Chapter  Eleven

     May seventeenth, Tuesday morning around eleven, on the second floor (third story) room of Hotel Tranquility on the ridgetop overlooking Darjeeling. Arrived and settled in by noon Sunday by way of a four hour shared jeep from Gangtok, from the hotel Pandim and from Kelsang the owner and manager, who will always be dear to my heart. He did so much to make so fulfilling my visit to Gangtok and Sikkim at large. He briefed me for my eleven day visit to Tashiding and Yuksom, and recommended Sonu’s homestay. He arranged the jeep with driver and guide, and got our official papers fixed for our day trip to Lake Tsomgo: Lily, Robert and I. Kelsang also made all necessary arrangements for Pookie and I to make our three day photographic trip through the North. And he kept me well supplied with good food and a comfort zone at his rooftop dining room, complete with panoramic view and good company. What more to say? Thank you Kelsang!

     Hotel Tranquility is another ridgetop structure with what would be an amazing panoramic view, I’m sure, were it not for the perpetual cloud that fills the valley. Sunlight breaks through only occasionally from the sky above. At my dropoff point at the Darjeeling midtown taxi stand, as I’m asking around for a taxi to take my luggage up the steep hill to my hotel, this old Nepali guy who looks like he could very well be as old as I, or at least in his sixties, works his way into my attention zone. He is about a head shorter than I and carries his tool in trade: weathered and worn, well-used and strong, head band strap, his tumpline, complete with double loop of strong rope. He wants to porter my backpack to the top of this hill. He thinks about weight a different way, I think, than people like myself. He, like all of the porters I have seen in Gangtok, make their daily rounds carrying huge loads on their backs with a tumpline wrapped across their foreheads: four cases of Pepsi Cola in glass bottles, a brand new washing machine all boxed up, and who knows what all in all kinds of bagged up and packaged boxes and loads. They walk up steep hills one step at a time, and their right-of-way is recognized by all. This industrious old fellow is competing at the taxi stand, looking for a load to carry, and here I am, fresh bait, and he is on it!  I wince at the thought of him carrying this weight I’ve brought here, yet know that this is a boon for him, a chance to put his strap to work and make some rupees. So he sets himself up for the walk, and I follow him up, and it is steep, and all I can think about is how much more I should give him than what he asked for, and what these rupees mean to him, as contrasted with how many I have and what they mean to me. I see him again Monday afternoon, yesterday, and we greet each other like old buddies, and make arrangements for him to come to my hotel Wednesday morning at seven to carry it all back down to the taxi stand.

     No particular reason to be visiting Darjeeling except as from Robert’s recommendation to visit the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Center, and the idea that it breaks up my departure journey from Gangtok to Siliguri and Kakarvitta. A two and a half day hiatus between Sikkim, and my final ride to the Nepal border. Two shorter trips instead of one longer one, and a place where everything is new and potentially interesting, with that very pleasant sense of a combination of total unfamiliarity, with as much quiet reflective time as I wish to immerse myself into with my panoramic view of the cloud. Searching for a good place to have morning coffee, searching for a good place to buy a small dish of something or a larger meal. Getting to know the up and down streets and how they either intersect or parallel one another, for the streets and the buildings follow the terrain, and the terrain is sharply inclined.

     On my second last day in Sikkim, while browsing in the Good Books bookstore in a hidden corner of the Marg, the owner hands me a book. A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor – subtitled: A Tibetan Lama’s Extraordinary Journey to a Land of Immortality. © 2011, a true story set in the Himalayan regions of Sikkim and southeast Tibet. There are places in the text I recognize from having been there: Tashiding and Yuksom, and descriptions of mountain terrain like I saw in the North. Having noticed me looking at books on Mandalas, Tibetan Astrology and Lepcha folktales, this book store owner figures I’ll take an interest in “A Step Away . . .” So this is one of the books I’ll be paging through in between reviewing and revising plans for departure and ongoing travel, walking the streets of Darjeeling, and finding little conversations along the way.

     Roland from Gangtok shows up at a little Tibetan café near the clock tower yesterday morning. Then again, my choice for a coffee spot this morning turns up Andy, one of my jeep-mates back on the road to Tashiding three weeks ago, and a young British girl named Olive, both of whom I give my card with website addresses, which they look up on their phones, and a nice little conversation ensues. One step at a time, walking up that hill, as I follow my porter, and I just keep watching his feet.

     Wednesday, May eighteenth, afternoon at the Hotel Nilkamal in Kakarvitta, Nepal. Yesterday, my last full day in India, walked down, down, down to the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Center, which is really a quiet and pleasant walk through lots of greenery shrouded in mist. Talk to a fellow down there from Amdo in eastern Tibet who especially relates to Texas, for that is where the cowboy movies with all of their horse riding comes from, and horsemanship is the pride and joy of the high Tibetan plateau Amdo people, and he misses that part of the life he once lived. Certainly not much horse running and racing to be done through the deeply forested hills of Darjeeling and the rest of this vertically inclined hill country. The Self Help Center is a rather extensive compound of buildings on the far edge of town where woolen rugs are hand woven, and other indigenous crafts including carpentry, wood carving, scarf weaving and more brings forth the beauty of Tibetan artistic expression. Wish I could buy a lovely turquoise colored woolen scarf, but I’ve got to be cutting my baggage weight and volume down, not adding to it, so I purchase some hand painted greeting cards on handmade paper, and then walk in the later afternoon on the long path I came down on as all ages of schoolchildren in their uniforms are making their ways down the narrow asphalt lane towards their homes.

