The Snow Leopard

by Peter Matthiessen

Beyond a bridge over the Danga stream is a steep slippery ascent; soon the worst of the climb is past. A pine forest drifts by in breaths of mist, and on the mountain face just opposite, seen through shifting clouds, ribbons of water turn from white brown as they gather up soil in the fall to the roaring rivers. On a corner of the trail is a weird shrine where horns of many slaughtered goats are piled in a kind of altar, with red ribbons tied to the branches of the trees. At this time of year, people pay homage to Durga, a dread demoness of ancient origin, who emerged again in the first centuries A.D. as the black Kali, the dreadful female aspect of Lord Shiva and embodiment of all horrors of the mortal mind. A bird note and the water rush command the stillness. Even in rain, this landscape is hallucinatory—gorges and waterfalls, the pines and clouds that come and go, fire-coloured dwellings painted with odd flowers and bizarre designs, the cloud-mirrors of the rice paddies in steps down the steep mountainside, a flock of vermilion minivets, blown through a wind-tossed tumult of bamboo. We walk on in mud and gloom and cold. At the mountain village called Sibang, to the beat of tom-toms, a buffalo is slowly killed for Durga Puja and its fresh blood drunk, while children stand in a circle in the rain. These mountain children have the big bellies of malnutrition, and though they seem no less content than the children of the valleys, they are quiet, and do not sing out to us; ...

Drugs can clear away the past, enhance the present; towards the inner garden, they can only point the way. Lacking the temper of ascetic discipline, the drug vision remains a sort of dream that cannot be brought over into daily life.

In the rain, all day, the Tibetans come to look at us, and again I am struck by the resemblances between our native Americans and these Mongol peoples. Most Dhorpatan Tibetans have the small stature, small hands and feet and noses of the Eskimo, the Mongoloid eye-fold, dark copper skin, and crow-black hair: even the low red-trimmed boots of hide and wool are very similar in appearance and design to the Eskimo mukluks. Their ornaments of turquoise and silver, on the other hand, suggest the Pueblo Indians and the Navajo, while the beads, braids, and striped blankets flung over bare shoulders evoke nothing so much as old pictures of the Plains tribes, an effect enhanced by the squalor of their encampments and the quarrelsome dogs. When travelling, these people use hide tents, children are carried papoose-fashion, and the basis of their diet is a barley or maize meal known as tsampa; no real kinship has been demonstrated between native American and Asiatic tongues, yet a similar farina of the Algonkian tribes of my own region is called “samp”. Such similarities are doubtless superficial, but others are more than remarkable in cultures so widely separated in time and space. The animistic kinship with the world around that permeates the life of the Gurung and other tribes in the corners of these mountains (including some that have taken up modern religions), as well as that of the Chukchi Eskimos and other remnant hunter-gatherers of eastern Asia, differs little in its spirit am...

Asian traditions refer to a hidden kingdom—Shambala, the Centre—in an unknown part of Inner Asia. (The Gobi Desert, formerly fertile, now a repository of old bones, is often cited; the desiccation of Central Asia, as broad lakes vanished in dry pans and grasslands turned into shifting sands, might have turned an ancient city into a legend. The death of a civilization can come quickly: the change in climate that dried up rivers and destroyed the savannas of the central Sahara scattered the great pastoral civilizations of Fessan and Tassili in just a few centuries after 2500 B.C.)

The ancient intuition that all matter, all “reality”, is energy, that all phenomena, including time and space, are mere crystallizations of mind, is an idea with which few physicists have quarrelled since the theory of relativity first called into question the separate identities of energy and matter. Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form, that matter is insubstantial in origin, a temporary aggregate of the pervasive energy that animates the electron. And what is this infinitesimal non-thing—to a speck of dust what the dust speck is to the whole earth? “Do we really know what electricity is? By knowing the laws according to which it acts and by making use of them, we still do not know the origin or the real nature of this force, which ultimately may be the very source of life, and consciousness, the divine power and mover of all that exists”.25

The young Tamangs, being inseparable, are exclusive, and so Tukten dines commonly with Bimbahadur, who is dull and gentle, a stumpy old lump-headed bumbler with gnarled legs and worn feet, who clings to his guardsman’s moustache and remnant regimental rags. He, too, merely tolerates Tukten, for Bimbahadur has withdrawn from life; he must be with people, to earn his keep, but not among them—in the world but not of it, as the Sufis say. Side by side, hunched low in the light rain, the two outcasts dip up tsampa, the roasted maize or barley meal, ground to powder and cooked as porridge or in tea, that is subsistence food in the Himalaya. Weathered faces crusted with white paste, they hunch like spectres over the fire stones and blackened pot; perhaps they will rise and, in dead silence, perform the slow dance of the sennin—wild mountain sages of the ancient days in China and Japan who give no formal teaching but redeem all things by the very purity of their enlightenment.

