Day 1 Phakdingma, Roma, celibacy

Its here at Phakdingma  we meet the incandescent Roma, who looks like she has just completed her look-at-me run around the bays in Auckland.Indeed she is a Kiwi, making excuses for living in Australia as we are prone to doing.She is sitting outside in the sun, reflecting on her blizzard un-view of Mt Everest but seemingly happy about it all. She reinforces my view; to not make the top my goal; to be in every moment. But I'd still like to get to Base Camp,3,000 metres above us.
So we think if Roma can make it maybe I can. She also talks about seeing old and overweight folk right up there at base camp, and fit young things crapping out.High expectations and feeling good at the start mean you try to ascend too quickly, with the result being you get sick. I develop anecdotal evidence along the track for my thesis about old and unfit and slow. Being old and unfit slows you down, giving you time to acclimatise.
So after a break, we ascend to two monasteries above the little village of Phakding. I'm feeling a little weird and weak There are no monks here today,just a youngish fellow trying to get the young novices (young boys of about my son Toby's age of 9).The boys are ostensibly cleaning the cold hard stone floor of the main hall, but more interested in beating up the softer boy. I am tempted to intervene; I say aloud why are you all picking on that boy,he doesnt look like he is enjoying it.The boys look startled; they look at me a little quizzically and they are interrupted from their 'fun'. I think they get what I am saying.

Gomba (monastery) above Phakdingma, viwed from the higher monastery

The inner of the same  monastery. Check out those flagstones on the floor and then think no power tools or lifting gear except your arms and back

 We then leave the monastery, and Phinjo signals upward.He is acclimatising us. By going quickly higher, then descending makes acclimatising to high altitude easier. We are amazed at these buildings high up with no flat land.At some time (I wish I knew when) alot of people who were very strong in mind and body hauled blocks of stone, which were themselves cut by hand, up here. Ok its seems like a game: higher and more tenuous wins Buddhas attention.
When I stayed at a monastery in my twenties, it was a sort of  status marker and coming of age for a monastery to establish a 'daughter house'. It made you solid in your intial foundation.
The even higher sub- monastery-perhaps it is a hermitage is deserted. At least except for an old lady who
appears from one of the lodgings. Phinjo says she is the  house keeper attached to the monastery. She is busy hard out texting on her phone.
We see another old kuia below. She is carrying a load of mulch on her back. She starts waving, pointing, gesticulating and shouting. We get a bit scared. Have we transgressed?Have we gone the wrong way? Is she shooing us away? I do the same back,waving and shouting.We speed up,anxious not to cross paths but trying to remain nonchalant about it. I mean,we are 5 big men.After a while we realise she seems to be enjoying it

The old lady who is waving,pointing, shouting at us

On our way down we discuss celibacy, living in a monastery. The guys cant get their heads around it,All they can see is loss of this, loss of that. This life is anathema to the Western mind.Where we come from its all about desire,achievement, competing. I'm in with the monks inner world. I have experienced and continue to experience great harmony and serene joy in the present, wherever I find myself..

Day 1 to Phakding Part 2

The first thing that strikes you about this place,and is soon to be amplified, is the scale of this place. Compared to my New Zealand, everything is huge-valleys,rivers,mountains. The two porters  have appeared from nowhere and are strapping our packs together. Yes, we are walking with a day pack and they are carrying 3 packs each. The kiwi in me is uncomfortable; he is quoting fairness and physical prowess from my shoulder.We realise later that Phinjo had meant to tell us that we should limit our pack weight to 15kg. Dave has enough clothes to cover a Nepalese family. (Later we also try to jetison the load but Phinjo makes it hard,saying "no problem" when we look pained at the massive load hiding the diminutive sherpa porter.
The trail right up the valley has been made by the locals-when I don't know. Large parts of it are flagstones laid by hand.Its easy going for walking and allows your eye to wander.
We have our first encounter with animal trains that ply the route up and down the valley. Donkeys seem to dominate down low. Every animal seems to have a bell around its neck which i first thought was cute and then saw it as torture for the poor animal (and us humans).I'm struggling in myself to be here as I encountered some unexpected expenses and got bailed out by by Dave.
We get easily to Phakding, a lovely small group of marble block buildings 2-3 hours from Lukla.We rest and then take a hike several hundred metres up a steep hill to a monastery above us. You get a feel for the enormous challenge of building something up here. Why did people inhabit these barely liveable outposts such as the polar regions and here? One thought I had was that they would be left alone-there were no resources over which to fight. Its hard,but damn sight easier than the constant threat of ransacking that may have faced peoples on lower,warmer, more fertile land.
From the beginning Phinjo is chanting "Om mani padme hum" (The jewel in the lotus flower?) as we walk, in a lilting sing song fashion.It  reminds me of the rosary chants of my Catholic childhood and no doubt serves to centre oneself,to encourage oneself, and to escape the babbling mind..I am uplifted and carried into this stupendous landscape.

Passing on the left a prayer wheel and ever present reminder of the inscriptions all over the pathways to the Himalaya
"Om mani padme hum"

Cat and stone Buddha-a poem from Katmandhu

Cat and stone Buddha

In the Be

In the courtyard, not accidentally

Buddha is stone still, its

furry Nepalese marble

is not lying,

though reminding me

of still cats

and the capped  uniformed sentry at the gate of the guest house

who nods on my departures and returns

Rascist cartoons and ethnic majority

In NZ, cartoonists (and is no doubt similar in other economies) cartoonists are almost unanimously part of the majority culture-that's why they are employed, because they reflect something in a humorous way to 'the rest of us' which means Eurocentic people.I am amazed, disappointed and saddened that the majority view from 'polls' is that indeed most children in need are in need because of their parents squandering of their resources,uncaring and lazy attitude.This happens to also conform to the Lazurus-like  image of Maori as lazy,uncaring etc. That's why they are poor they say,didn't you realise!