     Sit on a park bench on one side of the main pedestrian mall, Chowk Bazar, alongside an elderly Tibetan couple for about an hour as Sun-Surya descends towards the horizon of the hills beyond. Take my last evening meal at Granary’s, the fine western style restaurant with white tablecloth and place settings and all, watching the sun’s final descent into the clouds at the horizon, before winding my way back up through the vegetable market and narrow streets leading to Tranquility. Evening packing, along with some reading from A Step Away from Paradise, and napping in between through the night till Dawn’s first light shines through the cool cloudy skies.

     Head down to the lobby around six-thirty to wait for my porter, who shows up around quarter to seven, and we walk together down the street we came up three days ago. I’m sure a good fare is a good way for him to start his day, and he helps me find a Siliguri jeep I can get first dibs on and buy two front seats, so it will be just me and the driver looking through the windshield on the way down to the plains. Filling the cab goes a bit slow, and we’re ready to go by eight. Then it’s twisting and turning all the way down, down, down to the flatlands and the familiar lowland heat and the longest stretches of straight roads I’ve seen in forty days. I’m dropped off at the Kakarvitta jeep stand, and get a rear window seat in a vehicle that’s about ready to go. Straight on to the Indian immigration office at Panatanki where I get stamped out with no fanfare or complications. Then a cycle rickshaw takes me and my bags across the long bridge over the wide flat green river basin that will likely be swollen when the monsoon comes. Signing up for the Nepali visa goes as smooth as silk. I choose the ninety day version and will have more time than I think I’ll want in Nepal, but then again, who knows? My options are open. Outside the immigration office a young man on his motor scooter is on me to come look at his lodge, and I like his approach so we pile all of my bags and me on his scooter and head on over to his simple place in town where his wife does the cooking and we fill out the sign-in papers in their kitchen – dining room. All settled in by around one-thirty, and I let Sunny know that I’m open to looking around the local area for a day or two, and he will be glad to show me around, and help me think about my options for planning the 600 plus kilometer, sixteen hour bus ride to Kathmandu. Perhaps I can break that up into some smaller pieces. Thus here I wait for now in the middle of a simple and ordinary neighborhood of small hotels and shops in this provincial town on the border, on the edge, on the threshold, of all kinds of new and unforeseeable discoveries.

     Friday, May twentieth, at seven in the morning at my delightful little room at the New Cruise hotel. By mid-morning yesterday, it’s clear that I need to clear out of the Nilkamal. My room there is dingy, with poor ventilation and lighting. I’m glad to have met manager – tour guide Sunny who is full of good information, is very helpful and the kitchen – dining room family atmosphere with him and his brother and their wives, all around in their thirties, and their two infants are kind of fun to be around, but it’s all very tight for space, and I don’t really have any space, either in my room or in the dining room where I can be laid back comfortable. Take a nice long exploratory walk through town, taking pictures and look into what looks like a couple of the better hotels in town. My corner room at the New Cruise is small and tight, and between the two sets of tall clear windows, the red and white flowery curtains are waving in the breeze. On a narrow side street with palm trees and birdsong for company, I feel I could easily rest in this compact room with its two beds and tiny table for several days. A room to like to be in! Hotel Dharka around the corner has a nice little restaurant for breakfast and other meals. Take a mid-afternoon walk down the street from the New Cruise heading towards the edge of town to where it all opens up into scattered houses, and open fields and quiet country landscape. Backyard cornfields and roadside shops with benches to sit on and watch a man chop wood across the street and a woman winnowing her grain. A taste of rural Nepal a kilometer from my hotel room refuge where I can bide my time in planning my next move. Not right now in all that huge of a hurry to dive into the urban metropolis of Kathmandu.

     May twenty-first. The Buddha’s birthday. One in the morning, in the quiet of the night. After breakfast at the hotel Dharka yesterday, walked over to visit with Sunny, my tour guide at the Nilkamal. He takes me for a ride on his motor scooter through town first of all to the Coop Art gallery – DeHi Art, “The Womb of Art” – where I meet with Tseten Sherpa (Chi-ten), one of the four thirty-something year old artists – three guys and a gal – who set this place up – a small space, not too small, that serves not only as studio and gallery, but through which the cooperators conduct art classes and workshops, especially for children, and serves as their base through which they participate in National Art Exhibitions and Festivals in Nepal, India. Bhutan and Bangla Desh. Tse-ten is mostly into very nice little watercolor landscapes, and he has a couple of very fine portraits hanging on this gallery wall. Tse-ten is just now getting ready for an “International Event of Fine Arts and Poetry” to be held in Siliguri these next couple of days. Sixteen participants. “Social awareness through art and public participation programs” is part of the mission statement of DeHi, The Womb of Art, gallery, and I am simply amazed to find this dynamic little center of young enterprising and enthusiastic artists in this small town which otherwise, on the surface of it, seems to be little more that a bus station crossing.

     Into the gallery comes Devendra T., an artist and friend of Tse-ten who will also be participating in the Siliguri event. Devendra is from Katmandu and gives me his contact info for when I visit that city. So that’s cool – to have a Katmandu contact before I even get there!