Higher, where the snow has melted, a hill fox jumps from tussock grass and runs to a group of rocks, then turns to watch. Its black points and rich red coat are set off by a frosty face and chest and an extraordinary long thick tail, dark brown and black with a white fluffy tip; the tip remains visible long after the creatures glowing colours sink among the stones.

(Yet that “blue” went unperceived until quite recent times: in the many hundred allusions to the sky in the Rig Veda, the Greek epics, even the Bible, there is no mention of this colour.6)

Meister Eckhardt meant: “The eye with which I see God is the Eye with which God sees me.” Or Jesus Christ: “I and my Father are One.”10 Surely those Christian mystics spoke of the Lord-Who-is-Seen-Within.

the wall itself is decorated by big round white spots; irregular wood windows let a small amount of light into the outer room, but the inner chambers are entirely dark. Animal heads are carved at the ends of the eave poles, from which hang sheepskins, calabashes, drying meat. From the terrace on the stable roof, another ladder mounts to the second story, where hens and hen dung are discouraged; here, warm piles of buckwheat, barley, maize, peas, hemp, and millet are spread out to dry on straw mats or homespun blankets, and one man, scattering the tree sparrows, piles big yellow pumpkin squashes in a corner.

Outside the village, two little girls in wool boots and bead necklaces, carrying water, tarry on a corner of the trail to watch us go; minutes later, I look back, and they still stand there, little ragged stumps on the daybreak sky.

At 10,800 feet, the canyon opens out into high valleys. A herd of the black shaggy oxen known as yak are moving down across a hillside of cut barley, preceded by a cold thin tink of bells; in these mountains, a faint bell is often a first sign of human presence. The lead animals, carrying packs, are decked out in red collars and bright tassels, and soon a man and wife come down the path in full Tibetan dress, the man in blanket, belted cloak, and baggy pants tucked into red wool boots tied around the calf, the woman in striped apron and black cloths.

A boy and girl appear among the cedars. In her basket is a cask of goat cheese, and cheese wrapped in birch bark; she presents me with a bit, and I buy more, and out of the wind, on warm needles in the shelter of evergreens, I eat it up, with half of a big raw radish from Rohagaon. From the forest comes the sound of bells, and horse hooves dancing on the granite: a man in clean cloak and new wool boots canters up on a pony with silver trappings. This horseman, too, demands to know my destination, and he, too, frowns to learn that it is Shey. With a slashing movement of his hand across his throat, he indicates the depth of snow, then rides off in a jangle of bright bells.

Now pretty children run out, smiling, and a silent mastiff runs out, too, only to suffer a rude yank from its chain; its lean jowls curl in a canine smile of pain. Everyone in Ring-mo smiles, and keeping a sharp eye out, I smile, too. The rough brown buildings have wood doors and arches, and filthy Mongol faces, snot-nosed, wild, laugh at the strangers from the crooked windows. Strange, heavy thumpings come from an immense stone mortar: two girls strike the grain in turn with wood pestles four feet long, keeping time with rhythmic soft sweet grunts, and two carpenters hew rude pine planks with crude adzes. Among the raffish folk of Ring-mo, dirt is worn like skin, and the children’s faces are round crusts of sores and grime. Both sexes braid their long hair into pigtails and wear necklaces of beads and dark bits of turquoise, silver, and bone, as well as small amulet packets of old string around their necks. The dress here is essentially Tibetan—cloaks, apron belts, and red-striped woollen boots with yak twine soles.

Through Jang bu, we question everyone about Kang-La and Shey Gompa, as the crowd gives off that heartening smell of uncultivated peoples the world over, an earthy but not sour smell of sweat and fire smoke and the oil of human leather.

