The Oracle, aka Peanuts, gives me a farewell book, Wade Davis\u2019 Into the Silence<\/i>, for my upcoming trip to Nepal, where he lived on and off between 1973 and 1978. It is the account of the late attempt to surmount Everest led by George Mallory, in 1924. I give Peanuts a copy of Bola\u00f1o\u2019s The Insufferable Gaucho<\/i>, in return. In its second short story, Jim<\/i>, the saddest North American walks the streets of Mexico City mesmerized by a flame eater and oblivious to everything except his obsessive hunt for the most frugal, virtuous rhyme. Jim walks and occasionally stops, and the beggar kids ask him what is the meaning of poetry. Jim looks at the clouds, then vomits, and then says. \u201cLexical, eloquence, the search for truth. Epiphany.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHarper, in Kathmandu, go to Durbar Square and visit the temple of the Lost. I used to live just above it. There were no tourists back then, just the odd mountaineer,\u201d<\/em> Peanuts says. He was one of the fewest expats in the 70s, and found his way to sell magic carpets filled with hash. \u201cBack then, you could get an unbelievable range of the brown stuff in every street market. It was lined up in heaps and you could buy as much as you wanted. Eventually, at the airport, you had to pay a five per cent tax for each gram you took away, can you believe it?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n When auld timers tell you about the good old days, they have a massive offline point.<\/p>\n Landing in KTM is the quietest affair ever: no one seems agitated or in a rush, all tourists are already moving like ballerinas underwater. The custom agents are also mindful and apparently floating in Kumari\u2019s (the Goddess of the land) smile, and I found my obnoxious backpack gently resting on a corner, already removed from the panic-attack-inducing conveyor-belt where most of my belongings have historically vanished in an timeless spiral of lost-and not found, lost-and-not found, lost-and-not found.<\/p>\n Outside international arrivals, smiley Roman finds me and I\u2019m not lost anymore. \u201cWhere are you going? I give you a lift,\u201d<\/em> he says. He is sporting an embroidered waistcoat and a Dhaka topi, the Nepalese traditional hat.<\/p>\n Next thing, I\u2019m his co-pilot. He considers me and says: \u201cEverything is easy here: no stress, relax.\u201d<\/em> It could sound like a condescending Aikido belt, but unlike them, his voice feels like a gust of wind tickling your temples.<\/p>\n He could be my grandson, and I could be his lost and found child. Then he says that in Nepal \u201call guests are Gods,\u201d<\/em> and asks what\u2019s my name.<\/p>\n \u201cHarper God,\u201d<\/em> I inevitably answer.<\/p>\n His smile broadens like a horizontal Annapurna.<\/p>\n In Into the Silence<\/i>, Wade Davis recalls that during his late expedition to Mount Everest, Mallory and part of his strictly British team ascended mostly through the Tibetan side of the highest peak in the world. Above 16.500 feet, amongst blue icecaps, phosphorescent flowers, and Buddhist-tamed fauna, they encountered a small community of followers of Machig Labdr\u00f6n (1055-1149), <\/b>the Tibetan tantric master of Ch\u00f6d, the most radical Buddhist approach to absolute detachment. Her accomplished disciples took the foundational teachings to the T, and were living in caves, deprived of everything except the sparse grains of barley that villagers fed them with \u2014typically to nourish the worms living in their guts.<\/p>\n The English were astonished with their unconceivable long nails, hair and stench, but overall they admired their endurance through the harshest of weathers devoid of blankets, winter clothes or food, which according to Labdr\u00f6n, aka the \u201cSingular Mother Torch from Lab,\u201d<\/em> was the key to attain Nirvana. Their devotion was rewarded with otherworldly rainbows in the skies whenever each of them departed this life.<\/p>\n I wake up to my Nepalese existence. I can make out the rainbow glimpse of the top of the world breathing through the dusty air, and set off for the Temple of the Lost. Upon leaving, I meet Alfred, a late thirties Western-Eastern looking guy juggling a small ball with his feet at the courtyard of our lodgement. He claims to be Mexican, although he can barely speak Spanish. \u201cI\u2019m from California,\u201d<\/em> he meaningfully adds. \u201cI was born in Barcelona, the Sweden of Spain.\u201d<\/em> He looks at me mystified, and off I go.<\/p>\n Peanuts had mentioned that while he was living there, the Temple was at the end of a quiet junction, across the derelict backyard where he sold his carpets. \u201cThere were a few of us, we found a chemical component to dye the rugs, and the locals wanted to buy our recipe, but we never accepted any of their offers, just to piss them off,\u201d<\/em> he recalls laughing his ass off.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t make out the temple anywhere, let alone the junction. As it turns out, it is a tourist-infested nest of endless intersections, where pilots, pedestrians, street sellers, travel adventure agencies, ATM\u2019s and exchange posts thrive like flying ants. After scrutinising every corner of the alleged crossroad the only remnant of the temple of the Lost is a ramshackle tiled wall where I see the faded image of a Goddess. A passer by sees me staring at it as if lightning struck, and says what I want to hear: \u201cThis is Machig Labdr\u00f6n. The Temple was brought down to ashes during the 2015 Earthquake.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n His name is Suman and he looks very much like someone I can\u2019t remember. He is wearing shiny sandals, a waistcoat and a hat, and his blue eyes and features seem to match the glimmer of the spears of all the temples around us. He asks if I want to know more. I say, \u201calways.\u201d<\/em> He smiles, holds my hand, and walks me through a hole-in-the wall that defies physics and perception. All of a sudden we are inside a carpet shop that could have been designed by Charlie Kaufmann and Ali Baba.<\/p>\n I feel like I\u2019m in Marrakech in 1998, except for the lack of snakes and mint tea. He says that there were a bunch of Mediterranean\u2019s lads living here back then. They were young, wild and very smart, and they came up with a system for dying carpets in a shiny purple hue that nobody around had ever seen before. I freeze. He screeches to a halt, grabs my hand, and asks my name. \u201cHarper God,\u201d<\/em> I say.<\/p>\n Wade Davis chronicles how before attempting to surmount Everest, most of the mountaineers found themselves drafted as soldiers during the First World War. The unspeakable horror of the butchery was so disturbing that some of the greatest writers of the time decided not to mention it ever again.<\/p>\n T.E. Lawrence and Robert Graves famously agreed not to discuss the experiences of the former in Arabia, which would become the foundation of the latter\u2019s mind-blowing biography \u201cLawrence and The Arabs.\u201d<\/em> Graves himself could not handle being back in Great Britain after serving at The Great War, and he left home to never come back. Before doing so, he became the best man at George Mallory\u2019s wedding, a man he was infatuated with, like most of the members of the Bloomsbury group and any other passer by lucky to see his handsome face.<\/p>\n\n\t\tDurbbie<\/b><\/h4>\n
KTM<\/b><\/h4>\n
Harper God<\/b><\/h4>\n
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<\/b><\/h4>\nFrom Silence to Eternity<\/b><\/h4>\n
The Temple of the Lost<\/b><\/h4>\n
Faded Tiles<\/b><\/h4>\n
Suman New Man<\/b><\/h4>\n
Trenches and Heavens<\/b><\/h4>\n