And be careful: this is their perception, not the truth. The truth is all parents want the best for their children, want them to be well fed,want them to prosper and feel happy, safe and confident.I have never met a parent who doesn't want this and I challenge you to find me more that a handful of exceptions.The sad and real outcome is that many are unable to produce it with years,sometimes generations of institutional racism, schooling which favours the majority culture,ways of living,eating socializing and working which do not serve their interests or well being. Which is not to exempt us from the ability we have to make changes.I do not believe in victim culture.either.

But perhaps to recognise that there are very strong forces set in place which make it difficult to even understand that change is possible.

By the way my view (below) of an earlier issue with vaccinating Polynesian and Maori children (a year or two back)  has now been vindicated in a recent pan international study of other peoples studies. Which came to the conclusion that there is indeed a link between infectious diseases and overcrowding. More money wasted on what we already know but haven't the conviction to stand behind.

Day 1 Avoiding crashing at Lukla Airport,Nepal

I thought I might begin this with a little bit about my fellow travellers. I know Dave from the school I used to teach at,Waiopehu College in Levin. He's a teacher there.His son Dan who I met once briefly before we finally got together at Wellington Airport.And Chow,aka Cagatay and later to Dan and me,Chowtang-who hails also from Levin via a long journey from London to Istanbul and then Canada.
I had briefly met Chow at Waitomo caves,on another of Dave's famous Geography trips which i was a helping teacher on.
And Phinjo Sherpa,4 times Everest summiter turned guide. Our relationship went back to my mothers cousin,John Gully,himself a guide. John runs a guided trekking company here and has been in this valley for 25 years. Phinjo is one of his Sherpas,and Phinjo has also climbed with Andrew Hall,the kiwi climber and guide who died in harrowing and sad circumstances protecting a sick client on Chomolongma herself.

Lukla Airport from the concrete wall end (will post a video clip soon as this doesnt look so scary!)

So let's suddenly find ourselves on the plane, minutes before its almost vertical dive in to the Khumbu Valley where one of the most dangerous airports in the world awaits our fate. Lukla airport. Glad to get out of the stinking hole of a city Kathmandu. If ever you need a reason not to create cities then go here,or any other number of cities around  the world.I read in a newspaper article that the government here is annoyed that recent legislation banning and making it illegal to dump rubbish in the streets  has fallen on deaf ears.In fact they were attributing the failure to people not even knowing the laws had been brought in! And I laughed out loud at the thought of policing it.
First glimpses of big peaks. Impossible lone rocks five miles high. Out through the front windscreen this little slab-sided,twin-engined Dornier aircraft, I could see the tarmac zooming in.The big problems with this airport is that 1:it is uphill and 2. it ends in a concrete wall about 6 or 7 metres high (and behind that a hill).3. It is invariably windy and cloudy. It was reasonable day when we arrived,a pattern that was to continue for our whole walk. So we slam into the hard and the passengers cheer. 
"Its a live one!" I shout cheerfully to Dave.
Phinjo tells us with glee that he did not book us to fly on Tara air who had an accident recently in which all 19 people on board were killed. 
Later we were at the airport and Dan witnessed a 'batman' using walking sticks to guide the taxiing plane. I myself saw a guy jumping out of the way of a planes propellers. The 5 planes that can fit on the airport platform are shoe- horned into this space;and they are either all arriving or all leaving.Its nuts-approximately a 5 minute turnaround with passengers,luggage etc. Its like, lets go, the weathers fine!
But never forget,as I said to myself time and time again, that alot of what I see is made for me,a Western tourist(and of late Eastern with the burgeoning middle classes in China and India).
I became aware that the Sherpa people are working for my benefit and that before Europeans' love affair with this place,life must have been very different for these people.

I went to the Himalaya

I went to the Himalaya recently.I would like to share my diary. I've thought about the value of this for a week since I got back.. I have seen too many time- wasting blogs which tell you moment by moment,someones boring day routine including what they had for breakfast. Don't panic;its not going to be a chronological account of my trip,although that will be the structure around which I will write my thoughts as sort of essays.And a couple of sketches and snaps.
With love and kindness,Duncan

Somewhere up there:from left to right Me,Duncan ,Chow,Dave,Dan

Nah, take a Coldral

Winters coming. A few years back we decided to ‘obey’ nature and hunker down, sit by the fire and take a 2 week holiday at mid -winter. This was in response to getting sick every winter, dragging ourselves through the days, feeling lethargic. One day we realized it wasn’t some moral turpitude and laziness that caused the yearly malaise; it was winter and we were connected to it. Winter is a good time to do inside things. It gives time to reflect; to become conscious. You can gather quite a lot of energy over winter, and by the time spring comes you are ready to move. In our ancestral selves this would have meant prepare gardens etc.

I do remember those years when we slowed everything down; we didn’t get sick or depressed. We sat by the fire, played games,read books, went for walks.

Our society makes no mention of winter in the psychological/spiritual/physiological sense. Inside us, we are connected to this world. That’s why we slow down in winter, it’s why we don’t want to get up in the mornings. If we ‘obey’ nature-ie stop the pretence that we are above it and take a Coldral and soldier on.

 If only our work practices allowed for this we would make massive savings nationally.Even if we all took a holiday for 2 weeks there would be no noticeable effect on GDP and productivity. There would be less colds and flu which attach themselves to a weakened host. In fact there could be a rise in every health indicator as people would feel better having rested with family or in nature, travelling  and so on. I propose calling this time of year Winterswait.

It will become a cultural habit like siesta-it works when everyone does it.