Walking and Praying

I’m reaching the midpoint of this four-month journey as Autumn colors wash across Upper Mustang and a cold wind rips across the high desert. The dry mountains are dusted with snow. Time has passed, a season has turned, and I can feel change in the air. Still, it’s hard—nearly impossible—to gauge what has changed or…

I had a profound and profoundly moving experience on yesterday’s walk, the second of our trek in Mustang. I’ve been thinking about and struggling to find words for it since then, at least in part because I’m never quite sure how to talk about the experience of spiritually powerful places. How to account for the…

Mustang: the forbidden Kingdom. There are few places on earth I can think of that are as mythical and as mythologized. Perversely, perhaps, or maybe not, this mythologization has dampened my desire to come here in the past, even though I have been aware that in many ways it would be a singularly appropriate journey…

It was a long and uncomfortable wait, but after a series of stuttering announcements, Japan finally confirmed this week that it will open on October 11 to tourists (and pilgrims). It was not an easy wait, but it was an informative one. I could say that i have learned more by hanging in the discomfort…

A few days ago, a wise friend, who knows Nepal well, wrote to me, “Beautiful how the veils lift with grace and allow us a divine glimpse.”  This morning, suddenly and without warning, the veils lifted. Driving away from Pokhara for a few days of rest before the next long walk, the driver pointed behind…

I’m sitting here with seven Nepalese men in their 20s and 30s drinking tin cups of raksi, or arak, at high camp. It’s 1:30 in the afternoon. We hiked in fog, then light rain, then a driving rain and whiteout, for a total of about five and a half hours earlier today. That included an…

I should probably learn to listen to the little voices. Still, it’s hard to trust your intuition. When my guide for Japan told me, with what seemed like complete conviction, that all chances of going this year were off, something in me kept hearing the phrase, “it ain’t over.” I assented to the notion that…

leaving ladakh Last time i took off in a plane from Leh’s Kushok Bakula airport, I assumed I’d be back in a year. That was how it had gone for the six previous departures. What in my experience could possibly have prepared me for the disruptions of a global pandemic, for the havoc that one…

The last three days of our trek took us upstream along the banks of a beautiful river that runs from the Tibetan Plateau, draining the glaciers of the Changtang, all the way through the Zanskar region. The name of the river is the Tsarap Chu. In just a few weeks, the river will turn the…

Ravi, who is in charge of camp and food, wakes me at 5 with hot water, sugar, and instant coffee. I hear him coming from the kitchen, which is good, because it is pitch black outside and, unusually, I’m still asleep. This is much earlier than he usually comes. I note quickly in my mind…