Solitude in Nepal

Tokyo is a city of moths. Human moths that frantically fly about a
magnificent nexus of neon light. It is electric adventure; the kind
that’s created when stir crazy geniuses are locked up in a giant concrete
room. It is the foreshadowing to the end of man’s quest to supercede god.
The garden of delights has almost been reclaimed.

The energy that permeates the air, along with it’s infinite chaotic
permutations, is a symbiotic host. As you lap up the sweet cream of
Tokyo’s sugar coated night life it devours your individuality, replacing it with a stress induced neurotic nervousness.

I, of course, figured this out too late. You can never truly see a problem
until you are separated from it. I had to be separated almost 2000 miles
from my delusional high-life before I understood that I had forgotten who I
was.

When my tourist visa had expired and my money had all been spent, I was spent. My alter-ego had only two masks left in it’s once sizable repetuar, James Bond and Ted Turner, and for a serious actor upon the stage of existence this is a truly depressing state indeed. I collected my worldly belongings, a rutsack, a few mangy clothes and a small collection of
books, and bought a ticket for the one place in the world where I knew
technology did not exist. Twelve hours after taking off from Narita airport I found myself in Nepal.

My first days in Katmandu were like a dream. Literally a dream I suppose
because I slept for almost two days in a flea ridden bed before I was able cope with the change in the cultural pace. Tokyo is a Mecca of speed; observably so by the frantic pace of the daytime city speed walkers and then further excentuated by the bopping party goers beefed up on coke. Nepal on the other hand is slow, leisurely, because, I suppose, it’s a land ruled by the mountains. Anything lying at the feet of those snowy haired Goliath’s feels intrinsically small and inconsequential. That remarkably enough makes you happy because you know that there will always be something grander then you. For the Nepalese, and those lucky enough to share their space, the mountains become a visual representation of god’s beauty and omnipotence.

After my internal clock had adjusted to the cultural jet lag I gained the
mask of a tourist and walked the streets with a wide eyed wonder akin to a
child’s first trip to the circus. Everything was a curiosity, a visual stick of liquorice that my eye’s sucked upon with a candy-cortex addict’s glee.
Adventure was mine again but for some reason I felt that this was still not
what I was looking for.

I knew I needed solitude and Katmandu, although bright and beautiful, could not give it to me. This is when my Crowded Planet, poorly named Lonely Planet, guidebook offered up tbe best advice it has ever given me. I searched the pages for the one town in the book that the writers had the least to say. A short one paragraph explanation told me about a small village named Gorapani in the south-western foothills of the Anapurna mountain range. Insight, that influential nudge by the seraphins of inspiration, explained that this was the spot I had been searching for. Insight, incidently, did not lead me wrong.

I spent 8 hours on a Nepalese bus, a bus that sang it’s creaking death song
as we zoomed down narrow mountain passes. I arrived in the dark. It was
10:30 and power officials turned out the lights at nine. It was just me and
my rut-sack and the Nepalese night covering me like a blanket. I remember
sitting, staring at this bridge which led to the first houses in the
village. It was this rickety rope bridge strait out of some 1950`s jungle
sufari movie. No head hunters unfortunately; only the wise green elders contemplating the deep chasm below. I sat staring at the trees, the moonlight, the swaying wood and rope bridge. I sat and time sat right down there with me enjoying in tandem the value of the moment. The wind, my  friend and protector, rocked the bridge gently making the four ropes chant in modulating voices. The rushing water, distant in the deep canyon below, added its own voice to the night music performing for only time and I. Water, ropes, and the thousands of winged violins thrumming out the melody
to the glorious Nepalese night. Time sat still and so I followed suit. Sipping up the seconds and savoring every last swallow. I am king, I thought, a god in my own perceptual reality. The wind giggled at this and grounded me with a fine burst of loving chastisement. Yes you are god, it said, but mortal and young. An infant actually because I was, I am. What am I to the great green
elders, to the rushing wailing river or my friend time sitting lotus beside me? A child, an infant, a creature of wide eyed wonder. It is because of this
however that they love me. Adore me as all great elders do. I am their
hope. Their energy put to fruition. However nasty or ignorant I may be they
love me all the more knowing that I am a child and will mature in time. Yes
I am God, but young. So young.

The bridge swayed, time sat, and I puffed out thick Dragon fumes that only
a cigarette from a third world country can produce. Thick necks were
forgotten. Pretty parasites were put on the sexual backburner. People became
beautiful to me again, probably because there were none around. I am a
happy hermit, I thought, but corrected my self before the wind had a chance to. I need people. They are my nourishment. They are my mirror. They are the catalysts that ignite passion and love. They may be the spiders and I the fly but it is the fear of them that keeps my prism eyes open as I fly about this wonderful world. Fear of loneliness keeps me moving. Fear of death keeps me awake.

I spent another month in Nepal, enjoying the solitude that only the
Himalayas could offer me. My time spent there, specifically that night I
lounged upon the rope bridge under the thousands of watching eyes, gave me
back my reason, my objectivity. I was my own person again and was ready to
face the world as a true individual.