     Next on the agenda with Sunny is a visit across town to a kindergarten run by Maria, a Bhutanese matron and her husband, where an itinerant Lutheran missionary volunteer teacher, John from New Zealand, aged sixty-two, has been helping Maria and teaching some of the twenty kindergarteners. To hear him talk, John is something of a free-lancer, visiting places and schools he hears about, all over south and southeast Asia, helping out in his volunteering kind of way. Maria offers me an empty room upstairs with a mattress on the floor where I can stay for free, and maybe teach some of the kindergarteners in whatever way I could – in art, most likely – but I’m not exactly into this level of involvement, and prefer to stick with my hotel room at New Cruise.

     After I take pictures of the twenty tots and their teachers, Sunny takes me over to the nearby Buddhist monastery, where preparations are underway for today’s celebration ceremonies and activities for the Buddha’s birthday. I get the ground floor to rooftop tour, complete with overview of town and surrounding countryside, and am allowed to take pictures in areas of the monastery where I would not normally be allowed to take pictures in the larger monasteries I’ve visited. Here again, this is not a place tourists normally visit, and since the next day, today, is the Buddha’s birthday, how can I not be there?!

     Sunny takes me for a short ride out of town along the country road through the tea plantations, and then it’s back to the Nilkamal for lunch, and a selfie picture taking session with some of the Bangla Deshi visitors. Afternoon is my own for reading from the amazing story in “A Step Away from Paradise, “ followed by a late afternoon walk through some quiet residential neighborhoods, and a bowl of vegetable Thuk-pa noodle soup at the Dharka as dusk settles into darkness. The Kakervitta border town is giving me reason to be hanging around and there is no big hurry to be boarding the bus for Katmandu. That will be there when I get there. Right now, just keeping track of where I’m at. Six months of India is now behind me, and where I’m heading seems pretty much up in the air.

     Saturday the twenty-first around four in the afternoon. On my early morning walk towards my first coffee and the Buddhist monastery, find a small school supplies bookstore that has a kindergarten or first grade primer for the Nepali and English alphabets, numbers, and basic words. Thirty-six consonants times twelve vowel sounds plus the twelve vowels sounds themselves gives us four hundred forty-four letters. So the learning curve is going to be a bit slow, but at least I’ve got the chart to keep me entertained during idle moments in the daily program.

     Over to the monastery by around seven-thirty, some plastic tables and chairs are set up around the yard, and I sit with a couple of other septuagenarian men at a table where a thirty or forty-something year old woman pours our cups of tea. More and more individuals and families trickle through the gate and more chairs are set out and more tea is poured. A group of four young grade school girls gathers near me to start asking questions about where I’m from and so forth, and when we reach our language barrier, I pull the alphabet primer out of my sack and we all start having a delightful time as they teach me pronunciations for both letters and words. Sometime around mid-morning, the monks start their chanting program, and people come and go, in and out, of the meditation room – chanting hall according to their wish to make a prayer or be close to the chanting monks. There is no mass. There is no meeting. There is no lecture. There is no organized anything that anyone is required to attend. It’s come and go as you wish, and listen as you wish, and pray as you wish, while the monks make the sounds with voice and drum and horn that carries all of these wishes into the atmosphere, into the universe.

     I sit on a low bench over in one corner and just let those sounds fill my ears, my mind and my heart. I am the only westerner amongst what I guess you’d call the congregation of mainly Tibetan, and also Bhutanese and Nepali Buddhists. Unlike all the other monasteries I’ve visited in my travels, no one minds one way or another about picture taking, and my camera is welcome entertainment for several children and their mothers and I’ve got a few digitized smiles in my electronic memory. The chanting concludes and preparations for the procession begin. Women both young and old go over to the shelves where the sacred texts are kept, and each is given one to carry on the crown of her head. Following the lead vehicle through the streets of Kakarvitta, with colorful flags on its fenders, the smallest children lead the procession, many of them carrying flags and banners, followed by the men who carry the holy statue laden with white scarves, followed by the laymen and monks of the congregation, the latter playing their Tibetan trumpets, all followed by the women carrying the holy manuscripts. Maybe three hundred people altogether and they take a very long walk around town. I break off at a point where I’m getting a bit tired, for I really don’t know how far they plan on going, and return to the monastery to wait for their return. Everybody’s back by around twelve-thirty. It’s a real church picnic atmosphere, and I am a popular guy with the kids with my camera, until I’ve had enough and take a chair next to an old Nepali guy, and we sit silently and watch. Communal lunch of rice and veggies is served, and I wind up sitting next to a couple of Sherpas whom I can talk with. One of them owns a local hotel and is full of traveling suggestions, so eventually he and I leave the party and walk over to his hotel where I look at a room that I decide to take after I’m through with my last night where I’m at the New Cruise tonight. One thing leads to another leads to something else, and Nepal is already unfolding in mysterious ways, right here in border crossing town Kakarvitta.

     Tuesday, May twenty-fourth at six in the morning. Long steady rain in progress. After five full days of blistering hot afternoons, the bleak skies above bode for a cool, wet day. The breezy New Cruise room with palm trees and birdsong turned into a daytime nightmare when the construction crew across the narrow street went into action hammering and riveting my brain with their racket. So glad to have met Lakhpa at the Buddha’s birthday celebration at the monastery and to now have this very lovely room at the Zeesal hotel, named with the first syllables of his daughters’ names. Zeesan, aged fourteen, and Salden, ten – ZeeSal. Huge panoramic view of a quiet street, looking across to shrubs and little trees and the earthy New Mexico canyon colored red post office.

A spacious room I can spread out in. Window to the sky. One entire wall is the window, with ceiling to floor draperies I can pull aside or close. Two cushioned chairs and a small table for my internet typing and note book writing. If all I’m really doing is going from one place to another looking for nice places to stay and set up my office, here is one.

