Maya's Aura: Goa to Nepal

by Smith, Skye

  Back at the dining hall the old stove was already lit. There was a basin and warm water to wash in, and afterwards she used copious amounts of hand sanitizer. The notice about cholera had unnerved her. She could not imagine getting that sick this far away from any hospital, and with the only road blocked.

  The two Japanese men were the first to set out trekking and Maya joined them. The solution to being cold to the bone was to get walking. The other ferengis were still confusing the hell out of the kitchen and waiting for food. The morning was crisp and the sky absolutely clear and at every bend in the gorge they had breathtaking views of some of the highest peaks on the planet.

  By midday they came out of the narrowest part of the gorge and into a part of the Kaligandaki valley that widened and had a comparatively flat valley bottom. In their halting English the Japanese men had told her about where they lived in Japan. Actually only one of them was confident in his spoken English. The other was embarrassed by his pronunciation, whereas he could read and write quite well.

  They lived in the equivalent of hillbilly Japan, on the coast that faced China, well away from the modern cities, and where people still lived in villages and still farmed and still bathed in the communal village bathhouse. Many in their village had faint auras that people would look for when they were bathing together after working in the fields all day, and before going home to eat supper.

  There was something about the ancient bath house and the steam that rose from the waters and the late evening light that made the auras visible, even weak auras. Never had they seen an aura so strong as Maya's, not even close, not even in the temples and shrines where his villagers still prayed. They tried to explain more about Dakini but they couldn't find the words. Their English was for things modern and scientific, not ethereal and ancient.

  Last night, the Aussie surfers had laughed at the word Dakini. They had told her that the Hawaiian surfers used 'da kine' in place of a word that they did not know, sort of like 'whachamacallit' in Oz. One of the Quebecois had shown her that this was the brand name on his boarding T-shirt. They were all good guys, but she was appreciating walking with the Japanese men today. There was a sereneness about them that matched the gloriousness of this, the deepest valley on the planet.

  By early afternoon, clouds began to billow high above them. The peaks disappeared and the temperature was dropping and the wind picking up. Now that they were through the narrowest of the gorge, they had entered a new climate zone. Yes, it was higher, but also it was dryer. The gorge had led them away from the mountain slopes that captured the southern rains, and into the first edge of a rain shadow caused by the towering walls of rock.

  There was more than one path to follow through this wider, flatter, bottom land. They decided to take the one that ran along the flood plain beside the river. It seemed straighter and more direct, and therefore faster for walkers. It was a mistake. As the wind picked up, it picked up dust in swirls and eddies and soon they were fighting their way against a stinging, blinding sand storm.

  With kerchiefs over their mouths and noses, and mountain sunglasses protecting their eyes and with their hoods pulled tight, they marched into the storm. They had to lean into it, and keep their eye on the path so that they would not step off it and get turned around and lost. One of the men had a walking stick umbrella, and now he pointed it into the wind and opened it full and all three of them hid from the wind and the stinging sand behind it.

  "Do we wait for it to drop, or go on?" she asked.

  "It may be hours," said one man.

  "But if we walk we may get lost, or follow a path which ends," said the other.

  "Merde," said Maya, but neither of the men understood French and it just caused more confusion. Over the hiss of the blown sand against the umbrella she heard something and she shook the shoulders of the men to quiet their Japjabber, and for them to listen too. It was like a wind chime, and it was getting louder.

  All three of them half stood and peered over the top of the umbrella. The wind chimes were now like bells being shaken in time with music. Ching, ching, ching, ching. They stretched their eyes into the swirl of dust and saw a tall dark shadow moving towards them. Was it a phantom, no, it was a horseman. More. It was a horseman wrapped in flowing robes. The figure stopped close by and the ringing stopped with him. He looked like a figure out of Lawrence of Arabia.

  The two men stared. The rider had a lean face with high cheekbones, and grin of white teeth that was a flash of light in his dark face. The horse was on the small side, but tough-looking, and had a colourful hand-knotted saddle cloth that looked like a miniature rug. The chiming bell was suspended from the bridle beneath his muzzle, and rang with every move.

