Tomorrow I will go to Nepal (The Elsewhere Series)

Author: Lin Feng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: The idea of going to Nepal came to me suddenly during my trip to Cambodia. It was a pre-dawn on February 2003, 4:30, when I went to see the sunrise. I walked on the cold stone path leading to Angkor Wat in the vast darkness. The steps were long and empty on both sides. You know how much I was heartbroken. How I longed to return to the year 1296 as seen by Zhou Daguan. How bustling the stone path should have been—wooden palaces, government offices, stables, baths, inns, barracks. But the Angkor in front of me, the magnificent royal palace along with the residences of the subjects, vanished like a dream in the blink of an eye, leaving only the cold foundation. I realized the desolation of the present day. Because the best has already passed. But Kathmandu is still here! The intricate and heavy wooden windows with carvings are still there; the ancient temples that have stood the test of millennia are still there; the exquisitely carved deities are still there; wooden structures and stone-built Hindu temples stand side by side, and people still live peacefully among them. It’s a living old city that breathes! So that pre-dawn, I knew I couldn’t wait a year to go to Nepal. I feared it might age and fade away one day. I feared it might suffer another massive earthquake like the one in 1934. I feared it would be exhausted by the relentless armed conflicts between the government army and the guerrillas. At the tail end of the 2003 monsoon, the plane flew over the Himalayas and landed in that valley filled with gods and goddesses. I began my journey of awe and enchantment. My heart was divided in two: half filled with the countless gods and goddesses nurtured by ancient Hindu civilization, and half filled with the natural wonders carved by the rapid change in altitude from 800 meters to 8,848 meters. It nearly encompasses everything a traveler could hope for: the exquisite and peculiar architecture and carvings of Kathmandu Valley, the primitive flora and fauna of Chitwan National Park, the tranquil lakes and countryside of Pokhara, and the exhilarating spirit of trekking and snow-capped mountains in the Annapurna region. Along the way, whether it was heavily armed soldiers inspecting passing vehicles or mountain paths with more than a hundred landslides within twenty-five kilometers, none became an obstacle to my soul. Instead, they gave me a sense of surrendering my life to it with complete abandon. To love a place is like loving a person—it can make a reserved woman go wild. Those moments were carved by Nepal like a chisel into a diary that purifies the soul, with every shadow and light holding the morning dew. How I miss it. After returning, I began to type down my true feelings on the keyboard. I even foolishly believed I had a responsibility to share the beauty of Nepal with more people, so as not to betray its gift. I wrote about the lanes, windows, and walls of the three old cities in the Kathmandu Valley, about the Asian elephant that accompanied me for three days in Chitwan National Park and the rhino hiding among the tall reeds, about the sound of oars splashing in the Phewa Lake of Pokhara and the paragliders soaring high in the sky, about the sunrise and walks along the hiking routes in the southern foothills of the Himalayas. And those simple joys, discoveries, encounters, and farewells unique to independent travel. The Nepal trip helped me rediscover many things I had lost in the city. It’s a passion and excitement for life that runs deep in my veins. Many times, I would wake up in the morning and see the snow-capped mountains right outside my window, then hear the Indian music drifting from the breakfast shop downstairs, smell the aroma of fried eggs and milk tea, and the day would begin in such images. Many times, I would walk past vibrant sari-clad streets, taking photos of houses, piles of vegetables and flowers, the leisurely oxen, and the dark muzzles of soldiers’ rifles. Later, I stopped taking photos altogether. I just sat on a small stool at a roadside fruit stall, drinking large glasses of fresh papaya juice, humming the famous Nepali song “Resham Firiri” as I drank. Or I would climb to the high terraces of an old city temple, listening to the wind passing through the eaves bells, the sound of pigeons taking flight, watching rickshaw pullers dozing under their sheds, and watching the sunset. I had almost forgotten that I was just a passerby, destined to leave. But I still returned, wearing handmade large silver earrings from Nepal, a string of plastic bracelets identical to those worn by Nepali women on my wrist, dressed in large orange cloth clothes, standing at the customs checkpoint. They said, “Ah? You’re Chinese?” I smiled and said, “Thank you.” And then you? The person who is now flipping this book. We are of the same kind. We are captivated by ancient and exquisite architecture, by the remnants of once-glorious civilizations, by the joy of walking, eating simple food, and staying in clean small inns, by light and by gaze. I am like you—I am not a professional traveler, I don’t love adventure, and I love life more than anything else. But I am also like you, a little more greedy than others, always wanting to go further and higher. So we set off, like we did when we met a love that shook the world—erasing the dust of ideals along the way.