     Finally plowed through the final volume of the Shiva trilogy by Amish. Very entertaining and quite a different way of looking at Shiva, and his entourage of fellow gods and goddesses, friends and enemies, challenges and achievements. Just a down home guy who happens to be very talented, emotionally real, and just trying to do the right thing.

     Looks like I’m walking right into the Nepali portion of the summer monsoon, and have got to wonder how this is going to impact my traveling plans for the coming days and weeks.

     Wednesday, May twenty-fifth around eleven morning. Finally got around to deciding to leave tomorrow, and the destination is Bhaktapur, the small ancient city just east of Katmandu in the valley. Looks like the place is crowded with Hindu temples and sacred places everywhere you turn, a place where after a few dozen or hundred clicks, I’ll just have to put the camera down and Be Here Now.

     Speaking of Be Here Now, Lhakpa, my hotel owner-manager-host comes back from the bus station where he went to set up my ticket for tomorrow, and tells me there will be a one-day bus drivers’ strike tomorrow, and I won’t be able to leave till Friday. Fine! Just when I think I’ve got a handle on a tentative schedule, some planetary alignment comes along and juggles it around for me. Seven nights I’ve now had in Kakarvitta. Tonight was going to be my eighth and final, and now I can look forward to number nine. When I first landed in Kakervitta, I figured on two or three, and they just keep adding up one after another while I watch the weather go by. Only two ways to walk, either towards the central bus station and business district, infused with its dust and noisy-ness, or on an out-of-town pathway, like I took yesterday late morning to the tea plantation fields in their sea of greenery extending towards the horizon. At least you can hear the birds out there, and find a quiet patch of shade to sit. Got into a conversation with a family on their porch, including a seventy-seven year old man and his wife, and who I imagine are his children and grandchildren, and we have a merry time with my camera. The weathered old patriarch and I engage in lively conversation – he entirely in Nepali and I entirely in English – with the complete understanding that neither of us knows what the other is saying, but we pretend that we do and he and I and the family all get a charge out of this delightful charade. He’s holding a Nepali booklet with a picture of Krishna and Radha on the cover, and I think that we are talking about an esoteric interpretation of the Krishna-Radha mythology, like minded intellectuals that he and I clearly are! Never know who you might meet while walking down a country road.

      So it’s the rest of today and all day tomorrow ahead of me now. Noontime rain clouds are building up and here it comes, the waterfall shower that cools things down.

     Saturday, May twenty-eighth at five-thirty in the morning in room thirty-one of Khwapa Chhen Guest House, Bhaktapur. Sometimes you find a place where the silence descends like an avalanche into that space between one inner ear and the other. Oh My! Rolling into a new urban landscape after an eleven hour spin across the plains and up and down the hills leading towards an unknown city, with no pre-conceived notion of where you are going to wind up putting your feet on the ground and your head into a bed, can be apprehensively disconcerting. My driver is dropping me with my bags off on the side of an urban thoroughfare, and with all of his helpful best intentions, pointing to some buildings in a field across the way, telling me that’s where I need to go to look for a hotel. And good luck finding a taxi in this somewhat unlikely place. Lucky me! Just so happens, a rattletrap taxi shows up looking for a fare just in time for the hand off, and my mini-bus driver explains to the city taxi driver what this clueless foreigner is looking for! So it’s off we go across the thoroughfare and into the field on our way to the network of twisting urban streets, and I am completely at the mercy of whatever kind of idea my driver has in mind for where I want to go. My man delivers! Homerun Touchdown Pass! To the gates of Durbar Square, Bhaktapur, the heart of the thousand year old city where Nepal began being Nepal. On target with a bulls’ eye. Those evening hours before nightfall are setting in. However many rupees my driver wants, he gets them. Foreigners visiting the ancient district of Bhaktapur need to buy a fifteen dollar pass and I get mine stamped for seven days. A helpful pedestrian points me down a narrow stone paved lane between tall red brick buildings and says there is my hotel, about a one block walk. The young man in the lobby speaks with a clear, slowly and softly spoken English and walks me up an ancient stonework stairway with dark smooth wooden banisters to this priceless room where, with my intention to stay for one week, I can leverage him down to fifteen dollars per night. Second floor, i.e. third story of this solidly built red brick building in this urban zone where most every building is red brick with red tile roofs, all blending together with the ancient temples of the square into the feeling of an overall place that hasn’t changed very much in centuries. Four stories altogether with a rooftop view across all of the other rooftops around towards the mountains in the distance that for the time being are shrouded in haze. While this L-shaped structure is solid and well built, the L-shaped building that completes the other two sides of the courtyard is a shambles of deterioration and slow-motion collapse and is seriously scarred by last year’s earthquake. And yet, this morning, as I look from my upstairs window into the courtyard below, littered with fallen bricks and shards of timber, an ancient woman draped in her maroon robe hobbles out of a weathered wooden doorway and walks slowly alongside a wall to water a small set of thriving and well-cared for potted plants. The avalanche of silence roars through the space between my ears.