Drowned boulders knock beneath the torrent, and a rock thuds at my back. Transfixed by the bright gaze of a lizard, I become calm. This stone on which the lizard lies was under the sea when lizards first came into being, and now the flood is wearing it away, to return it once again into the oceans.

These Red-faced Devils have us at their mercy, and all know it. Perhaps we should adopt the imperial methods of dealing with unruly Tibetans, as described at the turn of the century: “Throwing myself on him, I grabbed him by his pigtail and landed in his face a number of blows straight from the shoulder. When I let him go he threw himself down crying and implored my pardon. Once and for all to disillusion the Tibetan on one or two points, I made him lick my shoes clean with his tongue. . . . He tried to scamper away, but I caught him once more by his pigtail and kicked him down the front steps which he had dared to come up unasked”.27

A gravel island under Shey is reached by crossing ice and stones of a shallow channel. At the island’s lower end are prayer walls and a stone stockade for animals; farther on, small conduits divert a flow of river water to a group of prayer mills in the form of waterwheels, each one housed separately in its own stone shrine. The conduits are frozen and the wheels are still. On top of the small stupas are offerings of white quartz crystals, presumably taken from the Crystal Mountain in the summer, when the five wheels spin five ancient prayer drums, sending OM MANI PADME HUM down the cold canyon.

The old woman’s name is Sonam: her husband, Chang Rapke, and her daughter Karima Poti have gone away to winter in Saldang, and Sonam lives alone in the abandoned hamlet up the mountain. Namu says that before the snows there were forty people here, including twenty-odd monks and two lamas: all are gone across the mountains to Saldang, from where—is this a warning to outlandish men who come here without women?—her husband will return in a few days. Namu’s husband has the key to the Crystal Monastery, or so she says, and will doubtless bring it with him when he comes to visit, in four or five days, or in twenty. Namu is perhaps thirty years old, and pretty in a sturdy way, and self-dependent. She speaks familiarly of B’od but not Nepal; even Ring-mo is a foreign land, far away across Kang La.

THERE IS SO much that enchants me in this spare, silent place that I move softly so as not to break a spell. Because the taking of life has been forbidden by the Lama of Shey, bharal and wolves alike draw near the monastery. On the hills and in the stone beds of the river are fossils from blue ancient days when all this soaring rock lay beneath the sea. And all about are the prayer stones, prayer flags, prayer wheels, and prayer mills in the torrent, calling on all the elements in nature to join in celebration of the One. What I hear from my tent is a delicate wind-bell and the river from the east, in this easterly wind that may bring a change in the weather. At daybreak, two great ravens come, their long toes scratching on the prayer walls. The sun refracts from the white glaze of the mountains, chills the air. Old Sonam, who lives alone in the hamlet up the hill, was on the mountain before day, gathering the summer’s dung to dry and store as cooking fuel; what I took for lumpish matter straightens on the sky as the sun rises, setting her gaunt silhouette afire. Eleven sheep are visible on the Somdo slope above the monastery, six rams together and a group of ewes and young; though the bands begin to draw near to one another and sniff urine traces, there is no real sign of rut. From our lookout above Sonam’s house, three more groups—six, fourteen, and twenty-six—can be seen on the westward slopes, across Black River.

In days to come, they will bring in the remaining loads, one trip a day, and for all of this period, from the Cave Camp onward, they will be paid as porters as well as sherpas. No matter that they are wasteful and careless, and neglect to bring goggles into the snow mountains, or even good winter clothes—their spirit is wonderful. These three, at least, have decent boots, but Gyaltsen, who was given money to buy boots in Kathmandu, spent it on something less crucial, and Tukten, as is the sherpa habit, sold his boots after his last expedition and started this one barefoot; they will cross the Kang Pass in the cheap Oriental gym shoes that were issued to the porters to get them across the ice crusts of Jang La. We cross the bridge to the island in the river, then jump stones across the shallows to the farther side.

