11/Lho Manthang Lho Manthang, the capital, presents us with a Garritt lonely at the top of a hill on the roof waving a red flag with the sickle and the hammer.
The Garritt is empty and dusty. The flagstick, little one, is inclined, and without the pedestal.
A flag is a flag without pedestal of way.
From above, from 4000 m. The pitch, we had already glimpsed The Manthang. Collection within its walls, square in the middle of the yellow-green fields of barley. From a distance, four large patches of color. The red of the three great monasteries of the city. And the white king's palace.
is she. The Manthang. Unreal in the midst of hundreds of sand dunes that surround it.
At the top, the remains of ancient castles and fortresses. Some stubbornly resistant poplar vento che soffia implacabile. Un ruscello che scorre lungo le mura.
Una visione magica. Una dimenticata favola d’oriente.
Poco prima dell’ingresso in città, il solito chorten con i colori sakia. Attorno al chorten un gruppo di ragazzi agli ordini di un ragazzo più grande. Lo stanno restaurando. Ridanno vita ai colori stinti dalla sabbia e dal vento. Pescano il colore dalla natura. Rocce polverizzate all’interno di minuscole bacinelle scavate nella pietra. Pigmenti Natural Ochre. Red. Green. Black
Under the walls of the city, women washing clothes in the stream, men sat chatting doorway of their houses, children running around, little kids who learn to stand up stuck to the fleece of goats, old that gin cotton rosary with my left hand. A girl washes her long hair to the river blacks. It is held in balance on two rocks that emerge from the water to rinse off the foam and leaned forward. The hair flowing with the current. Long black hair that look like algae and sinuous.
Dilish, Ram Goma and discuss with a young fiercely. Are negotiating the possibility of install our camp inside an inn vis ible
must have been closed for years. On the front door hangs askew a sign on which it says pompously, "Mystic Resort. The courtyard where Goma had planned to install them is occupied by the French. And the little meadow near the creek, under a group of tall poplar trees that sway with the wind, is reserved for the arrival of some important personalities.
The boy finally succumbs. Freedom of the bolt that holds a door closed sheet and allows us to enter. The usual large square courtyard with a statue of clay from a fountain in a corner. The interior the building is dilapidated and covered with a thick layer of dust. The boy takes us up a steep stairway that leads up to the gallery on the second floor and introduces us to a room. Will be to our bedroom he says. The place is immense. Two wooden beds against the wall of mud on which lie two horsehair mattresses that time and dirt have dyed brown. Two large windows, one overlooking the street that surrounds the walls, the other overlooking the courtyard. Neither of the two windows will close and both have broken windows patched with tape wrapping. The ceiling is covered by a large blue fabric in the center shows signs of water infiltration. Where the water penetrates from the roof of the fabric is a kind of brown belly. The floor is uneven and bumpy. Below a couple of jute bags that are function of carpet lie huge holes. Along the walls of large white plastic sheets on which are set in the mountains of potatoes.
We are dedicated to rehabilitation of the premises while the tireless Dilish is merrily installing her kitchen on the ground floor.
capping, the window openings with rags. We cover the mattress with sheets we lie on camping and sleeping bags. Move the potatoes in a corner. Extract from the bag our clothes and hang them with nails sticking out of the wall. We obtain some candles and a plate to collect the wax. Let us create for ourselves a real room as comfortable as possible, because we will stop Manthang Lho.
We'll be at least two days.
take advantage of the fountain to do laundry. The water is cold and it is easy to wash shirts, pants and socks with soap. My fingers are numb. Kishan, who never moved away too long from me, watching me, smiling slyly. Then I take the laundry out of the hands and begins to soap, squeeze, bang, then rinse. Within minutes our things waving in the sun and wind.
a couple of days Kishan has made a habit to seek treatment malleolus sick for me. From running and walking as a suspicion that the pain has stopped, but the rub arnica on the foot and massage it for a few minutes has become a ritual. Kishan washed with care ends and then wait for nightfall, when the porter they start playing cards. Then comes to see me and makes me sign that I put the cream. The coating of the cream lives with satisfaction. He sits down, takes off his shoes neatly on the ground that supports and introduces me to the foot. I pretend to look at it, just grazed his ankle, I ask him if it hurts and makes Kishan nodded his head. Then I take the make-up kits of medicines and carry out the transaction. Arnica take long to absorb and Kishan is fixed pierced feet. After a few minutes to give him a massage packages on foot, and I understand that it is okay.
A Lho Manthang, Kishan, for the first time, I also presents the other foot. I massage, coated and think. When I stop Kishan gets up, puts on his shoes and gave me a grin.
