candle burn, and listen to the looped recording of a single male voice in quiet rhythmic chant. Till the young caretaker monk comes in around four to let me know it’s closing time. Outside, first sprinkling raindrops are beginning to fall, the gray clouds are billowing, and I will tarry not during my descent down the winding rocky path. Raindrops accelerate slowly as I carefully pick my way across the mossy stones, and I manage to get to the bottom and over to the porch of the Limboo before the soaking rains come down.

     Dinnertime is with my Cornwall family – Ian, Bernie, and Elsa – as well as Neomi, returned from her day trip to the Tashiding gompa. Neomi has a lovely set of photos to share. The five of us, later to be joined by Michael, have engaging conversation during and after dinner.

     In the dreaming before my afternoon climb to the hilltop chanting hall,

I wandered through some of my university hallways till I came to the registration desk where  I could sign up for a course in the Tibetan language, and the lady at the counter is happy to tell me that as a senior citizen, I can take the course for free! There was a time, a long time ago, when I took one semester of the  Tibetan language. I learned the alphabet and some simple phrases and sentences. All of that is pretty well evaporated by now, but I wonder if I might pursue some sort of elementary review, even if only to learn the alphabet again, which in itself is no simple task. Would help, clearly, with my sense of connection with this cultural world I will be passing through these coming months. And for the evening after my visit to the ancient monastery, my dreaming brings life to some of those images on those painted walls.

     Tuesday, May third around nine-thirty, after two coffees, two bananas and a few cookies for breakfast in the hotel Pandim top floor dining room. We have a shared experience, you and I, and our feeling together is grounded in our hearts, yours and mine.

     Analogous thinking in computer language: The brain is the hard drive; the heart is the software which tells the neural network which program to run. So whatever is put into the heart, writes the software. In thinking over the function of the brain – a rather recursive, oxymoronic concept, when you think about it! – at the top of the list is keeping my people together. Every person I have interacted with to any significant degree – significance of course being a completely relative and subjective notion, you know what I mean! – is with me here now in this room I’ve never been in before. An entirely new window through which to see the world, and to see it with you, each of you one at a time, see it with the memory

I share with you! Green foliage, sweet birdsong, and a city stretching down the hillside towards the invisible bottom where the rock strewn river runs. For all of the lingering issues of misunderstanding, I will weave an interpretation as intricate and ordered as a Navaho-Tibetan rug. And when we meet again,  I‘ll run that software by you, and it is of course in my best interest to keep the hardware virus-free, malware free, and as we all know, the spam-battle is never-ending, and requires discerning filters. Scanning the city below with my lens, there are countless configurations to focus on, and here is where choices are made.

     Six hours yesterday in a jeep along the rocky road from Yuksom through Tashiding, and a series of other mountain villages, to the final stretch of highway leading to the taxi stand in the heart of the city’s crowded pedestrian and vehicle traffic. Night has fallen, the city lights are on, and a taxi driver is right on me as soon as I get my backpack down from the jeep rack. From room number eight to room number nine, next to the view I had before, but attenuated with another focus. Closer to some greenery and dirt this time, without the view towards where the mountain should be. Three rows of seats with four passengers each, including the driver, which doesn’t give him much steering elbow room, and his phone keeps ringing, and he keeps answering it and having short conversations, but of course he’s used to doing things the way he does, and his is driving along rocky cliffside hairpin turning roads. I’ve got windowside, row two, and the skies are moistly clear all the way through the afternoon till we find evening haze as we approach the city.

     Sunday evening dinner with Ian, Bernie, and Elsha was a sumptuous feast of heartfelt conversation and Cornwall is now very high up on my list of places to visit. Between the hotel Pandim in Gangtok, Sonu’s homestay in Tashiding, and Limboo homestay in Yuksom, I’ve got three new places I can return to and call home. I’ve got a nice little map of Gangtok sketched out in my brain, and know the turns I need to take to find my way to certain destinations. For as long as I’m walking this hillside cityscape, further explorations are certainly on the horizon.

     Wednesday, May fourth at the window of Baker’s Café at quarter after five. Having met Lily this morning, from the UK, who is looking for a traveling partner to Lake Tsomgo for tomorrow, and possibly for a two or three day trip to the North for the following days. Exactly the person I’ve been waiting to meet. Intelligent, adventuresome young woman coming off of three months volunteer work in Nepal. Just arrived in Gangtok yesterday. Get the get-acquainted conversation going in the hotel Pandim dining room late morning. Kelsang can arrange tomorrow’s one day Lake Tsomgo excursion, and I’ve got a lead from last night’s Russian party of travelers for a good agent to ask about the trip to the North. Lily and I walk down to the Marg and we visit Norgay of Galaxy Travels and he writes us up a set of options that are as good as anything we are going to find.