The hermitage is situated so that nothing may be seen but snow peaks rising to a shining sky; even Shey is hidden by the slopes above the village. The effect is so hallucinatory that GS, disturbed, is stirred to protest at the hermit’s life, and solitary meditation: “You have to have something coming in!” But the point of meditation is to let everything go: “When your mind is empty like a valley or a canyon, then you will know the power of the Way.”11 On a ledge, two bronze-skinned monks sit quietly, as if in wait. One is patching his wool boots, the other is curing a goat hide in a yellow mix of goat brains and rancid yak butter. Smiling, calm, they let our greetings wander; perhaps they live here under vows of silence. The boot-mender is a clear-faced youth, little more than twenty, while the other, curiously ageless, is a handsome cripple in strange rags of leather. When we say goodbye, the two figures bow slightly, smile again, and keep their silence.

Leaving GS to observe the Tsakang sheep, I descend the trail again, to gather fuel. On my way I meet a wild-haired stranger, bound for the hermitage, it seems, since this trail leads nowhere else. Chanting, he comes up the mountain to the ridge point where I have paused to let him pass, and there slings down his basket, steps behind a boulder, squats, returns, and says aggressively, “Timi kaha gani?” (You where go?) “Shey Gompa,” I say, and he repeats it: we both point at Somdo, to make sure. This wayfarer is clad in blackened sheepskins, with the usual assortment of beads and amulets, silver pouch, silver flint case, silver dagger. Demanding a smoke, he laughs loud in disbelief when I say that I have none, and raises his dagger toward my throat in demonstration of my fate, were he but given to low banditry. Without goodbyes, we go our separate ways.

The man with bold earrings and moustache who offered us butter is named Tundu, and his companion is a youth named Tasi Fintso. Helped by Namu and Tasi Fintso, he loads yak meat and potatoes on the four remaining yaks and dzos that stand hobbled in front of the gompa. With their short noses and short fluffy tails, yaks have an appealing air, but they are shaggy brutes of a half-ton or better, with rude temperaments to match. Tasi Fintso is gingerly in their presence, but Tundu is firm and gentle with the balky animals, talking to them in a soft-no-nonsense way as he straps on pack saddles of wood and leather, hoists cargo sacks of striped brown-and-white homespun, and lashes down the lot with braided rope. There is a quiet in his actions that gives him a strong presence, and apparently he is the headman here: he will bring the key to the gompa in five days or so, when he comes back from Saldang. Without a word, he leads his yaks away into the east, leaving behind his little girl, Chiring Doma, who sits on a blanket with Nyima Poti, eating potatoes in the sun. The gompa yard is windy and cold, yet Nyima Poti is naked, while her brother, Karma Chambel, is clad in a rag smock. In her dust and burlap, the red-cheeked Chiring Doma looks like a smiling potato given life. Once Tundu is gone, Namu resumes her work of spreading yak-dung fuel to dry along the prayer walls and abandoned houses.

As usual, GS is there ahead of me, recording data. Eyes watering, we read and write by paraffin lamp. We are glad to see each other, but we rarely speak more than a few words during a simple supper, usually rice of a poor bitter kind, with tomato or soy sauce, salt and pepper, sometimes accompanied by thin lentil soup. After supper I watch the fire for a time, until smoke from the sparkling juniper closes my eyes. Bidding goodnight, I bend through the low doorway and go out under the stars and pick my way around the frozen walls to my cold tent, there to remain for twelve hours or more until first light. I read until near asphyxiated by my small wick candle in its flask of paraffin, then lie still for a long time in the very heart of the earth silence, exhilarated and excited as a child. I have yet to use the large packet of Cannabis that I gathered at Yamarkhar and dried along the way, to see me through long lightless evenings on this journey: I am high enough.

In my parka I find a few wild walnuts from Rohagaon, and crack them open with a stone. From this point of mountain, I can see in four directions. Eastward, the White River comes down out of the snow—this is the direction of Saldang. To the south, the Black River canyon climbs into the Kanjirobas. To the west is the great pyramidal butte of Crystal Mountain, parting the wind that bears uneasy clouds down the blue sky. Northward, beyond Somdo mountain, on a hidden plateau above the canyons, lies the old B’on stronghold at Samling.

On the way down the mountain, I stop outside Old Sonam’s yard in the upper village. In sooty rags and rough-spun boots, wearing the coral-coloured beads of her lost girlhood, Sonam is sitting legs straight out in the dry dung, weaving a blanket on a crazy handloom rigged to rocks and sticks, bracing the whole with old twine soles pushed stiff against a stone. Her wool has a handsome and delicate pattern, for there is design in the eye of this old wild one. I admire her sudden grin, strong back, and grimy hide indifferent to the cold.