The second flag flying in Lo Manthang is the Italian flag. Waves, together with a Nepalese flag on the roof of a house to a plan that is outside of the walls. I see and I remember what you told me to Benno Chele. A Lo Manthang there are three Italians who restore a monastery, he told me. Boys formidable, he added.
The city, not much bigger than a village, is a maze of roads, streets, squares, arcades, monasteries. Around the door that allows access to the interior walls of small crowds of people if they are sitting talking and running their mills prayer. Mules, and goats entering and leaving the door to their liking. Near a monastery, along an alley, a large group of women if they are squatting on the ground to talk and spin wool. Groups of children come and go.
From the terrace overlooking the square facing the palace of the king a dog barking. Barking furiously running forward and forth along the balustrade of carved wood. A man dragging me over to the halter a horse nervous and harnessed with silver bells. The impression is that here, the arrow of time has stopped. We were so cities in the Middle Ages?
stroll at random. A girl beckons us to come to his house. The usual courtyard, tiny, and a tree trunk, which were excavated some rudimentary steps, leading to the roof. From the roof watching other roofs topped with stacks of wood. And then the prayer flags flapping in the wind moves. The domes and red ocher chorten of ghompa. Highest of all, the white palace.
Un ragazzino, il naso che cola e la pelle annerita dal sole e dallo sporco mi trascina da un tetto all’altro. Capisco che Lho Manthang la si può percorrere anche dall’alto. Tetti, stanze, cortili. Il ragazzino mi sospinge dentro pertugi, camminamenti, stanze
dove donne filano la lana, stanze dove giacciono malati, stanze dove dormono bambini su letti di paglia. Fumo, tanto fumo, nelle stanze annerite. Calderoni sul fuoco. Abiti appesi ad asciugare vicino alle braci. Vecchi che fumano pipe. Il ragazzino mi porta da uno zio che mi mostra dei grandi tanka stinti dal tempo. Non voglio i tanka, gli dico. Instancabile lui rovista in una cassa ed estrae crani umani intarsiati d’argento, horns of bone, large red and blue stones tied to ropes of hair, carved teapots, prayer wheel, sacred tablets, would sell the soul of man, and then bought him a tiny silver flask, sealed with a cap wax. What's inside I do not know, but he binds her to me and touches my neck three times in the head with his wrinkled hands. A good luck charm? The only thing that I will carry with me from The Manthang.
Federica
the bishop at the top of the scaffolding ghompa Lhakang.
Gomphia Lakhang The monastery is the second visit. At first, ghompa Choprang of us by-case basis, invited by a group of nun adolescenti che mi fanno da guida. Mi chiamano i monachelli dall’alto di un muro. Non mi chiamano, si sbracciano e corrono ad aprire il portone del monastero. Vogliono farmi conoscere Tashi, un loro compagno che studia l’italiano.
Tashi sorge dal nulla e mi snocciola frasi tipo. Ciao. Come stai ? Bella giornata ! Da dove vieni ? Dove vai ? Mi chiamo Tashi. Ho diciotto anni. Poi mi accompagna in camera sua, nella zona dormitorio del monastero. Un lettino, alcuni libri da preghiera su uno scaffale e « A zonzo per l’Italia », grammatica italiana per stranieri. Sulla parete di legno di fianco al letto, il poster di una donna in bikini. Tashi ride quando gli indico la donna in bikini, ma non smette di produrre frasi. Like a river in full reads as follows: The train arrives in an hour. In what track, please? Where is the ticket?
I can to stem the relentless Tashi through a hollow sound that comes from another wing of the dormitory. A continuous sound of trumpets. I open a door and find five or six nun blowing trumpets in a strange engraved under the guidance of a teacher of music. Do not raise their eyes. Do not look at me. They continue to blow pricked.
From the next room stands a sound even more dark and deep. Two apprentices musicians strive to make some sounds from two long horns laid on the ground. The horns are long at least three meters and the sound that comes out is very disturbing. Dull, dark, naked. It is its sameness, more than anything else, to make it disturbing.
Federica is a calendar girl. I understand now. From what greets me. From the heat of the contact. He says that our arrival had been already been reported by a couple of days. A group of herdsmen reached Lho Manthang the country had reported the arrival of two Ingi, two foreigners. They, her, Louis and David, are hungry for foreigners, he said. Why stay in Lho Manthang it feels a bit isolated, she adds. And he laughs.
Federica laughs often. And the stories about her, the three Italian who are there to restore the monasteries, the girls, the people of the land, tells her the evening. At home. The house on the roof waving the Italian flag. And where they live in three: Louis, the initiator of the project, Federica, and David, her boyfriend.
Federica tells us that four years ago when I was coming to Manthang the first time, was left alone a month. Luigi was due to start on an expedition to caves in a mountain that hid under a shepherd of strange and precious frescoes. David was not yet part of the group and she was therefore found in the city alone. A handle about forty people. The girls and boys sizes Manthang to intervene in the restoration. How many things did not understand ...