     Friday morning, May sixth at nine. As it turned out, a trip to the North with the Russians was not in the cards. Which is very much just as well. Lily and I along with Robert from Poland arrange through Kelsang – our hotel manager and liason with the jeep and taxi network of this city – a drive for Thursday morning heading East into some higher altitudes to the sacred Lake Tsomgo. What specific sacredness this lake embodies we do not know. Suffice it to say there is a one day road trip with exploration and mystery lined up for Thursday morning. Lily with the driver in the jeep front seat. Robert and I in the second row, and our official guide in the rear. Three kilometers out of town is the official police checkpoint station for the restricted area we will be entering. There is a very long line of jeeps and cars and vans inching along, one by one, as the men in brown uniforms check everyone’s permit papers. The twisting, curving, cliffside mountain road climbs from seventeen hundred meters at Gangtok to the entirely different world of thirty-seven hundred meters where the jagged gray rocky terrain closely caresses the ribbons of snow that fill her crevices and line her ridges. Of course this is a Her, whoever She is, who hovers over the reflecting pool, between the silvery dark gray snow lined rocky crags on both sides, in this snowmelt basin from which the first trickles of the long mountain stream emerge.

She is in the water, She is over the Water, She is all around the water, and springtime greenery is not yet here. Thin layer of gray cloud filters the light, save for a twenty minute parting and dissolution that brings blue sky reflection to the waters, and a brightening of the snow ribbons.

     This lake is all about reflections – of rocks and sky and snow and clouds and ridges and crags and jagged skylines on two sides, and the soft, gentle, deeply white skyline of a faraway elevation, from where the waters come. The collecting pool, before the final spillover and descent, and there is an endless supply. Cold mountain air at twelve thousand feet washes our faces and fills our lungs, and we’ve made this two thousand meter leap in about an hour, and the air is lighter, thinner, and fresher than from where we’ve come. A rocky trail goes a few hundred yards along one side, for visitors and photographers like me to wander around and find a personal space for saying something to the Lake. I go pretty far along the way by myself with the guide following by about fifty yards to make sure I don’t go farther than I rightfully should. We are in a restricted area, as far as foreigners are allowed to go, and every step from here to the east is one step closer to the Chinese border.

     There are several military engineering camps alongside the road on the way coming here, and many parts of this cliffhanger of a highway are still in the earliest stages of demarcation and development. Some stretches are very well done, while others have a long way to go. The small groups of civilian workers we pass by on the way have plenty of work to look forward to. There are about a dozen shaggy black Yaks with saddles and colorful knitted stockings for their long horns. For the visitors who want a ride along the lakeside trail, and always cheerful and enthusiastic Lily takes her turn. We hang out at a gazebo-like structure at the end of the rough, rocky trail, before returning on the higher side of the loop. Instead of a flat-on view, more of a slightly elevated view, where ribbons of prayer flags – yellow, green, red, white, blue – criss-cross on long strings tied to high points, and slowly disintegrate into the wind, one wave at a time.

     Are we up there for three hours? There is a magnetism in the rocks and the snow and the water and the air that holds us there, and we drift slowly along the trail back to the jeep parked at the side of the road. Finally, a short ride to the first village down the road, where we stop in and take a table for coffee or tea, and a bowl of Thuk-pa noodle and vegetable soup, and jostle around with the owners, the cooks, and the other visitors to this rest stop canteen. Return to the hotel by four, about six and a half hours since we left. At dinner at seven in the top floor dining room, we share a table with our motorcycle traveling friends, a fellow from Finland who has gone across Russia and Mongolia and China and Japan, then Southeast Asia to here, so far, with intentions to get back to Finland by winter. The woman cyclist is from Holland, started in Australia, has gone through Indonesia, Southeast Asia and China and Japan, and is on her way through India, Pakistan and the other –stans of Central Asia on her way to Holland. These two cyclists met somewhere on the road in China, where they decided to share the road in tandem.