Once Sonam was an infant with red cheeks, like Sunny Poti. Now she works close in the last light, as cold descends under a faint half-moon. Soon night will come, and she will creep through her narrow door and eat a little barley; what does she dream of until daybreak, when she goes out on her endless quest for dung? Perhaps she knows better than to think at all, but goes simply about the business of survival, like the wolf; survival is her way of meditation. When I ask Jang-bu why Sonam lives alone all winter in the upper village when she might use an empty house near Namu, he seems astonished. “She has the habit of that place,” he says.

Sunrise, illuminating my thin tent, transforms it from an old refuse bag of brown plastic to a strange womblike balloon. True, it remains a wretched tent, stained, raggedy, and sagging, yet I find I have grown fond of it, for it is home. Each day I sweep out the heavy dust that comes creeping, blowing, seeping from the bottomless supply of dry dung in the yard. One understands better the local indifference to cleanliness when one is shrouded with dust within moments of each washing: I am grained with filth.

Taking shelter on the sunny step, leaning back into the warmth of the wooden door, I eat a green disc of Phu-Tsering’s buckwheat bread that looks and tastes like a lichened stone mandala from the prayer walls. Blue sheep have littered this small dooryard with their dung, a human hand has painted a sun and moon above the lintel, yet in this forlorn place, here at the edge of things, the stony bread, the dung and painted moon, the lonely tattering of flags worn to transparence by the wind seem as illusory as sanity itself. The deep muttering of boulders in Black River—why am I uneasy? To swallow the torrent, sun, and wind, to fill one’s breath with the plentitude of being . . . and yet . . . I draw back from that sound, which seems to echo the dread rumble of the universe.

THE HIGH STONE wall of the compound of this house separates my tent from the others. Therefore it is vulnerable to theft, which is not unheard of in these parts, and I keep a sharp eye on two wool traders, filthier than most, who came yesterday from Saldang, bearing no wool or other evidence of honest trade. The first I saw on my way home from the west side of the river, eating barleycorns in Namu’s yard; the second paid an uninvited visit to my tent, poking his head straight through the flap to feast his eyes upon the contents—a larcenous overture if there ever was one, so thought

A golden eagle, with shrill peeping, glides down along the snows almost at eye level; the deep voice that would better suit this noble bird would not carry very far in so much emptiness. Soon afterward, wild pigeons pass on snapping blue-grey wings—the Turkestan hill pigeon that replaces the snow pigeon here on the Tibetan Plateau. In the frozen air, pigeons and eagle are superb, but they do not console me for the loss of my sheep, which I track over the ridge to the northern buttes; there the fresh prints in the snow lead down an incline so steep and icy that neither man nor wolf would care to follow. But the sheep have led me to the only point in all this landscape from which one might see those two pale buildings, far away on a plateau to the north and east. This view is my first and last in my present incarnation of the old B’on monastery called Samling, for the deep gorge of Black Canyon is impassable, and the way over the mountains blocked by snow. Jang-bu returns this afternoon with great good news. It is true that the track from Saldang across to Tarap remains open almost all winter; one has only to cross the Shey Pass to Saldang. And a yak trail from Saldang to Murwa, that pretty village below Ring-mo, under the great falls, stays open longer than the Kang.

While in Saldang, Jang-bu talked to the two wool traders who later passed through Shey, and it turns out that these men whom we treated so inhospitably were carrying Jang-bu’s messages to Tukten and Gyaltsen. There are no police at Saldang, Jang-bu says: there are “many temples”, and a lama from Shey is there, just as reported. But the true Lama of Shey—and we realize now that Namu was protecting him—the tulku, or incarnate lama, whom I was so anxious to find, is none other than the crippled monk who was curing the goat skin in yak butter and brains, up at Tsakang.

The Himalayan griffon, buff and brown, is almost the size of the great lammergeier; its graceful turns against the peaks inspire the Tibetans, who, like the vanished Aryans of the Vedas, revere the wind and sky. Blue and white are the celestial colours of the B’on sky god, who is seen as an embodiment of space and light, and creatures of the upper air become B’on symbols—the griffon, the mythical garuda, and the dragon. For Buddhist Tibetans, prayer flags and wind-bells confide spiritual longings to the winds, and the red kites that dance on holidays over the old brown city of Kathmandu are of Tibetan origin as well. There is also a custom called “air burial”, in which the body of the deceased is set out on a wild crag such as this one, to be rended and devoured by the wild beasts; when only the bones are left, these are broken and ground down to powder, then mixed into lumps of dough, to be set out again for passing birds. Thus all is returned into the elements, death into life.

