on top of old NAKO

have you ever contemplated nothing...for say 3-4 hrs...i am sitting under a old pine tree looking over one the world's great epic sites...the himalaya mountains...there are so many mountain peaks in my view it would take an atomic calculator to count and remember them all...well ok maybe not that many...there are several hundreds in my site though...next to me are 10 very highly thought of monks that have been buried in a traditional stupa's...i say highly thought of because i am about 1000' above the town of nako and to carry the buggers and all the stones up here must mean that the people like them...that of course is my assumption...i am at about 13,000'...not sure if i have ever been up this high...i know that i have never meditated at this height which is a pretty blissful and easy task...i think this is how a bull dog must feel through out it's life...kind of slow and ok with the that pace...and so i am here after a breathless hike up the mountain which took less than an hour i think...i am sitting perched under a pine...meditating and i realised that i just spent the last 4 hours thinking about nothing...it was so enjoyable...in this thin air environment i can think of nothing better than to just sit...breath....now my curiosity has gotten the better of me and i am thinking about how high the mountains across the valley are...maybe 16,000' possibly higher...they go on for ever...i am reminded of the view i see every time i fly back into vancouver...our mountains go on for ever as well...why haven't i been impressed by this before...hmmm...

last night i slept outside...well sort of...i dragged my mattress and blankets out to my balcony just outside my guest house room...it's covered...and it's as outside as i could get at the time...it was beautiful...the sky was so dark...the stars and the galaxies were so bright...i was reminded of the sky back in lillooet were my bro lives...it can be argued that my outside adventure was a little bit boy scoutish...i don't really care though as i enjoyed myself...so there...
Nako is a beautiful little village nestled into a small valley at 12,000' between giant peaks...there's so much agriculture here and my guest house sits in front of a lush green field of rice and wheat...it's really beautiful to watch the sun set behind the mountains on the other side of the valley...however this tiny little quiet village was a little bit deceiving upon my arrival yesterday...i learned a lot on what to look for in a guest house and i think that the information is pertinent enough to be blog about for the benefit of all...so without further hesitation here are a few things to look for when choosing your guest house...

a.) lush green fields:: now while lush green fields provide beautiful fresh air as well palate of greens that dance in your eyes as the sun sets they also include farmers...now farmers are early to rise mother fuckers and the ones the reside in nako are not the silent types...in fact they are dam right noisy...not to mention a bunch of alcoholics...now i don't know that for sure...biased on the hollering that went on each night...yelling to one other across the green fields on what topics i have no idea...but that lasted well into the early hours of the night...not to be undone by the female farmers who at 5am seem to have no problem about yelling to one another across green fields about the previous nights earth quake warnings perhaps...i went out to my balcony one morning to politely ask mama g if she could shut the fuck up...well one can imagine just how successful that was...it's actually quite remarkable how the villagers have no concept of personal space...it's not uncommon to have a villager walk right on in to answer a question that one asked maybe a day ago just because they finally have the answer...

b.) Steam Roller...Drums of Tar...Piles of stone:: now as i was parking my motorbike behind the 1950's steam roller it never occurred to me to look around at the piles of sand and gravel or the drums of tar that lay just beyond it...i mean well of course there was road work to be done...there's always road work to be done...i just never thought that they would start up a asphalt mixing machine in front of the 4 main guest houses that support this little village...upon descending from my morning and afternoon meditation hike on top of Nako i walked into a stinky noisy stomach turning mess that went on into the wee hours of the night...it was disgusting and every visitor that i spoke to either left the village immediately or the next morning...it never occurred to anyone that perhaps it would have been better for business to locate the tar machines a half km down the road where they were working...

i hope these tips will be helpful for other travellers...

rest in peace

mag