     Now to the table comes Roland from the UK, who got the message from the Galaxy agent that I am looking for a partner to go to North Sikkim. Neither Lily nor Robert can afford that excursion, so I am back to looking for a jeep-mate for that trip. Roland is staying in the hotel right next door, and has found me, and we seem eminently compatible, and he would like to take the three day, two night trip on Monday. So we still have time to find another partner maybe even. Lily is leaving very early tomorrow morning for Yuksom, and it is most unlikely that I will be seeing her again around here. Such a brilliant shooting star she has been. I had no idea about visiting Tsomgo Lake before we met two nights ago, and this Lake trip was the diamond she brought into Light. She is planning to go South, to where I’ve just come from, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. She has been audio studying her French. I give her a copy of both the French and English versions of my book. Meeting with Roland in the stairwell on the way to my room, he and I have had enough of a conversation for me to give him a book. My motorcycle friends and Robert each get a card with my website addresses, and I will be seeing more of Robert the next couple of days.

     At our conversation over bowls of chicken and vegetable noodle soup at the windowside table of Taste of Tibet two days ago, as we were weighing our options after our visit to the Galaxy agent, Lily speaks of her interest in pursuing Social Anthropology, and reminds me of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, which I read and loved several years ago, and would love to read again. We visit the Jainco bookstore to look at Sikkim maps and browse the shelves, and Lily finds The God of Small Things for me, so I am now paging through Arundhati’s exquisitely vivid and enchantingly insightful prose.

     Sunday morning, May eighth, after porridge, papaya, banana, and coffee for breakfast as I continue my reading journey through The God of Small Things. Excursions with Robert these last two days, first to the Enchay monastery here on the ridge overlooking Gangtok, and next to the Rumtek monastery on the ridge across the valley, twenty-six kilometers along the winding cliffside roadway, down one hillside, crossing the river, climbing the other hillside. At the Enchay on Friday, as we enter the gateway into the main courtyard, there are a few monks walking about on various missions. On an old, painted dark green wooden park bench, a stout and muscular aged monk welcomes us with his look. Robert and I approach with our Nameste’s, and the old fellow asks through his limited English vocabulary, how old I am. After I tell him my seventy-one, I ask his age. He is eighty-two. A picture of robust, cheerful health. I ask that we may join him on the bench. Robert sits between and most of the conversation is between Robert and the clear-eyed monk, as it should be, for Robert and I are already traveling partners, and the conversation between my elder and I does not require very many words. As a picture of health and soberly cheerful good natured energy, I am inspired to continue my journey through Living.

     Meditation hall is quiet this afternoon, the air is misty with occasional drizzle, and the younger monks are arranging a long row of small piles of fresh evergreen branches and dry kindling sticks for a long row of little fires to burn the next day to commemorate something. The eighty-two year old monk had given each of we visitors on the bench a sprig of evergreen and told to rub it in our palms and inhale the scent. Robert and I have a cup of hot chocolate at the canteen near the gateway before heading down the asphalt lane back to the hotel under gray late afternoon skies, cutting our way through the ridgetop flower garden along the way. On Saturday, the Rumtek monastery is much larger, there are more visitors, and we sit through an early afternoon chanting session, complete with deeply vibrating drums, and sharply resonating trumpets.  

     Notes from the hotel Pandim rooftop morning Monday May ninth. The range of Kachenjunga peaks are clearly bright and snow-capped white across the horizon in Dawn’s first light. Finally! For the first time during the two weeks I’ve spent in this hillside city. Went with Robert on Sunday to the Ganesh Tok, i.e. hillside temple, on the upper reaches of the ridge about seven kilometers from our hotel. Ganesh, the ever popular elephant-headed god who removes obstacles to our endeavors, speaks to us through his Sanskrit chanting priest, who leaves me with an intertwining red and yellow string wrapped and tied around my right wrist to remind me that so long as I speak in my heart with honor for benevolent Ganesh, so he will honor me. The string is worn until it wears away and disappears into nothingness, like the Tibetan prayer flags waving in the wind.

     Robert, my boon companion these last four days, will soon be heading to West Sikkim for an eleven day Kachenjunga trek, after which he’ll be heading towards Nepal. There we might meet again. He has a copy of my book to page through on his journey.