I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence, the requiem birds, the mythic beasts, the flags, great horns, and old carved stones, the rough-hewn Tartars in their braids and homespun boots, the silver ice in the black river, the Kang, the Crystal Mountain. Also, I love the common miracles—the murmur of my friends at evening, the clay fires of smudgy juniper, the coarse dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time: when I take my blue tin cup into my hand, that is all I do. We have had no news of modern times since late September, and will have none until December, and gradually my mind has cleared itself, and wind and sun pour through my head, as through a bell. Though we talk little here, I am never lonely; I am returned into myself.

When we arrive, the Lama is inside chanting sutras, but his attendant sits outside, still cutting and sorting the small store of potatoes; he is an aspirant monk, or trapa, whose clear gaze makes him look much younger than he is. His name is Takla, he is twenty-two years old, and he comes from the great northern plain of Tibet. On the sunny ledge, under the bright blue window of the gompa, we listen to the murmurs of the Lama and contemplate the prospect of the snows.

When the Lama appears, he seems glad of our visit, though we lack the gift of a kata, or ceremonial white scarf, that is customary on such occasions. He is an imposing man with the long hawk nose and carved cheekbones of a Plains Indian; his skin is a dark reddish copper, his teeth are white, his long black hair is tied up in a braid, and he wears an old leather jacket with brass buttons, patched with burlap homespun of strange colours. When talking, he sits with legs crossed, barefoot, but puts on ancient laceless shoes when he moves around; in the doorway behind him hangs a wolf skin that he wears about his waist, indoors, to warm his back.

Presently we are led into the gompa, through small dark rooms full of barley, oil, red peppers, and the like, all given to Karma Tupjuk by his people. The lamasery owns farmland at Saldang, worked by sharecroppers who bring it half the produce, but most of its tea and yak butter and tsampa come as offerings. Karma Tupjuk mounts a log ladder to a room on the second floor that contains a brazier and some large copper pots and urns. He removes the top from a canister of water, laying it down on a pile of dung chips while rinsing his hands.

From Tsakang comes the weird thump of a damaru, or prayer drum, sometimes constructed of two human skulls; this instrument and the kangling trumpet, carved from the human thigh bone, are used in Tantrism to deepen meditation, not through the encouragement of morbid thoughts but as reminders that our time on earth is fleeting.

I climb to my old lookout, happy and sad in the dim instinct that these mountains are my home. But “only the Awakened Ones remember their many births and deaths”,22 and I can hear no whisperings of other lives. Doubtless I have “home” confused with childhood, and Shey with its flags and beasts and snowy fastnesses with some Dark Ages place of forgotten fairy tales, where the atmosphere of myth made life heroic.

At the gompa, the log ladders climb to a small third-storey room, lit by a dusty ray of light from one small window. The chapel is a litter of worn draperies, leather cases, hide drums, copper cauldrons, conchshell ceremonial horns, painted wood boxes, wood-bound books, and terra-cotta figures of Karma-pa, Sakyamuni, and a bulge-eyed Padma Sambhava. A splendid bronze of Dorje-Chang on a platform above the centre of the room seems to vibrate in the dusty light: I keep expecting it to speak, and can scarcely turn my back upon it.

I ask Jang-bu to buy meat, and later our hostesses prepare the best meal we have eaten since September, a goat stew with potatoes, turnips, and a little rice, accompanied by many cups of barley chang. Jang-bu is my drinking companion; Dawa and Gyaltsen will not drink, and Tukten, despite his reputation, seems indifferent to it, though he takes a glass or two. The feast is held over a smoky fire of dung and twigs in the window-less main room on the ground floor, and afterward pretty Chirjing serves hot wheat bread with salt and a pat of butter. While we feed, more villagers come in, until the firelight is a circle of lively faces, young and old. I wonder if I have ever seen so many faces that I like in a single circle, and I go off happily to bed, my belly glowing. Soon Jang-bu calls me down again, for a man has brought the thin elegant lute known as the danyen, its stem carved as the long neck of a swan. Everyone is dancing. More villagers come, filling the smoky room with the companionable smells of human grease and coarse tobacco, and the old woman makes a fresh pot of chang, squishing the fermented barley through a wicker basket. One fetching, round-faced girl who looks somehow familiar brings a round-faced infant named Chiring Lamo, and while the young mother dances, our old woman holds the little girl in her lap. Infant and ancient are both heavily beaded, and the baby has a copper locket and a string of money cowries; the wizened visage and the pearly one wear identi...

