Day 8 - Tea with Jigma Lama

Rest day in Manang

I get up at 7 am after many hours of sleep and enjoy a hearty breakfast. I pack my stuff and move to the hotel next door where everybody else I know stays and which is much much nicer. The staff is also friendlier. Pipi is smiling again.

The laundry I did last night is still wet so I just move it from a line to another :-)
The hotel has downstairs a little bakery with quite delicious stuff. The cheese rolls are very tasty and I pamper myself. Pipi prefers chocolate rolls, so that's what he gets.

I ask around about the plans people have for the rest day. Not much, mostly lazing around. Some have some problems with the altitude already. We're only at 3400 m. However, yesterday with Pipi we wnt up to almost 3700m to Gyaru before descending.
The secret to acclimatization is to sleep lower than the highest point you reached during the day. You need to gain elevation slowly and let your body adjust to it.
I am restless as usual. I want to go visit Braga and then hike to Milarepa's cave. There was a sign along the trail yesterday. Milarepa was a Buddhist monk in the 11th century who for long periods of time lived in isolation in a cave. The sign said 2.5 hours to the cave. A perfect day hike I find.
By 9:15 am I am ready to go to Braga, a very old village on a hilltop with the interesting pinnacles in the background. The houses are all built of stone and beutifully carved wooden struts and posts. On the flat roofs people are drying their laundry or grass and beans. Here again the display of flowers is stunning. I love these villages and the whole picturesque scenery.
At the entrance to the village is a small white stupa. It is also being repainted and so shines spotless in the bright sunlight. High above the houses is the white monastery with the golden roof. Tibetan prayer flags are fluttering everywhere.
I find a way up the hill between the houses and reach the gompa only to find it locked. When I get up there I am out of breath, probably because of the combination of heat, altitude and steepness.
I walk around the grey walls and get to a spot where a dozen men and women are hard at work repairing a lane. The men are digging whereas the women are carrying the heavy rocks away in the bamboo baskets on their back. It is extremely hard work.
A few meters away in a bamboo basket on top of a pile of clothes and below an umbrella I notice a sleeping baby. A dog guards it watchfully. The baby's mom obviously works at carrying rocks.
One of the men show me the right way to the gompa and I follow the direction till I get to the open entrance door. I can hear voices from inside and so I take off my shoes and enter. There are 2 huge prayer wheels right at the entrance and to the left in the dark corner a scary monster. It is a supersized traditional monster mask that scares me at first. Its dangerously grinning red face is crowned by a series of skulls. After taking a picture I enter the monastery room where a guide translates the explanations of the guardian to a German couple.
Everything inside is made of wood. The struts and posts are beautifully carved and painted. Scary, ugly, monstruous traditional wood-carved masks are hanging off the pillars. In the front a big golden Buddha statue and some prayer objects. Lots of flags and mandalas are hanging off the walls.
We spend some peaceful moments in meditation and contemplation, then make a donation and exit the room. The guardian offers to show the couple another shrine with a bigger Buddha statue and I ask whether I can join them. Sure. So I follow them through a dark tunnel, up a wodden ladder, down another ladder and to the locked door where I have stood earlier. Inside there is a huge Buddha statue recently restored. The walls are covered in colourful paintings depicting scenes from Buddhas life. Unfortunately, those are in a pretty bad shape. In the niches on both sides of the entrance to this shrine there are 2 other statues of "traditional" monsters.

After finishing my visit I go down the hill and stop on one of the benches on the meadow at the bottom. I drink some water and eat some almonds and make some calculations.
It is 12:18 pm and if I go up to Milarepa's cave I'll get there by 3 pm. If I only take a short break there I have time to get back before dark. I am prepared for rain and cold, have enough food and water for a long day, so why not go? In the morning Pipi did not show any desire to do anything or be helpful in some way, so I told him I'll manage on my own.

I cross the small bridge over the now so small Marsyangdi river, traverse the fields and follow the trail up the hill. From time to time along the trail on a bigger rock or slab the Tibetan prayer "om mani padme hum" is painted in vivid colours. When I reach an opening some 30 minutes later there is a big chorten and lots os strings of prayer flags fluttering. I do not meet one soul on my way up. The trail eventually leaves the forest and gets into the alpine where lots of small chorten and prayer flags are adorning the rock walls, the moraine and, of course, the stupa and monastery. it only took me 1.5 hours to get here. In a big niche in the rock wall is a shrine with a huge gilded statue of Milarepa. A flight of stairs is leading you up there with hundreds of prayer flags. The sky is criss-crossed by the prayer flag strings. From here you are very close to the Annapurna IV glacier visible higher up. Unfortunately the low clouds are concealing the peak although the whole valley is bathed in the bright sunlight.
I'm alone in this beautiful remote landscape. Only the chortens and prayer flags are an indication of the human presence in the area.
When I climb up the stairs towards the Milarepa shrine I am becoming aware of another presence. An old man, the guardian of the gompa, tells me through signs that I can go closer to the shrine. Then he invites me, thorugh signs again, to join him.
he spreads out a small sheet of plastic on the grass and invites me to sit down. Next he goes inside the small building and returns with a thermos and 2 cups and pours tea in them. It's the famous butter-tea, the sweet and salty tea I have heard and read about ... and feared. But I am polite and also curious. Agreed, it takes some getting used to it, but the problem arises, I believe, from the definition. If you consider it a tea it's totally disappointing. But if you look at it as a soup it's quite tasty. I certainly enjoy it and get a couple more refills until my "pugyo"'s become more determined (enough in Nepali).
So we sit there in the sun sipping tea and having a nice chat, the two of us. The man, a Tibetan who fled Tibet when he was 16 in 1959, does not speak or understand any English except for "yes", "no", "good", "family". I do not understand more than a handful Nepali words. Yet we have a very long chat and good time together.

