027 KTM Landing in KTM is the quietest affair ever: no one seems agitated or in a rush. The custom agents are apparently floating in Kumari’s smile, and I found my obnoxious backpack resting on a corner, removed from the panic-attackinducing conveyor-belt where most of my belongings have historically vanished in an spiral of lost-and not found, lost-and-not found… Harper God Outside, smiley Roman finds me and I’m not lost anymore. “Where are you going? I give you a lift,” he says. Next thing, I’m his co-pilot. “Everything is easy here: no stress, relax.” He could be my grandson, and I could be his lost and found child. Then he says that in Nepal “all guests are Gods,” and asks my name. “Harper God,” I inevitably answer. His smile broadens like a horizontal Annapurna. From Silence to Eternity In Into the Silence, Wade Davis writes that during his late expedition to Everest, Mallory and part of his British team ascended through the Tibetan side of the peak. Above 16.500 feet, amongst blue icecaps and phosphorescent flowers, they encountered a community of followers of Machig Labdrön (1055-1149), the Tibetan master of Chöd, the radical Buddhist approach to absolute detachment. Her accomplished disciples took her teachings to the T, andwere living in caves, deprived of everything except the grains of barley that villagers fed themwith —typically to nourish the worms in their guts. The English were astonished with their long nails, hair and stench; overall they admired their endurance through the harshest of weathers devoid of blankets or food, which according to Labdrön,” was the key to attain Nirvana. Their devotion was rewardedwith rainbows in the skies whenever they departed life. The Temple of the Lost I wake up tomy Nepalese existence and set off for the Temple of the Lost. Upon leaving, I meet Alfred, aWestern-Eastern looking guy juggling a small ball with his feet at the courtyard. He claims to be Mexican, but barely speaks Spanish. “I’m fromCalifornia,” he adds. “I was born in Barcelona, the Sweden of Spain.” Later! Peanuts mentioned that while he was living there, the Temple was at a quiet junction, across the backyard where he sold his carpets. “We found a chemical component to dye them, and the locals wanted our recipe, but we never gave it away, just to piss themoff,” he recalls laughing. Faded Tiles I can’t make out the temple, let alone the junction. It is a tourist-infested nest of endless intersections, where pilots, pedestrians, street sellers, and exchange posts thrive like ants. After scrutinising every corner the only remnant of the temple of the Lost is a tiledwall. I see the faded image of a Goddess. A passer by sees me staring at it, and says: “This is Machig Labdrön. The Temple was brought down to ashes during the 2015 Earthquake”. Suman New Man His name is Suman. He looks like someone. His blue eyes seem to match the glimmer of the spears of the temples around us. He asks if I want to knowmore. “Always.” He smiles andwalks me through a holein-the wall that defies physics. We are inside a carpet shop, the dreamof Charlie Kaufmann and Ali Baba. It feels likeMarrakech in 1998 without snakes andmint tea. He says that there were few Italian lads living here back then. They were young, wild and smart, and they came up with dying carpet system in a purple hue that nobody had seen before. He screeches to a halt, and asks my name. “Harper God”. Trenches & Heavens Davis chronicles howbefore attempting to surmount Everest, most mountaineers were fighting at the First WorldWar. Some of the greatest writers of the era agreed not tomention it ever again. T.E. Lawrence and Robert Graves convened not to discuss the experiences of the former in Arabia, the foundation of the latter’s biography “Lawrence and The Arabs.” Graves could not handle being back in Great Britain after The Great War, and he left home to never come back. Before doing so, he became the best man at GeorgeMallory’s wedding, aman he was infatuatedwith, like all the Bloomsbury group and any other passer by lucky to see his face.
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