reread the notes I took on my moleskine (Chatwin oblige ...). I wrote: The Mustang began to Kagbeni.
I try to remember. But the memory overlaps. A Kagbeni there had already been three years earlier. I remember a magical view at sunset, tired and coming down from Thorong La. Suddenly, the clouds had blown away. Below, a few hundred meters below us, there was Muktinath. In the background, away, placed on different planes, the snowy peaks of Dolpo, the band of bright green fields of barley, el'ocra and an endless red desert sand and rocks. Between the two a dot on a bend of the Kali Gandaki. That's Kagbeni, he told me Razu, the leadership of then. From there onwards you can not go. From there on, there's the Mustang. Difficult. Impervious. Inhospitable.
A Kagbeni we stopped a few hours the next day. A short stop. Until the sign of unregistered entry to Upper Mustang is illegal. "
That day I had promised myself that I would come back.
Jomsom to leave the morning advanced. There's no hurry. Between Jomsom and Kagbeni, stay where we count as permission to enter Mustang snaps in just the next day, just four hours of walking. We proceed along the Kali Gandaki on the left bank. The first signs of the kingdom of Lo, how people you call this region, they show up. A group of riders coming down the mountain along a steep path. Tiny horses with colorful saddles and harnesses, wire and bells. A couple of stones and mud houses with strange trophies made of yak heads, stones and feathers in front al'ingresso.
We meet two Swiss horse coming from Muktinah. We warn that we will face a difficult ford. The Panga Khola, a tributary of the Khali Gandaki is swollen water of the rains in recent days. He came down strong and violent and the wooden bridge was washed away. They tell us, they crossed on horseback, but doubt that it can be crossed on foot.
Arrivati in vista del fiume dubitiamo anche noi. I portatori percorrono la riva in su e in giù alla ricerca di un guado possibile. Discutono. Poi alcuni di loro si lanciano. A piedi nudi, le scarpe in cima alle gerle. Oscillano. Ogni tanto si fermano in mezzo ai flutti per ritrovare l’equilibrio. L’acqua scende violentissima, marrone e così torbida da sembrare un solido nastro di fango. Il boato del torrente è così forte che per parlarsi bisogna urlare. Mi siedo su un sasso, mi cambio le scarpe. Ho portato con me le scarpe da torrentismo acquistate in America l’anno scorso. Il Mustang, lo si sa, è terra di guadi. Finiti i ponti sospesi che collegavano più sotto i due versanti di una valle. D’ora in poi si scende fino al fiume, lo si attraversa e si risale dall’altra parte.
Chitra arriva per primo sull’altra sponda e fa segno agli altri di seguirlo. Goma inizia ad attraversare tastando il fondo con un bastone. Poi di colpo fa una smorfia e torna indietro. Pietre e sassi rotolano sotto l’acqua trascinati dalla corrente e una pietra gli è finita sul piede. Goma, il sirdar, sanguina copiosamente. Si esamina il piede, poi riparte. Ora tocca a noi. Tutti gli altri sono già passati e ci fanno grandi gesti indicandoci questo o quel punto del fiume. Kishan è sull’altra riva. Mi fa anche lui dei segni, poi, si toglie la gerla col carico e riattraversa il fiume. Mi prende per mano. « Go, didi... go», he says. Didi. In Nepal, sister. Older sister.
The water is freezing. Takes its first steps into the water. I feel the rocks and stones that I banging against his ankles and calves. I try to move forward as fast as I can. Before ascending to the other side off balance. I'm about to ruin the water but it keeps me strong and Kishan Dilish, the cook, who has since returned to the water to pick me up, I grab your other hand.
While I wipe sitting on a rock comes a group of nuns. There are six or seven, all with shaved heads and dressed in red. They laugh scared watching the waves. Then they take off their shoes to get up the habits of life shamelessly showing thighs. And throw in the river holding hands and forming a chain. They spend almost all of them. Only two are still on the other side. Are not resolved. They laugh, they shook their heads. I'm scared. A man is immersed in the water reaches them, loading their belongings on their shoulders and goes with the other side holding her hand.
Gainers on a pilgrimage to Muktinath, he explains Goma, which has since slipped on the bloody foot in the shoe as if nothing had happened. Tibetan nuns are. Refugees. Arriving on foot from their monastery in Kathmandu. The nuns are
knot exhilarated and laugh. Then, within minutes, they disappear from our view. I can see from Eklai Bhatti, a group of houses from which branches off the trail to Muktinah. Six or seven red dots are climbing fast up the mountain.
Kagbeni is a green oasis. A medieval town at the confluence of the Kali Gandhaki with the Jhong Khola. Narrow, cobbled alleys, arcades, crevices and courtyards. Everything communicates with everything. Wooden windows so small that we just go a head. Cows, calves pulciosi, horses barefoot girls on a leash and disheveled. Runny noses. Faces, hands and feet blackened by the sun and soot. Eyes blacks. Hair blacks. Strands of wool braided the hair of women. Lapis lazuli, silver and amber in those of men.
Women with a rosary in his left hand. Men who wear the rosary around his neck instead. Old who pray sitting on the steps in front of the house. Front doors that open in the middle. The bottom is closed so as not to leave the animals. Here people live together with animals. It agrees with the rhythm of life. A woman sitting on the ground, breast-feeding a baby. A fool with a talking horse tied to the door.
chorten an impressive entrance to the town. Slightly elevated, the colors of a Gomba Sakya Buddhism: yellow, red and gray. A young
Monaco, at the entrance of the gompa tells me in a bad English fundamentals of Buddhism. I said to them, the monks Sakya, a few months to drop all Dheradun, India. Overwinter there, where is the Rimpoché head of their movement. Then he points to the top of the Thorong glimpsed just soar above the clouds and Muktinath. We call Yakhuba, he said. Yakhuba in front of yak. I do not see the white of the eternal snow around the top? Just like the front of the white yak, he confides.
It's cold. The night is falling. The monachello covers his bare shoulders with a piece of his maroon robe. At the foot has a pair of sneakers. Like Buddhism, I ask?
tramp up and down the alleys of the village. Kishan follow me. Always a few steps from me. From the balcony of a house painted red with a baby boy in the neck is watching us. "Hello, Kishan shouted, then addressed a few words in Nepali. Kishan smiles. The guy is French. He tells me he lives there for a few months along with his girlfriend and their child. Kishan had helped them to carry the child from Beni. Know him well, Kishan? The two smile. Everyone in the valley, know Kishan, she said.
edge of the village, just near the border post, a long wall of prayer. Two farmers from the fields covered by spinning through it all one by one the mills prayer. We have dinner
nicely to our lodge by candlelight. Mushroom soup, sauteed vegetables and rice pudding perfumed with cinnamon. During dinner every now and then appears an old woman. We fixed a long time, then disappears behind a door only to reappear a few minutes later and fix it again. A crowd of young girls prepare the food and sprepara the table. We lie down soon. Tomorrow we will enter the kingdom of Lo.
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