A little later he goes back inside and returns with a bag of "badji", something that looks and tastes like some sort of flakes. I forgot the Nepali word and nobody can tell me later what "badji" means in Tibetan. Nonetheless badji and tea are a tasty combination.

He lives down in Braga with wife and daughter and commutes almost daily here to guard the gompa. Sometimes he stays here for days in a row, living in the little building by himself. He is originally from Shigatse and as I try to explain him that I want to go to Tibet and visit Lhasa and Shigatse I remember that I have with me the colourful pages of the German Hauser travel catalogue.
When I pull those pages out of the backpack and show them to him he is surprised but he definitely enjoys it. For almost an hour we browse through the pages taking a close look at every picture. Sometimes he would utter a long "oooh" sound in delight.
I got here in 1.5 instead of 2.5 hours but I have to not forget about going back. Around 3 pm after exhausting the catalogue pages I tell the man that I would like to see the monastery and also go up to the cave which lies a little bit higher, maybe 30 m or so.

When I get up I leave some money under my cup and, although the man tells me that I shouldn't, insist for him to accept it. "For your family" I say and he suddenly smiles and relaxes. That word he understands.

He leads me inside the tiny gompa, a small dark room lit by a few candles with a Milarepa statue in the altar. Some pictures of Dalai Lama are hanging there as well. The usual little bench, drum and shells are there too. On a shelf on the left wall are countless little painted Buddha statues. Objects of worship, for sure, but what exactly for, I don't know. I ask whether I can take a picture and he nods positively.
Then, after making a donation I leave the room and explain him that I want to go up to the cave and then return to say good-bye.

I follow the narrow little slippery trail he showed me all the way up to the cave. It is not much of a cave, more a niche highly decorated with prayer flags. I take some pictures and look up the valley again. Over the course of our conversation I could see the clouds lift and sink again. They now lifted again and Annapurna IV is visible in the sun. The glacier seems so close that I really want to go a bit further. I also prefer returning on a different trail, maybe the wide one going through the middle of the valley to the left.
Therefore, instead of going down I go further up and to the left with the clear intent to get onto the main trail. As I pay attention to my steps on the steep slope I suddenly hear some rocks rolling down to my left and when I look up I see 7 mountain goats running away onto the moraine. I didn't see them and scared them. I come to a sudden stop and barely have time to chnage the camera lenses and take a not so good picture. Then I go down and into the main trail. I look down and the Marsyangdi valley is in full sun. So is the high ridge on the other side of the valley. But up here I'm already in the shadow of Annapurna IV which is so close. It's a terrible attraction I have to resist to. I'm expecting a little lake higher up where the glacier ends in a bowl. I'd like to get there and it seems so close. OK, I decide to go 200 steps farther. I'm sure I'll see the lake. So I go higher and higher and some 550 steps after the initial 200 I finally stop. There is no lake, just a flat area of rocks and silt. I take pictures of this intimidating ice-giant.
It is 4 pm when I finally turn around and downhill. When I reach the gompa the man is waving at me and inviting me inside for a cup of sugar-tea. How could I resist ?

I get a big cup of sugar-tea this time and he even wants to offer me some biscuits. I decline. How could I take his food, when I have mine in my pack (well, a chocolate, some almonds). The little room is very dark. Inside there is a little stove in the middle where a woodfire is on. The wood is crackling, the air is smoky. On oine side is a small wooden bed covered with blankets. That's where the man sits, whereas I sit on a small bench on the other side.
As I'm sipping my tea and enjoying this unique experience the man grabs his prayer wheel and prayer beads and starts praying. I feel totally honoured and enjoy the peaceful moments of meditation. It's very hard to describe the emotions and the feeling of intimacy or immediacy, even with this higher spirit we call God or Buddha or whatever we want to call it.
Unfortunately, I have to go. I have to interrupt this and go up and go. It's not easy.
It is 4:30 pm when I finally get up and dare to ask whether I can take a picture. The man agrees and I am extremely happy to take it. When I show it to him he is happy, too. So I ask for his name and address in order to send him the picture later.
Then I say good-bye, we hug each other and I leave.
It only takes me 30 minutes to reach the Marsyangdi valley bottom and Braga. I am so happy that I feel I'm going to burst. All the way down I sing out loudly, and I'm still singing when I cross Braga and head uphill backto Manang. The local people watching me surely think I'm crazy, but I don't care. I'm happy. The encounter with Jigma Lama was something extremely intense and unique.
I get back to the hotel at 6 pm, just in time for dinner. Here I have another pleasant surprise. The young porter who is a Fine Arts student in Kathmandu (as his colleagues told me) and whom I gave my crayons and blank cards in the morning saying " Could you please draw something for me?" hands me the cards and crayons back and apologizes " Sorry, I didn't have time to draw more".
He drew several cards and one of them in particular is very good - the portrait of a woman. Lovely! I am more and more excited. I'd normally jump up and down but I would puzzle these people more and more. I thank him and encourage him to keep drawing and painting.

I go to bed happy and with expectations for tomorrow. I want to head to Tilicho lake, the lake at the highest altitude in the world - 4920m. I told Pipi that I would go alone if he doesn't want to. He's been telling me all the time that the trail is bad but he didn't ask around much. And he's never been there either.
A quick calculation after looking at my altimeter tells me that today I went up to over 4200m, more than 750m elevation gain from Manang.

This was a great rest day!!!!