Jang-bu is playing his harmonica, and Dawa and Gyaltsen laugh indiscriminately at all they see, but the only one of the Shey party who will dance is Tukten—Tukten Sherpa, cook and porter, alleged thief, bad drunk, old gurkha, is a dancer, too, and dancing, he smiles and smiles. The dance is a short rhythmic step well suited to small spaces, and very like Eskimo igloo dances, even to the jet-black braids and red-bronze faces and the shuffle of the soft, mukluk-like boots. Soon the dancers begin singing, and Tukten joins them but not Dawa, who has an exceptional voice but is much too shy. The songs are melodious and wistful, and as in Dhorpatan I am reminded of the mountain huainus of the Andes.

In late November, the starkness of Saldang is pointed up by the scarcity of its inhabitants; at least one member of every family, usually more, has gone off to the south or east, in search of work, and the beasts are gone, too, for want of grass or fodder. (In former times, the herds would have wintered on Tibetan plains, but now they must be taken south across the mountains.) In such barrenness, the neat aspect of houses, walls, and fields speaks for the strong spirit of these villagers, who constructed spears to drive off bandits, and can dance so merrily when their food is almost gone; the religious fervour here is represented by the many walls of heavy prayer stones, the stupas that rise like turrets on each barren knoll, and the strange rows of upright slabs, like gravestones, known as obo, which are characteristic of northern Tibet and Mongolia.

A yak herd goaded by wild boys descends the mountain to the huts at Raka. In a stone corral are more than one hundred yaks, which will carry these stacked bales of wool and salt into the south; the bales are guarded by big-headed mastiffs that lie quiet, dog eyes fixed upon the nearest dog.

But Dawa is sick this morning; through Tukten, he tells me that even before leaving Shey, he suffered from dysentery and internal bleeding. That last is worrisome; it might well lead to worse. Perhaps he should rest, but we cannot stay in this wild place between high passes. And of course it is only luck that he came out with us; had it not been for Gyaltsen’s fear of Tukten, Dawa might have remained behind and died there, without ever speaking up, less out of fortitude than in that peasant apathy and fatalism that is so often taken for stupidity. I give him something for his dysentery; it may kill him.

Walking along the Bheri hills this afternoon, I remembered how careful one must be not to talk too much, or move abruptly, after a silent week of Zen retreat, and also the precarious coming down from highs on the hallucinogens; it is crucial to emerge gradually from such a chrysalis, drying new wings in the sun’s quiet, like a butterfly, to avoid a sudden tearing of the spirit.

At Raka it was dead of winter, at Murwa near winter, in Rohagaon the deep autumn; in the valley that leads down to Tibrikot, the walnut trees are still in leaf, and green ferns grow among the copper ones along the watercourses, and I meet a hoopoe; swallows and butterflies flit through the warm air. And so I travel against time, in the weary light of dying summer.

To the repentant thief upon the cross, the soft Jesus of the modern Bible holds out hope of Heaven: “Today thou art with me in Paradise.” But in older translations, as Soen Roshi points out, there is no “today”, no suggestion of the future. In the Russian translation, for example, the meaning is “right here now”. Thus, Jesus declares, “You are in Paradise right now”—how much more vital! There is no hope anywhere but in this moment, in the karmic terms laid down by one’s own life. This very day is an aspect of nirvana, which is not different from samsara but, rather, a subtle alchemy, the transformation of dark mud into the pure, white blossom of the lotus.

This warm season is the season of a dream, not quite like any autumn I have known. I smell fresh frog mud at the rivulets, and sweet chicken dung in sunny heaps, out of the wind, and woodsmoke and the acid smell of rotting leaves—the smells of childhood morning days that tug my heart.