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| Monday 10/26
We are in Phortse. Four hours of trekking from where we
stayed last night. This is the gateway village to the Gokyo region
Today is a beautiful day. The sun is intense in its’ sea
of blue, and I feel great.
Earlier on the trail, my old nemeses "height fright"
reared up again. The trail was again narrow and the vision
split. The close-up view of the path on my right and the
silver ribbon of the distant river in the bottomless
rocky crevasse on my left, played with my mind. For the second
time that perfect photograph was left un-shot. |
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Dawa’s sharp eyes spotted some mountain goats. It took me a while
to locate them. The slope they were on looked shear and it seemed like they had gotten themselves
into a predicament. I’ve been there: can’t go forward, can’t go
back. Soon, though, they had disappeared around the impossible
knife edged corner of the cliff.
Phortse is a beautiful village. Set on a small piece of flat,
slightly canted land, it is surrounded on three sides by a
bottomless abyss, and the fourth by steep terrain.
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Playing In The Newly Dug Potatoes |
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I wandered through this village, which even though is on a
major trail, is largely unaffected by the tourist trade.
It has two Tea Houses that cater to the trekkers, one
along the trail which is where I am staying, and one more
in the middle of the village. There are no stores or
shops, just the stone homes and a government one room
school house.
The areas around the homes are neat and tidy. The
leaves picked up from the ground and saved as animal fodder for when the winter
comes, the homes surrounded by the ubiquitous potato fields, hemmed
in by meter high stone fences, village trails zigzagging at hard
angles following the stone walls, the slant of the land leading to
the stupa and then the abyss and oblivion: all this spoke to an unhurried, but
hard life. |
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Page 49 |
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