Not Kareri Lake

Dinner on the roof of the bakery 

Get up at 4:08 AM, make Tibetan honey and peanut butter sandwiches, eat chocolate croissants, walk to the the taxi place, Mahi picks us up and drives us past the hotel manuvinot, hike down to the river, find a jeep to take us up the mountain on very rough roads, to Kareri village, playing Punjabi music, great time, only 7:30. 

Take a trail up the mountain, wrong trail, talk to Gaddi shepherd, go back down, stop at a purple house, and speak to a lovely young girl who keeps a solemn silence, but offers her brown dog who accompanies us for hours, and cannot be discouraged. After exploring several other trails, we settle on a stony steep path up the mountain, covered I dried Rhodendron leaves. It is not now, we are tired and discouraged by how far we have traveled in the wrong direction. I tell long stories about Frank Mason, schools, and arcane studies to cheer them up. Eventually we see a red flag on top of a boulder...none of the trails are  marked, a red flag below a green ridge. We head back to the forest to try and find the path to the river, and wafer, we consult the map (not to scale), finally deciding to climb the beautiful ridge in the hot sun, water running out. We climb and climb.  I brake the spell holding the dog to us by throwing rocks at it, which it understands exactly.  We climb and climb, 

Eventually seeing some primitive stone shelters. A large group of sheep and lambs runs, in mass, to meet me, and three bright clad figures watch from a rocky perch. These Gaddi shepherds speak no English, but generously refill our empty water bottles with cold water. 

After a long hike up the ridge, we return to the shepherds and the woman brings us hot milk tea in a silver cup milk from one of the goats, hot and tasting like wood smoke, evoking ancient stories. 

The amazing green hilltop camping spot, overlooking the valley, just above the shepherds, just below the mountains.

Morning hike up the ridge to find a view of the pass and the elusive great Himalaya range. As I walk I remember the warm smile of the shepherd as she handed me a cup of milk tea, sweet and pungent with wood smoke. It was like the mountain ridge covered  in grass and white stones was their home, and they were welcoming us, with water and hot tea. 

The shrine at the end of the trial down.The jeep ride back to the trail up 

Sunday night dinner. 

Enlightenment

 The mandala of infinite paper making, at the Tibetan papermaking archive (Photos on this page Clark Goldsberry). The monk, in the conversation class, asked me, "Why are you studying Buddhism?" It is partly curiosity about the calmness of enlightenment, the idea of enlightenment, and now, about the resilience of Tibetan culture: what is this resilience and dedication to preserving a culture while being driven away into another country?

T

 The monk who showed us all around the prayer area and explained things to us, and the monk who had visited the Khombu in Nepal.

The big fair at Dal Lake.  Trying to out throw the monks to gain merit, and like the sounding of a bell, the strike of the tennis ball says, be here.

The quite solitude of a book  the Buddha, and the friendly communiion of  milk tea and sugar crackers. 

The absence of children

The wall next to the village Tibetan school, I found out later that it was white Wednesday, the day when all the children dress in traditional Tibetan costumes and eat no meat. It is observed to remember their relatives in Tibet, who also observe white Wednesday as a way to keep their culture alive. 

Another close shave.  I have to try this. 

We visited the big Tibetan Vilłage Community School, it is a very large complex where the children live. This is the principals office, who said that we could not observe classes even though we were famous researchers from the USA. But we kept asking, so he took us to another sub-principle, who introduced us to the art teacher, and after awhile got very excited about showing us around the place.  As usual, we arrived at an auspicious time, since they would be having a preview of a big cultural performance competition that night.  Clark managed to get invited. 

The teacher drew a lonely landscape from Tibet on the whiteboard, and then students drew for awhile, their own version. The landscape included a Yak and a Yak tent. Later, he showed us paintings and drawings students had done, often with themes of the experience of moving to India from Tibet because of the oppressive Chinese culture and government. Later we found out that many of the students had parents who still lived in Tibet. We were told that parents living in Tibet will take their children to Nepal and meet someone who will take the children to India where they become part of the school. They do this in the hope that their language and culture will not be lost. Many other people we me had walked to India over the Himalaya. 

A child asked, you will not take my picture and send it to China, will you?

Above the school was a path and little shrines, a sweet smelling forest of prayer flags. This area included secluded places where monks seek solitary refuge. 

Moving, Goddesses, and Weavers

Goodbye red velvet table cloth and long tables where we ate museli, milk, chocolate croissants, and digestive biscuits every morning and read books and asked questions, like, what is memory?, how do we remember? What is progress? Enlightenment? Faith? India? Goodbye green grassy hilltop where soccer balls disappear forever into the pine forests. Goodbye huge shower spiders, goodbye pink walls, bugs stuck in the red velvet tablecloth,  goodbye sunset hikes down the mountain and moonlight hikes up the rocky trail, goodbye Stoberry hills forever. 

Moving. 

 In the Nadi weaver's shop

Other things that have happened. We went to Nadi to visit the international school, but were there on the wrong day.  The principal came out, an Indian woman, and said, no the children are taking tests.  So I asked her, “Can you tell me about your remarkably unusual school?” I had been there last week, and had met the children, who talked of miracles and meditation, as they threw their long scarves around their heads and pretended to be, I don’t know, dancing princesses. So she took us to the shrine/exhibit hall of meditation.  If I was not dreaming before, I was dreaming now. There were portraits, many portraits of the Shree Mataji, “a goddess, the goddess of all the goddesses” she said. In fact they had preserved an entire room, with a huge throne, right out of Mourdour, or the Hall of the Mountain King, with carpets, and a bed, behind a large window, bordered by many statues of Ganesh, in this case the god of innocence.  She said, “photos can show us what we cannot see” and commenced showing us the miracle photos, Shri Mataji surrounded by bright lights, Casper, sparks.  “Don’t stop meditating” we were admonished, by the mathematics teacher who had assumed the role of guide in this strange visitor center.  Clark said "bad photography makes ghosts". 

 There was a hall of the writings of the Shri Mataji,  pages from a sketchbook, with diagrams, random thoughts about evolution, eternal progression, animals.  Over the doorways were little shrines with postcard angels from Leonardo, a tableau of the last supper, symbols from Islam. This was the second goddess we had encountered in our area.   By this time most of us were a little freaked out and wanted to wake up and have a glass of milk. So we walked down to Nadi, to the weaver and felt his bolts of cloth, woven into scarves, dreamlike scarves, blankets of refuge, turbans and table clothes, dresses and vests.  And that is where I bought a Yak blanket. Then I wrote a poem about the bakery:

I am buying a croissant

 quickly.  Everyone is waiting 

Outside, the white taxis 

honk their horns

Dobku Ko is teaching someone

ardently at the table behind me

I sip my milk slowly

and learn compassion

green hilltop or busy street lined with vendors?

Cooking class, making momos. 

The Tibetan weaving guild, amazing skill, and we wandered through, like invisible ghosts, or maybe we are just from an invisible age where things move too fast.