Vast plateaus of dried earth, patchworks of agricultural lands. The steady tread of my footsteps, firm, determined, each step a kiss to the earth. Larch forests carpet the ground, turning vivid ochre with the autumn sun. The unceasing song of opal milky rivers that burst joyously from towering rock faces, carving scriptures onto bone-worn smooth river boulders. Life giving water. Thick dinosaur ferns gush from the mountainside like lush horse tails. Passing villagers, stooped over grandmothers and grandfathers, thick straps across their foreheads, loaded with wicker baskets larger than their bodies heaped with plates bowls chickens tools vegetables hay wheat Coca Cola firewood teas, up these treacherous paths with nothing but loose sandals binding their feet. And always the sherpas, bags bound by peeling rope, impossible feats of strength.

Tea houses, blue steel roofs, wooden balconies, clustered groups of travelers, snug and constricted sleeping bag nights. Chorten stupas speak through ancient anonymous prayer slabs. Circumnavigating clockwise, we pray to Tibetan and Hindu scriptures carved onto rough stone that echo the shapes of the mountainous landscape all around. The golden glow of shimmering Buddhas and green Taras and fierce deities and embossed inscriptions, many a mystery to me, whilst groves of prayer flags flutter endlessly like sails in bright rapture and dapple shadows onto the ground at my feet.

The worship of stone. A human quest for insight on the true nature of existence, self looking at self, remembering, conveying, reflecting. Each village more remote than the next. The yaks begin to appear – sturdy, dishevelled, grunting, and oddly beautiful. The stone houses now have two floors, yaks below humans above, their inhabitants climbing wooden ladders to stoop into meticulously arranged wood fire kitchens and sacred home altars. Smoke, offerings, golden Buddha eyes, maroon robes, prayer wheels and bells and dark rooms whose edges are laced with tattered parchments of Buddhist scriptures. The gutural rhythmic chanting of the diamond way. Our first sighting of Manaslu the spirit mountain, white capped and watching. Paper-thin sun kissed trees peeling as we rise the hill to Milaropas cave.

Powdered lemon ginger tea and momos of all flavours and spiced masala and dal bat plates and deep fried molten Snickers rolls. Apple season is upon us and so is a profusion of apple pies. We carve our prayers and mantras with our breath on the breeze. Hands brush brass copper bells, caressing the traces of pilgrims past, white paint on my fingertips. Om Ah Hung Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hung. Hot showers a long-gone luxury. Thin air, thin breath, constricted chest, the precise sunlight of high places. 3am alarms to ascend to Larkhe pass, 5200m above the ocean, a sliver of croissant moon lighting the path behind us, the high Himalayas silhouetted by a slow pale rising sun, bright white glaciers beaming ahead. Victorious ascent – yelps of joy. Only a slight ache at my temples. Dead mule carcass turned maroon like the grass brush. More prayers. I contemplate the impermanence of my existence and this incredulous precious opportunity to be alive. Over the peak, crampons gripping on snow, we descend into the lowlands.

In the foreground rise vertical stone turrets, clouds clustering thick, hovering still like a candle flame without wind. Sun drinkers, ice scatterers. A glacial valley whose silt flows into rock unfolds before our eyes. Meltwater lakes wink like shields in the sun. Butter lamps and carved yak skulls, women sheafing wheat in the fields, dodging caravans of mules loaded with gas canisters and colourful collars and bells, swooping drawbridges, mossy madrone and Douglas fir Pacific Northwest misty forests, undulating roots like antlers.

My internal chatter rising and falling like the pace of my steps on the rocky soil, my tender heart expanding into space, mula beads swirling in my right fingers. If viewed from three dimensional space, imagining only a thin gold trace or hologram across a black void, I realise my voyage actually paints a tapestry of whirlpools: my feet tracing  uncountable clockwise spiral around the stupas and chortens; my hands spinning prayer wheels in each of their four walls; my fingers whirling the beads of the mala as it spins on its axis; each of these spirals an anchor for prayer, knotting intention into physical space, like a string being tied endlessly across the land, pulled tight each time a circle is completed. A strange and possibly beautiful spiral mandala. And – these are only my small gestures. Imagine the cumulative tapestry, the shaping of space, the cosmic dance, of all the daily actions of pilgrims and practitioners, across all these landscapes.

Mountains and rivers carve prayer into stone, humans carve prayer onto the mountains and the wind, our steps carve spirals onto the land, and here I begin to detect a pattern, older than time.

More photos to be found here… XX