He did not understand, for example, that existed on the rigid scaffolding of caste distinctions that govern society Loba. And even the orders of a Ingi could break them. The Tarang, for example, people in the river, a low caste, the scaffolding had no right to be higher than those who belonged to the caste of the city. Neither had they explained to Frederick. And she did not understand why the boys refused to intervene where she said. They did not, with his head and pointed to the upper floors.
He did not even understand the strange ceremony that some lamas were in the early morning, just where she had ritoccare i disegni di alcune divinità tantriche. Usavano degli specchi, dei grandi specchi sui quali riflettevano la parete. Catturavano lo spirito della divinità per evitare che venisse disturbato dai lavori. Lo avrebbero riportato al suo posto, avrebbero riportato l’anima nei dipinti, solo a fine lavori. Ma lei anche quello non l’aveva capito.
Ci racconta poi della Coppa del mondo di calcio. Erano riusciti a convincere il responsabile delle centrale eolica situata a nord della città di fornire il villaggio di elettricità per un paio d’ore. E di notte, in piena notte, poiché la finale loro la potevano vedere alla televisione del monastero, in bianco e nero, su una rete indiana, alle due di notte. Tutto il villaggio, la mattina dopo, era al monastero ad attenderli. Per festeggiare. Loro non se l’aspettavano. Erano entrati, e il monastero era illuminato da centinia di candele da preghiera, dei lucignoli immersi nel burro rancido, e tutta la gente era là riunita e li abbracciava contenta, e il sindaco aveva macellato una capra in segno di festa. Proprio di fronte all’altare. Di fronte alla statua di d’argilla del Buddha alta quindici metri. Quel giorno, per festeggiare la vittoria dell’Italia nessuno in città era andato a lavorare.
Come ci erano arrivati là ?
Luigi era arrivato per primo. Luigi Fieni, 34, Cisterna di Latina as Federica. An aeronautical engineer who had changed the road after graduation. It had started to learn the techniques of painting with an airbrush, and later, the restoration of the Institute of Restoration in Rome. And that was over there in Mustang, in 1999 along with his teacher, a Guatemalan specialist in murals. The two monasteries on which they had decided to intervene, they had found in a complete state of neglect. The rainwater that trickles down to the roof, the deterioration produced by the time the black smoke of prayer candles were ruined, covered, concealed the beauty of the paintings, the harmony of forms.
Louis was able to be financed the restoration project by the American Himalayan Foundation. A foundation that, among other things, allowed the Americans to take under control the borders with China. Or better with Tibet. Very hot area.
Yet it was not easy. Each year, Federico said at least a couple of months they lost them in Kathmandu to get permits. Everything depended on the tangent asked the Nepalese government to allow them to work in that remote area. And, since the Maoists, then, had entered the government, it was not clear who had to forage.
The Maoists, always tells Federica, often down in the city. Yes were presented at The Manthang just a couple of weeks ago. The flag that we saw on our arrival had left them. And nobody in town had dared to remove it. They had not done anything particularly fierce. In the end they were almost all boys. Fifty. All young. They had set up their little show on the square, at the foot of the king's palace. It was just a show done right, says Federico. Dancing, singing revolutionary, and a small piece of theater. To illuminate the stage were appropriate for their generator. But the next day they had returned. The boy who had returned to the monastery had also tried to make her morals, says Federico. But she had not left intimidated. I asked him, directly, "But you seem to just take away the barley and rice to families in the city. People who have only this? Do not call it stealing, you? '. He had attempted a weak defense, then said he could not answer her, but her boss would give the right answer. Federica had not given up, and as he clumsily tried to reinstall the generator, I told him that she thought of what his boss did not care and who wanted to hear what he thought. The boy, embarrassed, had set his shoes without saying anything.
David, the boy Federica, restorer he laughs.
He says Federica if he takes the fly on the nose will not stop anyone. He was only the second year that I spent the summer in Manthang with the team. Federica had met during a renovation in London. They were not home, two of them. They lived together where they carried out their work. In Mustang, shared the house with Luigi. A room on the ground floor to sleep. A rudimentary shower in the yard. A hall on the second floor. Sofas, coffee tables and a shelf on which Federico kept his treasures: teas purchased in Kathmandu, Italian coffee, a few packets of biscuits.
On the wall of the living room where we spend the evening and the night talking and Drinking herbal tea, a large city map and a poster, like I did as a child to count the days until Christmas. On the days that were missing their manifesto to back down in the valley. In Kathmandu. To civilization.