  It was like a vision, a vision of a ghost from the high steppes of the Tibetan Plateau, and it was slightly frightening, and totally awe-inspiring. They all stood there for a moment, wondering if they were about to be robbed, or have their throats slit, when the figure raised an arm and pointed down a thin trail that ran perpendicular to their main path. Then he dropped his arm, spurred his horse, and the ringing began again and he disappeared in a ching, ching, ching of rhythm and then completely disappeared into the swirl of dust.

  The Japjabber began again in earnest, but Maya knew a sign when she saw it and left the shelter of the brolly and started walking along the thin trail in the direction that the phantom had pointed. The men stopped talking, and quickly caught up and the three of them walked crushed together with the brolly now protecting their sides from the storm.

  The next sound other than the shriek of wind and the hiss of sand that they heard, was a repeated crack like tiny claps of thunder. It turned out to be a loose tarp snapping in the gusts and it led them to a very strange low building. The entrance was behind the tarp but it was the entrance not to a room, but to a hallway that zig zagged like a maze. The walls were mud brick, and the roof was old tarps, slats of wood, straw, and just about anything else that could be used to cover the narrow maze.

  After two zigs and a zag there was a door made from hanging skins, and they stepped through it into a scene from the original Star Wars movie. The one in the strange cantina in the space frontier town where they first meet Han Solo. It was dimly lit by storm lanterns and had a low ceiling, but was mercifully out of the wind. The eyes that looked with interest at them belonged to people from a variety of high mountain cultures and all dressed in tribal clothing. Thankfully, none were wookies. They were quickly dismissed as lost trekkers and of no interest and everyone went back to their own tales of adventure.

  "Unbelievable," said Maya peering into the dark corners of the great room, and then sweeping her eyes over the sample bottles on a counter.

  "Yes, it is," said the Japanese man, amazed by the clothing of men just down from the high valleys, or just in off the Tibetan plateau. "Look at that man over there. Where can he be from? What is life like for him?"

  "No," she replied, "I meant it is unbelievable that here in a cafe on the edge of the world, they still have Coke." Not only Coke, but also potato chips. The chip bags were blown up like balloons because of the altitude.

  In that ever so strange cafe with mud brick walls that could have been stacked at the time of Christ, they waited out the storm in relative comfort. To be sure, they felt a bit unnerved, a bit threatened, by the wild look of some of the men, but what was that in comparison to just the wonder of even being here.

  When the storm stopped they ventured out and were pointed along a trail that climbed out of the valley and up to the new road bed. They followed it until they came across a slide, hopefully the last slide, and beyond that a set of villages. These were villages of the Thakkali people, who were very neat and friendly and Tibetan-looking. The villages were surrounded by fruit orchards, she guessed at apples and apricots by the plastic bags of dried fruit for sale in the shops.

  While they were looking in the shops, a horn blasted, and a bus screeched to a halt in a cloud of dust. It had been the last slide. The rick
ety-looking bus was on its way to Jomsom, Kaagbeni, and Muktinath, and they climbed aboard.

  Although much faster than walking, and much relief to their shoulders which ached from carrying their packs, this was not a comfortable nor a fast service. They crashed over boulders and into potholes, and if you had the windows open you froze and were covered in dust, and if you had the windows closed you could smell and hear the exhaust from the engine.

  As they passed Jomsom airport, Maya winced and told her friends that she should have flown in, but they just laughed and pointed to the skeletons of wrecked planes sprinkled about the airstrip. Jomsom was a spread out town, and as people reached their stops, the bus slowly emptied. By they time they were out the other side of Jomsom and heading north again, they could faintly see a high plain that must have been the beginning of the Tibetan plateau.

