Stupafied!

   

        My romantic fantasy of completing Ngondro practice at Nepal's holiest pilgrimage site, the Bouda Stupa on a rented private prostration board where my body would get ripped with 1000s of prostrations a day as my mind obtains 'the view' so I could quickly start performing Vajrayogini dance adorned in the antique jewels and skull costumes I drooled over last night in Shilpa's father's curio shop, was sobered by devout bald, toothless Tibetan woman wearing filthy heavy pads and prostrating around the stupa in the busy morning crowd. I watch, realizing where my devotion ends and doubt begins. Why I am even walking around and around this stupa. I'm praying for Haiti? Hurricane Matthew hits tonight...that country is already a disaster....but anything can be prayer.... Dance. No, writing is my prayer... fuck walking in circles.... A familiar anger that says 'Buddhism is bullshit' takes over and I give up.

        I duck into the plush Noryang Hotel café facing the Stupa and splurge on a five hundred rupee breakfast. Sipping complimentary green tea next to the goldfish tank, I observe the crowds of mostly Tibetans circumambulating the stupa. Some count malas as they talk on the phone, a group of ladies in sneakers do exercise speed walking as they finger malas, older hunched over Tibetans shuffle along slowly spinning each prayer wheel they pass, young monks by-pass them to spin the next wheel. I analyze the faces to see who actually looks devoted and who is just doing a mindless ritual. Feeling without faith, I didn't want to be alone in my little self created hell of annihilation.

     Some Pilgrims have journeyed across the snowy Himalayan passes to reach Bouda, their holy destination. In three days, I too would begin a pilgrimage through the Himalayas to Kanchenjunga, the third tallest mountain on Earth. They set their bamboo baskets and duffle bags down in piles before entering into the Stupa's small inner chamber to offer butter lamps and prostrations. Surrounding the circling crowd are rows and rows of beggars sit on pieces of card board or scraps of blankets, protecting themselves from the bricks that have began baking in the morning rays. By afternoon eggs can fry. A group of twenty blind people have arrived, all with canes and dark glasses and arrange themselves into a long line. Next to them are the Hindus in orange robes and white body paint. Everyday they chant, play accordions, tambourines and ring bells as foreigners take pictures before tossing dollars into their big jar. Nepalis sell milk tea from giant thermos on the steps below the shops surrounding the stupa.
   
    A fly cleans his hands on the edge of my water glass. I look at him thinking I should do the same, but my breakfast of steaming greens and hot spicy soup arrives. I'm already full from all the green tea and bananas I ate from my bag while waiting, but I eat anyways. My body a reflection of my mind these days: stuffed with confusion. No limits. At Shilpa's I have been eating heavy plates of meat and sweets that her mother insists on refilling no matter what I say. I blame her rather than owning my own lack of discipline and the loneliness I am trying to fill. Part of the reason I've checked into the Dragon Hotel next to the Stupa is to cleanse and find my own rhythm again. Being a lazy princess for the last two weeks has left me lethargic and guilt ridden for not getting up and doing my practices.

      I see the Stupa's giant bell slowly making its way up the Stupa. Nine men help balance the heavy six foot bell up the pulley system of ropes and bamboo poles. The circling crowd begins to notice others looking up and pressing their palms together in whispered prayer. I step outside to better glimpse the top of the Stupa to where the bell will return to now that the reconstruction on the dome is complete. The woman next me chants louder as we watch the men make their way onto the bamboo scaffolding. They have a good fifty feet before they will reach the top. I film the bell rising along with everyone holding up their phones. Everyone seems to be holding their breath as it nears the top. The bell, symbolizing dharma Buddhist teaching ringing across the land, finally resumes its thousand year old home. Cheers break out, little ritual bells ring from the shops, some clap, some prostrate, some blow conch shells, some keep filming. I feel their devotion as I too stand clapping in the land where Buddha attained enlightenment. Since the earthquake last year, the Stupa has been under daily construction. In just a few weeks the Karmapa will arrive with crowds swarmed around his car as it attempts to make its way to the stupa for the consecration ceremony. 
 
 

    A crowd's joy awakens inspiration and I head back to the Dragon Hotel to finally do my practices. The front desk informs me I have a message to call Shilpa and I need to call her immediately. 

"Hello, Anna?"

"Yes, what's up, Shilpa?"

"Plans have changed with my family. We need to leave for Kanchenjunga in two days. Can you be ready?"
"I guess."
"Okay met me at Ecstasy Travel this afternoon to confirm the itinerary."

     For the next 48 I hustle together whatever gear I can find on the list Sujan, the youngest of the seven brothers who started the travel agency, Ecstasty Nepal gives me along with a with a bill for $1100 and my twenty two day itinerary. "My second eldest brother, Bal Krishna, will be your guide. You'll meet him the day after tomorrow in Taplejung. The jeep will drop you at the hotel where he will come to get you. Give him this," Sujan hands us a sleeping bag and envelope. I hand him my Bank Of America debit card cringing that 90% of my account is now gone. He manually swipes it in a carbon copy machine. We shake hands.
"Thank you," I say noticing Sujan's smirk growing. It would take me months to understand why he looked at me this way.

      Most of the gear I borrowed from Shilpa's collection I barely cram into my backpack of other gear I borrowed in Ashland. In her spare bedroom is a bag of gear the famous mountaineer, Messner, the first man to summit without oxygen, left behind when he stayed in her family's home many years ago. I open his dusty black leather duffle bag in awe that I am in its presence. I borrow his lavender colored wool visor promising to return it if I return too.


      Shilpa's mother shoos us to the upstairs shrine room where her father leads a ritual for any family member traveling. I am familiar with the steps as I watched her brother and his wife go through it before they travelled to Tibet two weeks ago. Since we are running late we rush through the ceremony of milk sipping, eating hardboiled eggs and dried fish, throwing the rice offering to the protector gods, and leaving with a big red smudge on our foreheads and a yellow kata around our necks. I hug her mother and father good-bye. I see the nervousness in their eyes and think of my parents. I shoot them a quick email from my iPad before hopping into the car. We are off!