     Going back to yesterday, and the day before. Unplanned for day number nine in Kakerbhitta was well spent. Sometimes it rained and sometimes sunlight warmed the air. Finally wrote my letter of introduction to Janet D., founder and organizer of the UBUD Writers and Readers Festival to be held in Bali at the end of October. It has taken me this much time to get around to composing this simple letter since Harsarran’s suggestion the first week of April. October seems a long way off from now, and introducing myself to an annual event where thirty-thousand people showed up last year seems rather daunting. Hi Janet. I’m a friend of Harsarran, and I’ve got a little book. I plan on showing up to this event. One little book, in a sea of other little books, all of us looking for readers. All of us looking for listeners to our voices. Another one of those Be Here Now events. No extravagant expectations. Just looking for friends and kindred spirits, and looking forward to whatever happens, for I know it will be good. In a Word.

     Back in Kakarbhitta late Thursday afternoon, make a point of stopping over to see Sunny at the Nilkamal hotel. The man who picked me up at the immigration office, set me up with my first hotel room, and rode me around town on his scooter for a local tour and visit to the art gallery, and the kindergarten, and the monastery. Sunny launched my visit into this otherwise invisible border town, and I want to make sure he knows how much I appreciate his guiding light. Sit with Sunny and his brother and a couple of his other friends in his kitchen – dining room, take some group selfies, trade email addresses, and share photos of some places we’ve been.

     A bit later, back at the Zeesal, Lakhpa asks me for my telephone number, and when I tell him my Indian number is dysfunctional, he walks me over to the NCell Nepali phone company office where he signs up for a new number under his name and we get the SIM card to install in my phone, so I now have a fully functional Nepali phone number. I would never have done this myself. To me, the paperwork is a labyrinth of crossword anagrams, and to Lakhpa, it’s one-two-three and done! Nice to be reconnected to the international cell phone world again. 

     Lakhpa also helped me make the mini-bus reservation for Friday’s ride to Bhaktapur. Instead of the big bus which takes the long way around to Kathmandu, Lakhpa sets me up with the mini-bus, a fifteen-passenger Toyota maxi-van, that takes the shortcut through the immensely more exciting hill country leading into the valley from the East. That’s what yesterday’s ride was all about. After a nice long morning stretch of kilometers across the southeast flatlands, our van turned north into the twisting, turning roads of the hill country, just like the twisting, turning roads that run through the hills of Sikkim. I had a front window seat most of the way, and got a bunch of fly-by pictures of rivers, and valleys and steep mountain forests. A bit rattling, as these journeys tend to be, and in the end it all turned out fine, as through one way or another, from one fortunate turn of the wheel to another, I wound up in this treasure of a room in this ancient city where a long time ago, someone decided this place needed to be.

     Monday, May thirtieth morning around six-forty. Looks like sunshine today. Yesterday was all full of clouds from start to finish with damp and drizzle along the way. Have been walking through initial explorations of the old city, dark red brick pavements, worn and warped with years of pedestrian traffic, tall three and four story red brick buildings, some of them older than I and others being built up over again where aging predecessors have crumbled or quaked to the ground. Four main temple squares, all within walking distance of one another through interlacing streets of shops to wander through. Restaurants aplenty to choose from in this tourist magnet town, and shops full of all kinds of wonderful hand made things to buy. Thangka paintings, singing bowls, carved wooden masks, wall decorations, metal crafts, and yak wool weavings. As I’m sitting on a temple step in Durbar square near my hotel Saturday morning, my first day out and not having yet gone very far or seen very much, I am approached by a younger teenage boy who asks if I want him to show me around. Santosh is a free-lance guide out to make a few extra rupees, but I’m mostly a self-guided tourist who is happy to sit and talk with him for awhile but I am not his customer. Then along comes another self-styled tourist guide, around thirty or in his thirties I suppose, and he is more of a professional with government approved I.D. and a very engaging personality, not an intrusive hustler like some of these guys can be. Again, I’m not in the market, but am pleased to sit and talk for as long as he wants. The conversation goes on for quite a while, and I learn a lot about Krishna as our personalities have a very real resonance. He walks here to the square every day from his village five kilometers away along some country road, on the lookout for tourists to guide. His wife and mother and three year old daughter and one month old son are back in the village. His world was devastated by last year’s earthquake. Two nice houses crumbled into oblivion, one buffalo killed and the other two had to be sold because he could no longer take care of them. He’s a musician and his tabla was ruined, his keyboard crushed, and guitar rendered useless. His three year old daughter is going to a pre-school and learning her alphabets and his wife is in some school training program to become a teacher, so when she’s qualified, and gets a position, things can become better. Meanwhile, looking for tourists to guide as a free lancer is difficult, especially in this off-season. He understands I have no money to spend on tourist guides, but business is slow and he leads me on a stroll over to a nearby Thangka painting school where I delightfully meet some artists, look at some works in progress as well as some of the finished paintings. Krishna and I return to the square and sit on a ledge under a roof watching afternoon rain tumble from the sky and collect into puddles on the wide brick pavement. After the rain, we go for a coffee shop drink and piece of cake. Throughout all of this, through silence and conversation, there is a sense of affinity between us. The coffee and cake are on me and I give him some rupees for taking me to the Thangka painting school, because he’s spent his time being helpful and informative, and because I want to help him in some small way. It’s like doing each other favors rather than paying for services rendered. We are clear that I am not his customer, and that there is something else going on here. This time we spend together is a personal sharing, and we agree to meet again the next day, yesterday, with an informal plan in mind.

     Yesterday, as I said, was cloudy and not good for going very far, but we walk through some streets and visit three of the four main squares, and it’s all really about sharing time and space together. We pass by a corner where a man sits on a step playing his djembe with consummate skill and singing some Hindu bajans. Krishna is good friends with this drummer, who steps through the doorway into his home and comes out with a tabla-like drum for Krishna to set his hands to, and these two guys get into a drum jamming session to set the neighborhood air on fire. Another passing friend stops by to join the djembe player’s voice with his own. Krishna is totally grooving with his fingers to his drum, and I am the total listener to this threesome on the sidewalk step. This goes on for easily an hour.