Lho Manthang were not that bad. With residents, they tell us, had a terrific relationship. Intense. Profound. The girls, for example, Federica telling everything. "Even the kids," Louis adds, smiling. "The even tell when and with whom they make love ... "
careful tonight when you go back to the inn, the comings and goings of children with the battery in your hand and ladders under Federica arm ... grins. It's called hula bula. And it is the most popular sport in the city. The way in which men courted women in these parts. The scales used to climb on the roof of the houses of girls available. The boys come from the roof and if the girl accepts making love with her. If not, move on to the next house. Always through the roof. The next day, tell all to Federica, adds David. Who were, and although it was nice. And then ask, "But Frederick, for our girls stink? Why not smell like you? ". And you, down to laugh.
Federica admits. Sometimes it is difficult to work around some girls. Sometimes the smell emanating is unbearable. Here, women and men never wash. At least the body, because the hair, however, women wash them every day ii. She once led the girls to the river of the monastery. Made them undress and distributed soap and bubble bath. Then he told them how we wash. That day all the girls had washed river. All spraying water and foam. They had lots of fun. As girls. But then they had not ever done. Here at The Manthang, still believe that the dirt protects against disease.
the evening, returning to our inn, a lot of trouble. Light beams that intersect. Boys with batteries and ladders. Chuckles.
The inn where you sleep is infested with mice, he told us Federica. Be careful.
The night closed in my sleeping bag, I hear the mice riding on the beams above us and sliding down the walls of the room, to settle on the bags of potatoes.
The following day the Manthang is still immersed in the sun. We decided to go on foot to the Namgyal Monastery, which stands atop a hill to the west. To get there, go down a valley to the river and from there we begin the ascent towards the fields of barley. We meet children who go to school, knights, monks. Tucci, who was in the past for Manthang anni ’30 racconta che in passato quella era stata una delle vie commerciali più importanti di tutto l’altipiano tibetano. Una via percorsa da pellegrini e apostoli, banditi ed invasori. In cima alle colline a nord della città le rovine di antichi castelli o fortezze.
Il monastero è semideserto. Un molosso tibetano alla catena quando ci vede arrivare abbaia furiosamente. Un paio di monaci che stanno passando al setaccio delle granaglie levano appena il capo verso di noi. Un salto alla scuoletta, e ai dormitori e poi via il ritorno in città.
Passiamo il pomeriggio a girovagare per le stradine di Lho Manthang e a chiacchierare. A guy takes me to the school of Tibetan medicine, where a lama, who is also the village doctor, I am visiting a dark cave where they are crammed large ceramic pots containing herbs, powder horns and hoofs of animals, stones, pebbles. He would like to explain. Magnify her potions. I do not understand anything but the head of five yes. They were so the surgeons of medieval toilets?
the evening, the Italians are invited to dinner at the palace. The king receives some members of the American Himalyan Foundation, on a visit. They are the persons who were expected in town. Camping under the willows by the creek, and arrived at Lho Manthang the night before. A long caravan of mules and horses.
At eight o'clock on the square outside the royal palace, witnessing a show of song and dance organized by the local school in honor of the guests. The whole city is the appointment there. People are sitting demurely on the parterre, or clings to windows, roofs and balconies to watch the show. Such events should not there be many in these parts.
Shortly before the event, touching in its naivete, the monks come dressed in red. The crowd opened to let them pass and they all sit together in the front rows. Later in the show already started, a huge uproar. The people stood up. Some people are off and create a void in the middle of the square. More benches and bring a mat and invite the man to sit ceremoniously. I learn from Federica, who has since fallen on the square too, that the man, dressed in western part, which cuts through the crowd, is the nephew of the king, the heir to the throne, arrived at the Lo Manthang mornings with the Americans.
The last evening I spend again Manthang the home of the Italians. Federica has prepared for us a chocolate cake. Kishan carry with me. He is always beside me. Do you follow me. Ride. He smiles. I speak with gestures. He sits with us on the couch that surrounds the living room of Italians. It is visibly embarrassed, but drinking the tea and eats the chocolate cake.
We stay up late at night to chat. Stories. Many stories, funny or tragic. Of "cholesterol day," that the three celebrated every year in prosciutto and mortadella, before leaving Italy for these quarters. The solemn flag-raising ceremony on the day when they do arrive in Lho Manthang, surrounded by the people of the country. The girl who was raped by the village idiot. Down to the River. And that was compensated with a goat from the family of the boy. The king and queen that they stay locked in their building waiting for Godot. Chinese merchants reduction to twice a year in trade in cities and that day is a feast for all. Great celebration. How it was nice, beautiful and difficult to train young people for the restoration of the country. And how are proud to use brushes and make colors.
Many stories. And the usual promises to meet again. Here or there.
Kishan pulls me by the sleeve and signals that it is late. Tomorrow, we leave at dawn.