Month: May 2012

Hi Folks

Hi Folks,

I first heard of Mustang: The Last Forbidden Kingdom when I was thirty years old. I knew I would one day find and explore this ancient Tibetan land. I recently completed an eighteen-day, traditional Himalayan trek, with guides, Sherpas and cooks, to Mustang, now within the borders of Nepal.

This profound experience so altered me in some indefinable way that I am compelled to write about it with the hope that you will feel some of what I felt and experience the joy and freedom that defined this trek. I knew having this show and opening party was a mandatory event long before I left Nepal. Most of the smaller pieces in this show I found in the villages we passed through between the 13,000 ft. passes we climbed. Each piece was loaded on the backs of mules, the same way traders have done for some 30 centuries. It’s the real thing. I never imagined I would be dragging treasures through these high passes. David: Mule-Man-of-the-Himalayas brings you some of the most real everyday life artifacts ever seen! Funny, but it’s true. I laugh at the madness of what I do. I laugh with joy. I laugh at the unexpected discoveries that comprise the best story I’ve ever told. I laugh because I love life with its endless fears and pain, beauty and magic, annoyances and loves.

This is what I found: sweet people, silence, brotherhood, peace, joy, and love. I also found a dozen monastery doors, portable Tibetan Buddhist shrines, folk art, and a host of other treasures.

I sometimes think I should act like a museum curator, scholarly and erudite. I’m not. I’m a mad man on the loose finding extraordinary pieces from unexpected places. I’m motivated by beauty, awe, and fun. I live to discover, create and share the heart and soul of the cultures and people of where I have been and what I’ve found. What to do?

David

Authentic Mustang

Trekking in the Himalayan Kingdom of Mustang was everything I’d imagined and much more.  The land was shockingly beautiful at every turn, the people endlessly sweet, and the villages simple and incredibly photogenic.  The trekking itself was often extremely hard, testing my physical and psychological limits for hours at a time.  Fortunately, I had no altitude sickness, even though the 13,700’ passes took every ounce of strength and determination I could muster.  The air is thin up there, however, within minutes of crossing a pass, I was happy to hike on, as if no trial ever existed.  Pain is forgotten in the face of such beauty, joy, and a powerful sense of accomplishment.  The trek was about living in the present.  It was a joy to be free, “off the grid,” and filled with simple happiness.  That joy grew each day, as the world I once knew receded and the now became the all. Continue reading Authentic Mustang

The Horseman

Often, the sweetest times slip by unacknowledged.  The day we rode horseback from Mustang’s capital, Lomanthang, population 800, to some newly opened caves near the border of Tibet, was a painful one.  The land we needed to hike, to the caves and back, was both too high (over 15,000 feet) and too far (about 15 miles) for us lowlanders to cover in one day so we went on horseback. Continue reading The Horseman