  * * * * *

  The bus lurched to a stop on a sharp corner. It would continue up a side valley to the holy pilgrimage village of Muktinath, which was at the this end of the 18,000 foot Thorang La pass that led mountain trekkers to the high alpine town of Manang. With a grinding of gears, the bus waddled away in a cloud of dust leaving them at the corner. They still had a half mile to walk to get to Kaagbeni.

  Maya stood with her pack as the dust from the departing bus settled. She looked south, the way they had come and if she hadn't had a mouth of dust she would have whistled. She was looking at the back side of the Himalayas stretching to the east with the Annapurna, and to the west with the Dhaulagiri, with all the peaks like ice fingers scratching at the sunset. She really was at the back of beyond.

  The path into the town led them past a large Buddhist monastery covered in prayer flags. "That is what I have come searching for," she told the Japanese man. "In that monastery is a statue of the Buddha, and my quest will end there." The sound of gongs and chanting was coming from the building.

  The two Japanese discussed what she had said and then one replied. "I think it not possible. It is a holiday now for three days, and besides, you are a woman. That is not a temple where anyone can visit. It is a monastery and women will not be allowed."

  "What?" she yelled out in surprise, not taking her eyes from the building as they walked by it. "That cannot be. Why didn't anyone tell me that? I have come so far." She shut up before she said too much. Maybe she could get one of these nice men to search for the missing half of her ancient book. Maybe if she told them how to find it in the base of the statue they could retrieve it. Maybe. If it was still there. If it had ever been there.

  This was not the time to discuss it. The sun was behind the ridges, the temperature was dropping, the wind was picking up, and it was getting dark. They needed to find an inn. The only inn. The Red Lodge Inn. The narrow 'streets' of this town were like a maze. Of course. They use mazes to keep the wind out. They stopped beside a long row of prayer wheels. They had no idea which way to turn and there was no one about to ask.

  There was a bark at her feet. She looked down. It was a small white dog. Probably a Tibetan spaniel. Really cute. It barked again and then ran up one of the 'streets', stopped, turned around and barked at her again. "This way," she called to her friends, and followed the insistent dog.

  They were glad of the guide. The town truly was a maze. Every time they thought they had been deserted, the dog would come back and bark and then charge off again. Too late, they thought of marking a trail so they could find their way out again.

  In a town of mud brick, and small dust-colored houses, the big red building was a phenomena. Painted above the door was a crude sign, "The Red Lodge." They ducked their heads, even Maya, and went through the door way and up a half a flight of steps. The door at the top of the steps opened out into a large room.

  Most of the people they had slept with the night before looked back at them from the gloom of the large room. Of course, they hadn't spent a couple of hours in a cantina from the other side of the galaxy and had come on an earlier bus. A young Thakkali woman, or perhaps she was Tibetan, urged them to come inside and close the door to keep out the cold.

  "Where ya bin, mates," called Lance, "we wus getting right worried for ya. Oye," he motioned to a local woman, "Chai" and he held up three fingers. The woman nodded and scurried away into the attached kitchen.

  "We went to meet Han Solo, but he didn't show," Maya replied laughing, relieved to be somewhere, anywhere for what promised to be another wild night of wind. Staring around the room, and at the various costumes and faces from all over the world that stared back at her, she decided that this place was just as weird as this afternoon's cantina. Was that only this afternoon? The day seemed to have gone on forever.

  There were many small tables scattered around the room but only one long table, and Maya sat at it and listened sleepily as everyone exchanged stories of their latest adventures. Leona came and sat with her, and waved to the kitchen woman with a tray of glasses of steaming chai. "This is the Dakini woman," Leona said to the woman who was setting down the hot glasses on the table.

  The woman ran back to the kitchen and returned with two other women of similar age, and dress. Their Tibetan style smocks were filthy with kitchen grease and dust. Their faces had glimpses of clean skin where the steam from boiling pots had streaked their dusty faces. Leona introduced them as the three sisters, or didis, who ran the lodge. Under the grime they were handsome, if not beautiful but their hands were gnarled from hard work.

  "Show them," Leona ordered, and unzipped and unbuttoned, and displayed her own cleavage.

