The Silence of Pokhara.

I often find myself drawn to beaches and not to mountains, but this time, in Pokhra, in Nepal, I found a silence. A quiet quality of almost audible purity. There are so many cliches that accompany most peoples rendition of a spiritual experience in the mountains, and they vary as to how relevant they really are. In most cases, many of them are spot on, and i could run through the usual list but i think that there was more to it than that this time. Maybe its where i am in my life right now, maybe its the fact that there was a receptive channel within in me that was open to it. Whatever it was, there was definitely a tangible silence. A calming simplicity that completely negated the prevailing tenets of my mumbai life. This quiet, was the absolute opposite of the frenetic, traffic jammed, noisy and relentless experience that navigating mumbai always is on a daily basis.  I was in Nepal one of my yearly get aways that i try not to miss. Its nearby, its full of familiar friends and places and is the venue for a psychedelic musical festival that always has me smiling and comforted, both by the mad party fun and the familiar faces that come with it. This year, the new aspect to it, was indeed, the quiet that i discovered in Pokhra after the festival. It was a day of recovery from 3 days of total debauched revelry. It was a unique day out of time, where my body was tired, my soul was open and the unassuming natural beauty of the lake and the snow capped himalayan peaks found their way into me. When night falls in Pokhra, the silence is alarmingly eerie to a suburban city dweller like me. There are no cars passing, no people talking, no dogs barking, and unlike Goa, there are no waves crashing on the beach. There is just the sound of, well, the silent night.

The mountains are aged, eternal and timeless in their mute testament to all the mistakes that humanity makes. The monkey business they have to witness as we strive to evolve at their feet. The Nepali people of Pokhra struck me as a strikingly rugged and good looking race. Mongoloid features mixed with other ethnicities, pretty oval faced women, with pink cheeks, old men with etched lines, carved into their weather beaten faces. They were a simple people, who rose with the sun and made the most of the light and set with it, as it glided gracefully into the arms of those mountains and eventually into the belly of the lake. 

I wandered out alone, tourist like, with my camera and my curiosity. Shooting almost relentlessly like a Japanese tourist, i would have to stop to remind myself, that i should simply look at the beauty and soak it in instead of trying to get the right F- Stop to do the best justice to it. I breathed deep and attempted to etch it into my minds eye. There was clean air, clear skies and white fluffy clouds that looked like marshmallows coasting slowly across the sky, aimless and wandering. For that moment i felt the same, aimless, and not concerned as to where I would end up. For the incredibly planned and structured human being that i usually am in my daily dealings with human existence, this plan-less-ness was absolutely liberating ( though those that know me well, would accuse me of scheduling a planned loss of control, by virtue of allocating a day that i would have no plan for).  I simply came out of my hotel and chose to go left on a whim, looking to see what lay on the other side. I walked far down the road, passing small shops that sold your usual manali / goa/ paharganj type ware. Nothing exceptional, very touristy. There was a proliferation of tiny cafes and cute eating spots. They all competed with each other, offering free wifi to the tech savvy travelers of our digital age. I had to admit that having that kind of connectivity next to so much natural rustic beauty is a testament to the way we have begun to evolve as a people in the modern age.  Having walked far enough i turned back towards the way i came, and within seconds, there were dark clouds in the sky and a terrific swirling wind that threw up dust in circles. It advanced down the street towards me like a pack of whirling turkish dervishes. Just at that moment that i chose to turn around a young lady stepped out of shop right in front of me and dropped her mobile phone onto the pavement. It split into three distinct pieces, as most of the old nokia's are designed to do. The body, the battery and its cover. I reached to help her gather the pieces. She said it had happened twice before that day. I smiled and handed her the battery, she smiled and thanked me, struggling to put her phone together. The whirling sand was coming closer and it was now getting in our eyes. We walked together for a while, into it, still wanting to go in the very direction it was coming from. She was from Austria. Funny, I thought. The last girl i met in Kathmandu a year ago, just as randomly at a bar in Thamel, was also from Austria. That, is another story though. :-) It had started to storm and i could tell rain was almost upon us. I saw a black iron staircase to my right leading up from the pavement to what looked like shelter. I motioned that she come up and out of the storm. She shook her head, and did not join me, and walked on into the sand. I leaned out over the railing to watch the last her of her vanish into the swirling sand. I never saw her again. I don't remember her name.  Since i was on the that iron staircase and the rain had started, i ducked into a massage center. No, not a dodgy one, i was in Pokhra, not Thailand. It was a legit establishment that offered trekkers respite for their sore limbs. I decided to make the most of it and since the rain did not look like it was going to stop soon, i decided to go ahead and get a 90 minute trekkers massage. A full body mixture of thai, swedish and deep tissue massage. Highly recommended to anyone who happens to wander around pokhra and would like a total once over that relaxes the whole body. A large matronly lady with strong hands, called Jaya, made sure that she edged out every kind of muscular pain i could possibly have.  The massage ended, and i tried to shake of the almost comatose state of total relaxation i had been lulled into. It was a super quick 90 minutes to say the least.

The rain subsided, and a day, as clear and fresh as i could ever imagine a day could be, is what the storm left behind. A cloudless crisp sky, cold air and an orange setting sun. Friends rang me and said to come watch the sunset at Shiva Cafe, over on the other side of the lake. I made my way there, and went down to the boats that were moored on the edge of the water, and got my hearts fill of a golden orange disc as it sank over a tranquil lake. As i stood by the water and watched the last traces of the light vanish over the mountain, i saw the clear glimpse of a crescent moon and the north star, bright in the murky twilight. Again i felt the silence descend, enveloping my shoulders like a warm cloak. It sent a shiver down my spine. It sent peace into my heart. The evening grew cooler, and the night came in cold and quiet bringing with it the Pokhra bustle of dinner time. We wandered out for Nepali thaali, traditional food that turned out to be not so exciting. Nothing that a wood fired oven, a chilled beer and a slice of cheesecake couldn't fix. I fell asleep that night, to the infinite sound of that peaceful silence, as it entered my soul and spread warmth into my heart.