Back of Beyond (35 page)

And there’s more. Kathmandu has two sister cities close by—Patan and Bhaktapur—each with its own mysteries and medieval charm and its own equivalent of Durbar Square.

Wisdom, knowledge, enlightenment—all hang like thick incense in Durbar Square. It’s a spiritual nexus attracting crowds of fluttery devotees, swarming like moths around the stupas and temples lit by a million flickering oil lamps. Some are harmless, gentle people, moist-eyed and moist-minded, floating somewhere slightly above the dusty plazas and murmuring to one another in free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness, ganja-laced sentences—always half finished, left dangling in the air like wisps of hashish smoke.

And then come the instant Buddhists and Krishna-cultists prattling on endlessly in caterpillar watta-batta-mutta sentences about the incarnations of Vishnu and the eight-fold path and the colors of Hindu deities with a facile familiarity that seems to have come from intensive spring break crash courses in “got-it” enlightenment at some hip ashram, paid for by poor unenlightened Mum and Dad back in old Satanland. Their transformations are often short-lived and when the rigors of meditation and abstinence begin to pall, they return home, leaving little and taking little of value back to the old familiarity of their own cultures.

A few remain though—die-hard stalwarts, long-term converts, moving in slow gurulike movements, eyes fixed on some infinite place, immersed in their Karmic devotions. These are the ones you remember most, wisping like wraiths through the great square, past the remnants of the old psychedelic “pie shops” and hash-houses with their age-stained posters of The Doors and the Jefferson Airplane, past the cracked honeycomb windows of the Hobbit houses and the ragged alleys and the lopsided guesthouses and the gaudy signs for Star beer and “genuine Buffburgers.” They move tirelessly, endlessly, floating through the Jackson Pollock canvas of Kathmandu, part of the splash, daub, and trickle of the place.

I was hungry for something sweet.

Alas—the famous cakes and cookies of Kathmandu no longer contain the mind-expanding ingredients of the seventies when weary trekkers and wannabe gurus would fill the pie-shops along “Pig Alley”—gorging on ganja-laced confections and rejoicing in the liberated attitudes of the Nepalese. Today’s ingredients are a little more on the conservative side, but KC’s restaurant, up in the northern part of the city, still attracts some of the old loyalists and has kept its appeal with the mystic in-crowd.

“She’s going to do it. She’s going to do it.” A young girl who said she was from Manchester, England (“But that was ages ago—I mean absolutely ages.”), bounced excitedly on her seat next to an older woman, also from England, who had spent the last half hour or so firing barbed darts of philosophical epigrams at her companions. She seemed very aloof. Her wiry hair was drawn tightly back over her scalp into a bun, her face had a gaunt profile, and her eyes seemed a long way away, somewhere in a cold dark place. I’ve seen that look before in the faces of long-time world travelers. But there was something not quite convincing here—she was like a queen under seige, peering down imperiously from high battlements atop loosely mortared walls. There’s undoubtedly safety—even occasional serenity in such heights—but unresolved fears can eventually eat like acid through the cracks and bring the whole elaborate fortification crumbling down. And that’s what I sensed: someone feigning enlightenment in that arrogant way peculiar to Western truth seekers, and yet still fragile, vulnerable, incomplete.

The tiny room of cake eaters became very quiet. The woman closed her eyes and performed a little ritual of breathing exercises. No one spoke. She took one last long breath and began to recite a kind of blank verse in a slow raspy voice (in transcribing from the tape I’ve tried to give it the poetic form I think she intended):

Her eyes were still closed and she sat very still as the murmurs of her admirers filled the room. Heavy stuff. Wagnerian gloom and doom. Outside in the muddy street there it was all laughter and noise and sunshine. I left the rest of my cake and rejoined the hullabaloo.

Surely it needn’t be that ponderous or pointless. I know that Buddhism has its downside, “All life is suffering,” etc. etc., but up here in Nepal, with the sparkling white peaks soaring above the temples and the crowded streets and the emerald green rice paddies and the tight little mud-walled villages perched on terraced hillsides, surely here there’s also rejoicing and joy in the fun of life itself.

I decided I had to dream up a response to her rather woeful litany. So I sat on the steps of a temple and scribbled away merrily to a spritely tune that ran through my head:

Well, if s hardly grand philosophy but it seemed to fit the mood of that moment. At least the gloom was gone, and I was free to explore the city again with a bunch of newfound friends.

One was a young man, a Buddhist scholar, who had lived in Kathmandu for a number of years working with the rural blind out in the Himalayan valleys, far beyond the city. His task was not an easy one. Buddhism teaches that bodily afflictions and other ailments are divine retribution for past karmas, punishment for acts in previous lifetimes, and the idea of trying to overcome such afflictions is considered by many believers to be ill-advised. But, with great charm and tact, my friend has persevered and changes were coming slowly to the villages. The blind were being encouraged to assert their independence, become full participatory members of the community, operate small farms and businesses.