     I ask Krishna to recommend a restaurant, and we go over to the Cloud 9, a fine place where even the locals go, and our meals are on me. We walk back to the Durbar square near my hotel, part ways for the day, and plan to meet again, hoping for a sunny day, which so far this morning, it is.

     Tuesday morning at seven, May thirty-first. Overcast and raining so far. Yesterday started out with a bright, blue sky, and I took an early walk across the red brick paved Durbar square to the Daily Grind coffee shop for a rooftop Americano and chocolate muffin. Then strolled down the narrow lane to the Taumadhi Tole square and climbed the steps to the top of the base of the five-story pagoda, the Nyatapola temple, for an early morning overview of pedestrian traffic below. Descend and walk the red brick lane to the Potters square where terra cotta pottery is all lined up and spread out across the pavement ready for market.

     Take Krishna’s phone call and walk over to meet him at Durbar square. With the weather as nice as it is, the time is right for our visit to the ancient Changu Narayan temple. Eight kilometer taxi ride to the hilltop village overlooking the valley. Changu Narayan temple dates back to the fourth century C.E., the oldest temple in Nepal. Weathered with age and well taken care of, it has been restored from time to time throughout its history. Built in the two-tiered pagoda style, and surrounded within the compound by a few smaller temples, the gateways are guarded with stonework animal deities: Lions, Griffins, and Elephants. Intricate woodwork carving adorns the façade and supporting struts. Walk around, take lots of pictures, honor the deities represented in the stonework and woodwork carvings, sit for awhile in silence and let seventeen centuries of presence soak in.   

     Eventually, Krishna and I walk around the hillside through the forest just below the temple and through the village back to the bus and taxi parking lot. Not very many tourists come up this way, and the sense of rural peacefulness prevails. Sit at a restaurant rooftop for some tea and momos. Take the bus down to Bhaktapur. Strangely enough, the sky clouds over and the rain comes down heavy during the bus ride, and by the time we reach the drop off point in Bhaktapur, the rains have let up. Walk the few blocks back to the city where we began, and sit for a short while again on the square, before I share some rupees with Krihsna for his time and company, and bid him adieu for the day and return to my room for an afternoon rest.

     Three days down in the Bhaktapur area now, two days in the ancient city, and one in outlying Changu Narayan. All three in one way or another to some extent in the company of my spirit guide Krishna. Cloudy and drizzly so far this Tuesday morning, and I just have to wait till it all clears up.

     Wednesday, June first, at ten in the morning, with my rooftop breakfast at the Daily Grind coffee shop, where I have found the best cup of rich black coffee I’ve had in a long time. Blue skies today. Walking across Durbar square from my hotel on the way over here, met with Krishna, my spirit guide to Changu Narayan two days ago, and young Sandosh. Krishna has lined up a tour for today, a couple from Holland, and is waiting just now for them to show up. Great to hear that he landed this piece of work, just in time to pick up some of the rupees he needs to pay this month’s tuition for his daughter’s pre-school.

     Yesterday afternoon was with my other Bhaktapur Krishna, the young man behind the counter at my hotel. We take a walk through some twisting brick paved lanes out of the old town to the highway where we catch a public transportation bus ride, along with half the population of Asia for company, to a hilltop on the eastern rim of the valley, where, just within the last few years, someone has built the largest Shiva statue in the world. Standing tall with trident in one hand, the other hand with palm facing forward in a benevolent gesture, cobra draped around his neck, crescent moon in his hair, cast in an amalgam of metals with an emphasis on bright burnished copper, he surveys the valley and its surrounding ring of hills. It’s a bit of a climb up the hill through the village where the bus drops us off, and Krishna and I spend a good couple of hours enjoying the relative sense of rural peace and quiet, along with the steady stream of Hindu tourists who enjoy the garden atmosphere. Krishna is off from his hotel duties from twelve to four, and he is delightfully happy to share his time showing me the valley from this place. Bus ride back, kneebone to elbow with the local population, who all get along extremely well accommodating each other in the space we are given to share. Thank whatever goodness, I get to sit next to the driver for a through-the-windshield view. Rest of the day, sitting on the Durbar square watching the pedestrians and clouds roll by and with some laid back quiet time on the hotel rooftop watching some masons laying fresh bricks to reconstruct a temple spire laid waste by last year’s earthquake. Another reconstruction going up, one brick at a time, to last another thousand years, or until the next earthquake comes around, at which time the children’s children of these masons will do it all over again. It’s the same temple, always there, just as it always has been.

     Ancient Bhaktapur is just one little corner of the valley, and there are enough temples and holy places to keep a person company on self-guided walking tours, and to keep a camera clicking for days on end. Today and tomorrow are my last scheduled days at the hotel. Maybe I’ll walk and maybe I won’t walk very much at all today. Once one steps very far into the meandering lanes surrounding the ancient square, the horrifically annoying motorcyclists start weaving their way through the pedestrian lanes, laying into their ear-splitting horns, while bearing down on you or from behind with their get-out-of-my-way intensity. That is even before you get to the highway where buses, trucks, and taxis engage in their own version of free-for-all madness. All of which makes hanging around vehicle off-limits Durbar square a rather appealing option for spending a day.

