5:50am this morning bed-tea arrived. This wonderful Indian tradition is a treat for guests in most Indian homes. My first experience of bed-tea was at my wife’s family home in Delhi in 1984 when we were first married. Tea and biscuits arrived at our bedroom along with about a dozen extra cups. I was delighted by the tea, but puzzled by the extra cups. Before I could ask my wife what’s up with the tray of cups, the whole family poured into our room and snuggled into bed with us. Question answered. A baker’s dozen of happy, chattering, warm Indian bodies. Bed-tea sounds romantic!
Here in the Kingdom of Mustang, bed tea was my choice of tea or coffee, served at the flap to my own tent, by a sweet, patient, smiling Nepali man, one of the four cooks on the trek. Only one cup was delivered. I’m not the most gregarious person when I first wake up.
Bed tea was followed by a small stainless steel bowl filled with hot water, my bathing water, brought to my tent about 6:15am. Each morning I had to organize my day’s supplies, from cameras and coats to sun block and sunglasses, as well as stuff the sleeping bag, reorganize the duffels and have everything ready for the porters and mule train before 6:30 breakfast. Once the mules were packed and hit the trail, we wouldn’t usually see them again until the next campsite later that afternoon.
Today was windy again. sixty mph gusts occasionally pushed us off the trail. We gained about 1600′ today. That means we climbed 4000′ and went down 2400′ mostly at over 12,000′. After 4 ½ hours of hard hiking, we had lunch in an old Tibetan village with barley field growing along the river. The barley was a glowing green moving in wave-patterns from the ceaseless forty mph winds. This spring green of the barley was in unimaginable contrast to the stark mountains of rock above the 11,000′ level where we spent ninety percent of the trek. I was a goofy, happy kid again today… Everything was joyful from bed-tea to the dust and stinging sand kicked up by the ever present winds. We were in Mustang! Remote Tibet! On a real live trek! Joy was as ever present as the wind.
In the early afternoon, we got stuck behind a large group of trekkers. I started skipping sideways next to our little group saying, “let’s go! Let’s go! I don’t want to look at the back side of these people all the way to camp” My guys were all good sports and passed the lot of them. What I forgot was we were at 11,000′ and I was panting like a mad dog from my antics by the time we passed them all. It was fun. Excruciating, but fun. What else is there to do but play hard and laugh. We all laughed, pushed harder and laughed some more. The Buddhists say life is suffering. Yes. The first step is seeing the truth in that. Next, “Pain is in the body. Suffering is in the mind.” Pain but no suffering today.
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