It was slow, slogging work but in Nepal nothing changes quickly in spite of the thousands of dedicated field-workers sponsored by well-meaning organizations from the West. And they were all here—agricultural specialists encouraging tree planting on the rapidly eroding slopes of the foothills; health workers; engineers; financial whiz kids trying to untangle the complexities of Nepal’s subsistence economy; missionary teachers; medical technicians; dam builders; Peace Corps volunteers. It seems at times that there are as many foreign volunteers and specialists as tourists. There’s something about this little nation that warms the hearts of wealthy philanthropists. The people, the scenery, the still-dominant royal family, the endurance of its varied cultures, locked in time, away in the remote valleys, reachable only by long weary treks on difficult mountain paths. A wonderful place!

Back in the boardrooms of Europe or America, Nepal seems manageable—a compact kingdom hardly larger than New England. Send some cash, a few enthusiastic specialists backed by a bevy of volunteers, and the job will be done in no time. Great public relations, a satisfying tax write-off, and a chance to spend some time in one of the world’s most beautiful remote hideaways.

Only it doesn’t always work out quite so easily. Nepal is Nepal and Nepalese ways of life are not as malleable as the “let’s-make-some-changes” guys would like to think. And there’s another problem. Nepal is very seductive. Centuries of slow, isolated cultural development have produced a beguiling mélange of architectural form, spiritual intensity, and societal richness, unique in the world. Just as I was, outsiders are often overwhelmed by the power of the place; half-baked schemes for “modernization” and social enlightenment suddenly seem inappropriate—even threatening—in a place offering itself as a touchstone to these more eternal values and truths, which Western nations have often forgotten in their wild pursuit of wealth and material abundance. The teachers are often the taught here. It comes with the territory.

My friends entertained me royally, and I remember one afternoon in particular that three of us sat drinking
chhang
(homebrewed millet beer) served from a communal bowl in the shady garden of a restaurant famous for its Tibetan wontons or
momos
. We had gorged our way into a pleasantly loopy state. Over the garden wall I could hear the spinning of prayer wheels in a temple courtyard. A flight of white pigeons curled over our heads. The ceaseless prattle of the city seemed a long way away.

“I’d like you to meet an artist,” the girl said, filling my glass with chhang for the umpteenth time.

“Lovely,” I said. I had no special plans. Kathmandu does that to you. Time becomes seductively elastic and nothing seems particularly urgent in this lovely rice-paddied valley under the mountains.

Eventually we finished the bowl, and she led the way past the temple and into a monastery at the end of a muddy track. We were greeted by monks in orange robes and led to a small cell at the rear of the compound. And there he was, a tiny elfin creature sitting on a stool in a bare room furnished only with a bed and an old wood chest. A single bulb hung down on a frayed wire from the ceiling.

He turned and smiled, and the room seemed immediately brighter. It was a smile I shall always remember. His whole face shone, his eyes sparkled and seemed translucent; I felt as if I’d been immersed in silky warm water. We were all smiling. I looked at my friends and their faces shone. The whole room was one big grin.

The girl introduced him to me, but I’ve long forgotten his name. It doesn’t matter anyway. I was mesmerized by him. His aura was almost tangible, evoking stillness and joy and something much deeper.

“He’s from the Dolpo,” she said.

Now, like many of the ancient Himalayan kingdoms that once existed all along the Himalayan range, Dolpo is still a remote and unexplored region, three hundred miles to the west of Kathmandu.

“How did he get here?”

“He walked.”

Of course. Even Nepal’s single major road, the “Rajpath” to India, one of the most tortuous mountain roads in the world (and one I was to experience first-hand later), was only completed in 1959. The rest of the country is still virtually roadless, bound together only by a spiderweb network of narrow paths.

“That must have taken a while.”

“Three weeks.”

“Alone?”

“Oh no,” she laughed. “He is a very famous artist in the Dolpo. Two hundred of his followers came with him.”

“Why did he come?”

“He was invited to paint a series of tankas for the temple here.”

Now tankas (or thangkas) are one of the major art forms of Nepal’s strange blending of Buddhist and Hindu faiths. They are a written record usually composed in circular mandala form, depicting the lives, deeds, and incarnations of the various deities and the supreme power of Brahman, the metaphysical absolute, the beginning and the end. They are works of the most exquisite detail painted with tiny brushes and using natural dyes made from cinnabar, lapis lazuli flower petals, and gold dust. While the broad themes are constant, artists are given unlimited freedom to interpret all the various facets of Buddhism’s four truths—pain, suffering, desire, and nirvana—and all the entangled attributes and activities of the deities—erotic, comic, cruel, demonic, loving, and lethargic (the gods are often appealingly human in their foibles).