La notte è tutto un entrare e uscire dalla tenda per pisciare.
Buon segno. Si chiama acclimatazione.
All’alba, mentre esco per l’ennesima volta a fare i miei bisogni I discovered that behind the dry stone wall against which it is planted our tent there is a carpet of flowers. They look like sea anemones. Of all the colors.
I'm not dead.
to die was the last thought I had the afternoon before collapsing asleep. The dreaded edema not caught me in the night. Before falling asleep I thought that basically I would have liked to die in the mountains.
I'm better. I realize that on the morning of symptoms the day before I was four, which is red alert. Headache, nausea, fatigue and 'dizziness', that is an odd gait and mental confusion. Mi è rimasto soltanto il mal di testa, ma molto meno forte del giorno prima. Sono rinfrancata. Posso continuare.
La notte è piovuto e tutto è bagnato. La tenda è bagnata, il terreno è bagnato, le scarpe che inavvertitamente ho lasciato fuori dalla tenda, sono bagnate pure loro. Infilo due paia di calzetti, uno sopra l’altro, per evitare le fiacche.
Partenza difficoltosa.
Dopo un primo scollinamento, la sosta accanto ad un gruppo di case. Ram e Goma spariscono all’interno di una di queste case. I portatori ridacchiano. In quel borghetto producono il rakhsi, l’alcool con cui chi abita da queste parti dimentica la fatica of life.
The rest looks like the morning stop at the inn.
the sun comes out and blow dry it. It's hot, hotter and hotter. Sock away twice, the jacket, the heavy batteries, the tights, the battery light. Wonder to get into the shirt.
The heat, the sun make the landscape less hostile. The Nyi La, 4200 m, the step that we see above us I'm not afraid anymore. This does not mean that we walk slowly. I read on my moleskine "Nyi the 35 minutes to travel four hundred meters." Four hundred meters uphill. Carriers cut the bends and climb straight up choosing the most direct route ripido. A tratti si fermano. Appoggiano le loro gerle contro uno spuntone di roccia e si riposano. Io salgo a zig zag. Lentamente. Cercando di adeguare i battiti del cuore al passo.
Un cavaliere scende verso di noi al galoppo. Un cavallino piccolo, con la sella rossa e verde e campanellini e fili di lana colorati intrecciati alla coda. Qualche minuto dopo è una mandria intera di cavalli a scendere verso di noi. Quattro mandriani e una cinquantina di cavalli. Gli incontri, da queste parti, sono visioni.
Settecento metri sotto di noi, a est, il villaggio di Gehling immerso in mezzo a campi verdissimi. A Gehling ci fermeremo al ritorno mi dice Goma. Oggi la nostra tappa è Ghami.
Gham appears as a vision of a couple of hours later, in early afternoon. It seems to be in a decorative artificial. As the scene of a theater. Three mountain ranges first black, then orange and ocher, positioned as the fifth. Far left, a series of green hills. Down in the valley, Gham, surrounded by acres and acres of fields.
The entrance to the village is solemn. A long hands of prayer that leads to a chorten Sakia with the colors, orange, yellow and black. To the right and left of the chorten other two walls of prayer. A group of ragged children playing with a ball near the Chorten.
A conflicted Gham cheerfully to the prohibition of sleeping at the home of the local people. Our tent is wet and then accept the hospitality offered to us by none other than the nephew of the king. His house is very spacious and comfortable for the standards of the region. Three floors that rotate around a square courtyard which is illuminated by a skylight on the roof. Windows painted wood inlay. On the roof is also our mail room.
small but perfect. Two wooden beds, a large window with a breathtaking view of the mountains, the mud wall painted with white lime. We even have a carpet from a bed to another. Pulcioso, but always a carpet. The roof
è il regno assoluto di una signora anziana e piccolina che non fa che scendere e salire le scale ripidissime che portano in alto. La vecchia è poco comunicativa, ed estremamente assorbita dai suoi compiti : spostare le erbe che seccano al sole su degli enormi teli di plastica, in modo tale che nessuna resti all’ombra. E posizionare le decine di vasetti di fiori che contornano il lucernario. Per quanto rudimentale, la casa della nipote del re è tutta un lusso. Sul tetto c’è una stanza con una tinozza dove finalmente mi posso lavare. Kishan mi porta su due grandi secchi d’acqua calda. Dopo giorni riesco ad insaponarmi e a farmi una doccia rudimentale con un pentolino con il quale pesco l’acqua dalla tinozza.
Ai piani inferiori ferve un’attività frenetica. La nipote del re, una trentenne silenziosa dallo sguardo estremamente dolce, sta facendo il burro agitando un bastone in un contenitore alto e lungo fatto con dei vecchi copertoni. In una stanza che si apre sul ballatoio del secondo piano una ragazza tesse rumorosamente su un grande telaio di legno. In cucina, una cucina bellissima con tante pentole di rame appese al muro, un ragazzino sta accendendo il fuoco. Nel cortile interno Dilish prepara la cena mentre i porter giocano a carte seduti a terra. Giocano a carte e ridono.
Al ghompa del villaggio ci fa entrare discretamente il guardiano. Sta cuocendo delle strane frittelle, like our crostoli. The kitchen is a dark and smoky.
ghompa The entrance is hidden by two huge black curtains, linen raw and hard, on which stand out two large white swastikas. I'm not new to the fact that the swastika in Buddhism is the symbol of the sun and, more generally, of harmony. Yet every time I see one in Asia I feel a little embarrassed. I remember the boys in Burma had painted helmets on motorcycles. Inside the ghompa numerous frescoes, prayer books, wicks lit, the smell of animal fat, walls blackened by smoke. No blade that welcomes us. I have the impression that the ghompa is little known.
Along the narrow streets of the village people Gham watching us in silence. The farther away, the deeper you dig in this region is more concrete and dirt of the people. An absolute dirt. Clothes and bodies. The skin of the face and hands, the only two parts of the body discovered, is literally black. Children have their hair and dusty clothes in tatters. The snot drip down from their nose to the skin by drawing a clearer line. An old, which makes hard in front of us, in a street, suddenly crouches down, lifts his long woolen skirt and defecates. Along the walls of the houses of elderly people sitting in droves to the ground to rattle off prayers. In the evening I
realize that the house of the king's grandson has a small private ghompa. At sunset, a knife, the blade of the house, carry out the blessing ceremony for the evening. Accocolato on two pillows at a table behind chanting as a law on an ancient prayer book. I sit down to observe it. He's all alone in the darkness of the room, between ancient furniture, painted walls, hundreds of books on prayer wrapped in layers and layers of silk and stuffed into the appropriate drawers, to chant. In front of him on the table, a large shell inlaid with silver, a tambourine, two or three bells, and a bowl of rice. Every now and then change its chanting rhythm. The blade lifts the tone of voice, speed up, slow down, breathe in the shell which produces the sound of hunting horns, beating the tambourine, shake the bells, scattering rice grains around him. My presence did not trouble him. The old lama chanting never stops even when the nephew of the king lay at his feet with a tray of boiled rice and a bowl of tea. The woman enters the small ghompa demurely, her head bowed. He puts the tray on the floor and goes back without turning his back to Monaco in any case not worthy of a look as it is absorbed in prayer.
The night wrapped in my sleeping bag I do lulled by the rhythmic clanging and the sound of his drum. Then, suddenly, the blade is close to us. On the roof, behind the doors of our room. Blesses us. The last blessing of the guests. A dirge delivered in a hollow voice. Then the prolonged sound of the shell.
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