     Monday, May ninth, at quarter to ten evening in the village of Lachen in the hills of North Sikkim. Seven hour jeep ride from Gangtok, from ten-thirty to five-thirty. Bumpy road. Stopped for lunch along the way. Traveling partner is Chanphen Orman from Thailand, (pronounced John-phen), also known as Pookie. First time in India for Pookie and she starts with a three night, two day sprint through the Himalayan foothills of North Sikkim. The road is true to form in its alternating states of form and formlessness. Pookie is on a three week initiation journey and plans to visit Darjeeling, Varanasi, Agra, Jaipur and Delhi, traveling much of the way by train. She’s got the front seat alongside the driver with their windshield point of view, while I’ve got the entire second row. Baggage is in the back. The thirty year old driver knows no English just as we don’t know his Nepali, but he’s driven this road before and knows some good stopover points for pictures, including an off the road stroll to the ancient stone platform where a couple of hundred or so years ago, the chief honcho representatives of the Lepcha and Bhutia peoples met and pledged to each other eternal peace between them in this land of steep mountains, abundant rainfall, countless waterfalls, and lush green carpeting forests.

     Pookie has a fine Nikon with a large lens, and encounters the landscape and villages in search of frames to capture, while I am likewise on a photographic hunt for images to keep and take home. My camera is comparatively compact, but with terrific resolution and zooming capabilities. I’m capturing my fair share of frames in passing, and Pookie and I are creating photo albums of our focal preferences. What do I see through my viewfinder, my lens? What am I looking for as I scan the panoramic, compositional possibilities and push or pull the zoom button? All the while a little voice going on in the back of my head, telling me how I wish to present these images. In slide shows for friends and family, of course. Here are images for my imaginary travel magazine article. Snippets of memory to carry to the other side of the world, to tell little stories about, and share with my friends this place where I’m taking these pictures right now. I’m thinking of those people and what I’m going to tell them about this series, and how they all fit together, and what they mean to me. Here is a series of notes. What kind of music do I hear, that I can share, through these images?

     Tomorrow’s journey begins before dawn, and Pookie and I and our driver will be covering a lot of ground, and it is all going to be completely new to two of us, and whatever we might think about what it’s going to be like, it surely will be sensually stimulating in ways that transcend imagination.

     Thursday evening Notes: The excursion is billed as three days and two nights, each night in a different place. Picture the letter Y. Begin at the base of the stem in Gangtok at ten-thirty Monday morning. Pookie in the front seat alongside our driver, and I’ve got the entire second row, both side windows at my disposal for panoramic views and photographic frames. Take the left fork in the road at Chungtang and proceed halfway up the left branch to Lachen, arriving by about one hour before dark. Measuring distance in kilometers is misleading. Better to measure in hairpin turns and ninety degree turns and turns of every conceivable angle wrapping themselves around the virtually vertically inclined hills. For this entire trip, these hairpin turns are endlessly recurring, and number without doubt in the several hundreds. And most of this highway is seriously underpaved, seriously unpaved, and seriously still a concept in some road builder’s imagination. Pookie and I can stroll through the streets and lanes of Lachen through the last evening’s light and night’s first darkness, looking into the occasional shop to see what there is to consider. Time to shower down and freshen up before the evening rice and curry and veggie meal at eight-thirty.

     Knock on the door at four with our first cup of coffee, and a follow up coffee in the dining hall before our four-thirty departure, continuing north along that left branch of the Y. to Thangu where we are served two egg sandwiches for breakfast along with more coffee in what looks like a shack from the outside but is very neat and pleasant inside, maintained by a Tibetan matron and her daughter. A short drive from there to the Chopta valley where we have the better part of two hours to descend a trail to the lush valley where scattered Yaks graze in peaceful silence, while the views towards the surrounding mountains would invite any trekker’s imagination.

     Sunny blue sky, and just chill enough to warrant a lightweight hooded sweatshirt. Pookie and I spend some time each on our own little photographic excursions, and sometimes we walk together, while our driver makes good use of his time hacking and gathering and packing a gunnysack full of evergreen branches from the surrounding brush amongst the scattered rocks and boulders. Throughout our journey, our driver who speaks no more English than we speak his language, is very good at stopping at spots along the road where fine views are available for our creative photography. From Chopta Valley, we drive back to our Lachen hotel for lunch, then head back down to the fork in the road at Chungtang, and go north along the right branch to Lachung for our second night. Late afternoon light is good for a couple of hours, but here at the edge of town, there is not much to walk to and visit, and truth be told, that mostly full day of bouncing around in the jeep is physically demanding, and information overload with today’s passing scenery has been more than fulfilling. Chopta Valley is around thirteen thousand feet. The change in altitude factor is real, slowing us down a bit, and hanging close to the hotel and waiting for our late dinner is in order.