     Forty-five years ago in nineteen-seventy, I spent three days in November walking the lanes of old Katmandu while prepping for my flight to Pokhara for my two week Himal Annapurna – Kaligandaki River trek. After that exhilarating walk through the gorge between the snow-capped peaks, I flew back to Katmandu for a couple more days of walking through those mysterious lanes. It’s taken a bit of time for me to get back to this valley for these further explorations. My program is a blank page. I’m here for soaking-in time for my sense of what this country means to me. I’ve been in Nepal two weeks now, and have yet to see a Himalayan snow-capped peak. It’s not so much about finding Nepal as some objective place as it is about finding my Nepal, those places here that resonate in some personal way.

     Like Changu Narayan with Krishna two days ago. There are free-lancing guides aplenty working the square every day, every tourist knows, and first response to an offer is usually Thanks, but No Thanks. Krishna’s voice and manner touched me in a heartfelt, resonating place, and I felt like I was talking with a person from out of a time before there were borders between what we now call Nepal and India and all of the Indian states. Here is a man who really is, I felt, an incarnation of Krishna, or Shiva, with a personality as old as the stones that lay at the foundation of all of those temples scattered across the countryside.

Our conversation flowed like quiet water, slowly winding its way towards another heartfelt understanding. For all that there is to see and take pictures of in Bhaktapur, there will always be the echo I remember from Krishna’s voice, the look in his eye, the nod of his head, and the way he found his way into my heart.

     I came to India to meet certain people. I came to Nepal to meet certain people. I came to these places to meet the people who resonate with my heart. The temple is a vehicle, a place to gather, a place to focus, a place to find what you are looking for after all of the wandering that you may have done through meandering brick lanes and winding hillside trails. The Lions, the Griffins, the Elephants and the Bulls greet you at the gateways to the temple. Here is the path to the holy place inside your heart. Listen closely to your voice within.

     Thursday, June second around six-thirty in the morning. Looks like sunny and clear so far today. After my leisurely breakfast and extra cup of coffee yesterday morning on the Grinder’s rooftop, meet with Krishna and Sandosh down on the square. Krishna has finished his two hour tour with the couple from Holland and now has five dollars, or five hundred rupees more than he had before. Pickings are slim and you take what you can get. There are more tour guides out on the square than there are tourists. I’ve got time on my hands and a good walk would be good, so I pick an interesting looking Ganesh temple out of the guidebook, the Suriya Binayak temple, which from the square is through town to across the highway to an uphill walk to a quiet forested setting, altogether a couple or three kilometers. Krishna leads the way, the climb is nice and steep, and traffic thins out as we approach the top where the seventeenth century temple sits amidst the surrounding forest. The place is mostly our own for awhile with an attendant Brahmin priest who sells us puja candles for five rupees each. One by two by three, other occasional visitors climb the steps to the courtyard to pay their respects to the great elephant-headed god, and take selfies and family photos. Sit on a bench to one side and just watch three older teenage girls spend an enormous amount of time taking more selfies and pictures of each other than I would think their phones have enough memory to store. What did people do for entertainment before the invention of digital phones and selfie taking? Does anyone remember?

     It was a nice long walk up here and I’ve got plenty of time to sit around this peaceful setting overlooking the city. We’re not exactly on top of the hill. There is an old brick stairway winding upwards through the trees that my exploring mind is compelled to follow. Couple of hundred yards up is a small old dilapidated brick temple with a well worn goddess idol inside, and graffiti initials written on the walls by the less than reverent visitors. A stepped dirt trail leads further up the hill, and now it is I leading my guide into the mysterious forest above. The trail thins out the further we go, and obviously might go on for a very long way, so I finally call it enough is enough, and mark the turnaround point with a photo into the unknown where the trail disappears into the trees ahead. A very old and weathered string of prayer flags whispers in the gentle breeze, threadbare disappearing into nothingness amongst the branches and leaves above.

     Down the earthen trail, down the old brick trail, past the dilapidated temple, down the newer brick trail, walking on by the Ganesh temple that brought us up here, down to the asphalt lane where we sit for a cup of chai at a roadside tea shop before descent and return to the city. Towards the bottom where the road flattens out, stop at a roadside shrine for Bhim-sen, the god with the power of a thousand horses, to pay homage and ask for a blessing. An elderly woman, perhaps as old as I or nearly so, strong and powerfully built, with a strong and wise look in her face, is in attendance for the shrine, and her radiant look of just pure knowing is clearly a reflection of Bhim-sen’s one thousand horsepower.

     Krishna and I stop off for lunch at a local place that he likes, then finish our walk to where we began on the square. Of course I’ve got some rupees for Krishna and the time he spends with me, and for his daughter’s pre-school and whatever else he’s trying to keep together back home. Fresh curious tourists are strolling into the square, and perhaps there’s another good connection for my spirit guide to make before the afternoon disappears into sunset. We part for today with Namaste blessings for one another at heart.