  "Not now," Maya pleaded. "I am exhausted, and hungry, and thirsty. Maybe later." Her pleading was too little too late. The three sister were also dropping the bibs of their aprons and undoing buttons. She took a sip of tea. It was scalding. Oh well, while it cooled she would do this, so she pulled her heavy clothing away and raised her aura.

  This time Leona felt the aura almost immediately. The didis pushed at each other playfully, each wanting to be next or perhaps not wanting to be next. The two Japanese men, perhaps because they were aware of the need to respect privacy even in public places, pulled out their sleeping bags and used them to screen the five women from the view of the rest of the room, while they themselves turned their backs.

  Emboldened by their new-found privacy, the didis became quiet animated and curious about what Maya was doing with her hovering hand. Now they really did want a turn. Maya was never quite sure if they could see the aura, as the women yesterday had, or whether they could just feel it. After each of the four women had nodded that she could feel it, Maya turned up the volume of her aura and hovered her hand again.

  This was repeated three times, stronger each time, until one of the didis, the youngest, smiled and took a deep breath through her nose. "Smell flowers but not the time of flowers" she announced. Her sister replied. "Not flowers. Is Dakini. I smell too."

  The magic moment was broken by the sound of crashing furniture. All the women pulled up their sleeves and various buttons and zippers, and then pulled away the sleeping bags so that they could see what had happened in the room.

  Lance was lying on the ground with a long stool beside him. He looked over at them. "S'okay, no damage," he laughed. "I was just sliding along the bench and it tipped up and over."

  It was a silly way to end such a magic moment and all the women felt like that, but there was work to do, and pots boiling, and the didis all went back to the kitchen.

  The rest of the guests had already eaten a meal and were now snacking on treats. Maya joined her Japanese companions for a meal of Swiss Rosti mit ei, something some climbers had taught to the didis. It turned out to be like a thick pancake made like hash brown potatoes, with some veggies mixed in and a fried egg on top. As greasy and strange as it was, she moaned through the entire meal because her hungry tummy enjoyed it so.

  While they were eating, Moses had donned a beanie and a shawl and was setting up a small table for a religious service of some sort. Jewish of course, since he was Israeli. He had conv
inced, or perhaps shamed, the other Jewish people to join him. Not only was this a Buddhist and Hindu holy day, but a Jewish one as well.

  Moses began his service, with much chanting in singsong, while the other Jewish youth mouthed the words, pretending to know them. His voice was vibrant and melodic and the effect was quite magical, and all the room listened, at least for the first set. Then it got a bit tiresome and repetitive and everyone went back to what they were doing before.

  The Japanese men started a noisy game of dice. Two couples were playing hearts, or some similar card game, with occasional shouts of success. The Quebecois were trying to incorporate the rhythm of the chanting into one of their folk songs as they clapped time with pairs of spoons. Someone at the monastery had begun to clang a large bell, or perhaps it was a gong, which was interspersed with the banging of a drum.

  Lance had finally retold his elevator joke to Maya. She had missed the punch line the first time, because he had fallen off the cliff. This got them both laughing, it was a funny and naughty joke. And suddenly into the noise and bedlam of the dining room, from the kitchen, came the three didis, arm in arm like a chorus line, singing the only Western song they knew.

  "Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,

  Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?

  Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!

  Din, dan, don. Din, dan, don."

  Which seemed quite appropriate at the time, in this strange inn at the back of beyond, and even the hot dice game broke up to watch them perform. Praise must be given to Moses who did not skip a beat, and to his flock, who did not crack a smile, and to the Quebecois for not joining in, and allowing the didis to take their much-deserved bows and their applause.

  When the didis were back in the kitchen, and after Maya could breath again without breaking out into more gales of laugher, she had the last of her cookies. These were the cookies that had replaced Honey Nut Oatios as her comfort treat in India. They were called Glucose Biscuits and you could buy them cheaply in any shop, although you had to make sure that the paper wrapper was intact, and mealy grubs had not gotten into them.