     Morning light starts around five in this eastern part of the Indian time zone, and we are on the road north around six-thirty towards a drive through the Yungtang Valley, and our ultimate destination of Zero Point, a rock strewn valley at around fifteen thousand feet where the beginnings of the river meander through the stones, where large patches of snow still carpet sections of the surrounding hillsides, where a couple of ambitious vendors have come and set up little wooden tables with refreshments for hungry and thirsty visitors, for Pookie and I are not the only Jeep-trekkers who have meandered our way up the loop-de-loop road to this remote niche of somewhere on the other side of nowhere. Our driver has the wisdom to take Pookie and I to the furthest end of where we’re allowed to go, away from the more collectively minded visitors. Photo-op time here is less than an hour. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us today. All the way back to Gangtok, by way of our hotel in Lachung for lunch. Although we’re not so very hurried that our driver cannot give us the time to snap pictures of dragons and rhododendrons and waterfalls and snow-capped peaks along the way. Our driver knows his timing well. We get back to the hotel in the last light before darkness settles in. And of the hairpin turns, and ninety degree turns, and all the other turns, and the uncountable bumps in the road, our driver handled them all, on the edge of the cliff, like the pro like he is.

     Early Friday morning, the thirteenth. Yesterday was my first full day back to the Gangtok valley after the three day excursion into the Northeast Heights. There was a mid-morning stroll to the Marg to replenish my rupees at an ATM, buy a new ball point pen, inquire at the jeep-taxi stand about schedules and pick-up points for Darjeeling, and check-in for a glance through the shelves of the Jainco bookstore. Take a shared taxi back up to the hotel around one as the sprinkling prelude to a downpour begins. Then it is hanging all day with my quiet time at the Pandim, sorting through my 397 photos from the three day journey, reading from Limitless Sky by David Charles Manners © 2014 about his life-altering visit to the Lepcha Himalayas, taking notes, making notes, writing messages to myself, visiting internet email connections, looking into the Nepal guidebook, all-in-all doing quiet time at my homeroom at the Pandim, sharing quiet moments with Kelsang and the staff at tea time and for a light dinner, counting down the days and the hours left for my visit to Sikkim and my first six months in India.

     Summary time. Aftermath of the climax. Sitting on a bench in the Marg – the shopping center mall – under the blue late morning sky, watching the river of shoppers and miscellaneous pedestrians endlessly flow by. I’ve done all of my Sikkim things, visited all of my Sikkim places, met all of my Sikkim people, taken all of my Sikkim photos, written almost all of my Sikkim notes. All of that is now history, behind me, under my belt, stored in memory, absorbed into memory, in all of its conscious and unconscious depth and complexity, and the meaning lies somewhere in between whatever I want it to be, and whatever it wants to tell me.

     A dance with a tall and slender woman I’ve never met before, dark red hair hanging closely to her shoulders. Our dance is very, very close, in a large wide open ballroom to ourselves. Slow, methodical and graceful, something between or a combination of a tango and a waltz. When the dance draws to a close and we separate, I find that she has been taking notes, writing things down with the small notebook and pen she held in her hands behind my head as we were dancing. She wants to give me some advice, tell me some things about myself I might do well to consider as I continue on my journey to wherever I go. Kind of like a lover, and kind of like a businesswoman, a publishing agent, in her approach. What exactly her advice is I don’t exactly remember, and that seems not to matter so much. Those notes will come back to me later. For now, just want to remember Her, and who and how she was as we danced.

          Then there is a younger woman who comes to dance with me on this same ballroom floor. More playful in gesture and movement, dressed in a free flowing frock. An older Anne Frank, in her twenties, northern European from the nineteen-forties, and our dance is so free-flowing that our feet leave the ground and we fly together through the ballroom, up to the ceiling and all around, until we return to the ballroom floor, and I’m holding an infant, so small it has almost embryonic qualities, and it is wise beyond its apparent age, and speaking quite clearly that it, he or she I don’t know, perhaps both in one, will be needing some kind of help, some kind of careful nurturing, and I am the one who is given to take care of this little person, this life in its earliest stages of development.

     As I awaken in the wake of these two dancing scenarios, in the darkness of some early morning hour, I linger on that surface between water and air where waves between conscious and unconscious thinking ripple with awareness becoming. My little book has been my lifelong project, and bringing it into the world has been my purpose, my mission, my assignment, and all of what I do and have done, and where I go and have gone, of what I talk about and with whom, has been rooted like the stem of the lotus reaching into the mud at the bottom of the holy lake, always reaching upward through the water towards its flowering, its blossoming, and the fullness of its expression. The bringing forth of these words within my heart has been through this vehicle. It is what I leave behind when my ashes are scattered to the wind, then to fall with raindrops to the Earth.