     Back to where I was yesterday morning on the rooftop of the Daily Grind with my mug of rich, dark Java. Light pedestrian traffic criss-crosses the red brick pavement mini-square entryway to the main square. The twin sentinel fang-toothed Lions have been watching them all go by for how many hundreds of years, through how many monsoons and earthquakes, through how many starry nights, through how many sun-baked afternoons, through how many crowded festivals and royal processions, through how many of everybody who has crossed the pavement at the foot of their pedestal, who can count? Now I sit and watch and wait with the Lions, they on their pedestal, face-to-face with I on the coffeehouse rooftop. Their mouths are open and fangs are ready to chew to shreds whatever and every ridiculous observation I might dare to make. A thin elderly woman in clothes clearly well-worn, on their way to oblivion, climbs the five stone steps to the top of the pedestal where the Lions stand. She lights a flame to the wick of a small oil lamp. She walks the few steps over to one Lion and holds the flame up to him, turns and walks the few steps over to the She Lion, for every pair of Lion statues comes as a He with a She, and holds the flame up to her. Flame-bearing Woman returns to the center of the pedestal, extinguishes the flame, and slowly, one step at a time, descends to the brick pavement and walks off into one of the ancient sidestreet lanes.

     Friday, June third, on the Daily Grind rooftop at nine-nineteen. Last day in Bhaktapur. Last morning in this ancient city where I met my friend, the Krishna from right out of the Bhagavad-Gita. This one is happily married for six years and does not run around with those unhappy western tourist women who want to hit on him. He tells them they have to find their happiness in their own heart, that neither he nor anyone else can be the source of what they are looking for. Krishna’s favorite people are little children and old people. Those are the happiest people. They are not grasping and greedy and looking for so many things to get and to have that they think will bring them the happiness they have lost and are searching for. I remind Krishna of his grandfather who passed away when Krishna was a young teenager. He was a loving and generous man, deeply embedded in Krishna’s heart as a man he admires and hopes to become like. I am honored for what Krishna sees in me, and I see clearly that he is well on his way to becoming who he wants to be. Really, he is already that person, just whiten his hair and add a few wrinkles to his face, and Krishna as the grandfather to his daughter’s children, to his son’s children sits now across the table where we came for our late lunch yesterday afternoon, on the rooftop restaurant overlooking Dattatrapa square, billed as the oldest part of the city, less frequented by the tourist pedestrians. At this highest rooftop restaurant in the city, we’ve got the pinnacle table. In the hills to the south, the Suriya Binayak temple where we climbed Wednesday. In the hills to the north, the Changu Narayan temple where we went Monday. To the hills of the southeast, the towering shining Shiva statue, aglow in burnished copper. Tomorrow, I’ll be on my way from Bhaktapur to Bodhnah, a few kilometers west, closer to metro Kathmandu. 

     The Bhaktapur chapter is closing, and more than anything else, my time has been about my meeting with Krishna. The earthquake ripped his house and buffaloes, his home and his livelihood, out from under his feet. He has used the fallen bricks to construct a three room house for his family and he tends a garden with corn and vegetables. The buffalo milk income is gone, and all he’s really got going is this sporadic and uncertain tourist guide gig. Keeping the show together is seriously difficult and there is not one word of complaint that comes forth, for he has and he knows he has the most important thing in the world, the love in his heart for himself and for his wife and two children. Krishna speaks the wisdom of his grandfather, and a ready smile is never far away. He walks the four squares of Bhaktapur and the lanes in between with a greeting in friendship for many whom we meet and pass by along the way. His wish is for his daughter to become an ambassador for Nepal, and to bring the voice of goodness to the world, the voice of peace and caring and generosity, the voice of his grandfather, the voice he has heard, the voice he will pass on. I am entirely privileged to know this man, and honored to be at home in his thoughts.

     Just when you think you’ve come to a finishing thought, here comes another to say, no wait, here is one more. I thought the scene from yesterday with the woman performing her puja with the Lions at the Eastern gate of Durbar square was a lovely finishing touch. Of course I knew I would see Krishna again, but did not imagine the amazingly beautiful conversation we would have on the rooftop restaurant that afternoon. He speaks a way of looking at the world and towards the people we love and the people we find taxing with a practical and uplifting spirit in his voice. I will remember our conversation forever. I knew I would see him again this morning for a couple of hours before my departure. There I am on the Daily Grind rooftop with my coffee and here he comes to join me. I told him how I watched the old woman do her puja with the Lions yesterday. He knows who I’m talking about. The old woman spends all day every day walking around visiting temples and shrines all over the ancient city, burning an oil soaked wick at every place where she stops to pray and pay homage to a resident deity. Sure enough, not much later, here she is again climbing the steps and doing her puja with the Lions. She weaves the thread of her trail every day through the lanes of the old city tying all of the ancient shrines together in one cloth.

     After finishing with our Daily Grind, Krishna and I stroll over to the Taumadhi square with the five-tiered pagoda to look for a shady stone to sit on and watch today’s pedestrian traffic, and throw bread crumbs at the pigeons. After a while, Krishna leads me through a doorway into an inner courtyard where a small pagoda stands and a few other shrines are built into the courtyard walls. A couple of workmen are mixing cement and laying a patch of pavement tiles. Not long thereafter, who should walk through the doorway but the puja lady. She begins with the main temple and shrine in this courtyard, then proceeds around to every other shrine, lighting her wick and saying prayers at every one. Of course, I can’t help but keep watching her and listening, and she comes around to the Shiva lingam shrine where Krishna and I are sitting on the ledge. After going through her entire set of prayers and motions, she comes around and gives a flower petal to each of us to place on the top of our heads, just as she gave a flower petal to each of the three workmen to place on the top of their heads. I’ve taken my hat off to her as I place the rose petal on my head, then put the hat back on, over her Bhaktapur gift. She exits the courtyard, and not long thereafter, Krishna walks me back to my hotel where we pick up my bags and walk over to the taxi Krishna has arranged for my departure from a place and a person I will always remember.