It’s now three days since I returned from Sarankgot and life has predictably settled back down into much the same rhythm it had before I left. But I’m hopeful I can manage the challenges of commune living with a little more grace and detachment. The folk here, at least up here on the floor where I stay, were gratifyingly happy to see me come back. As I write out on my balcony, the valley falls away to Phewa Lake and the distant heights beyond with Shiva sitting in quiet contemplation. It’s a farming community with a little tourist development at the guesthouse level, but there’s no question that it’s still largely life on the land here. The rice, planted into the monsoon wet paddies a few weeks ago has grown a lot since then, casting its vivid emerald greenness everywhere.
Here the household has settled back down to the seven long term guests that form the core of the guesthouse, plus the family and the occasional more itinerant traveller staying a night or two. There are few of these given travel here is still very restricted. We’re an eclectic bunch certainly, but I’m not sure if you could describe us as being lotus eaters or simply new age travellers. On the top floor live the young Australian guy, here since last year and a young Chinese man, also a long term resident, who sings at the top of his voice from time to time. He wears his long hair loose and wild, and before I moved to live here, seeing him from a distance on his balcony, I formed the view that he was a woman of indeterminate ethnicity. How wrong first impressions can be. Both play guitars.
On this floor there’s me as the resident Brit, who loosely passes as a ‘spiritual seeker’, Saiva[i] and writer. I play no musical instruments however, nor do I sing (a mercy to all). Then there’s the German lad and two of the three Brazilian Saiva yogis, the third living on the ground floor, but spending much of his time up here. Their musical repertoire has already been described. The family running the establishment varies in size depending upon who of them is visiting. Their son is responsible for running the business which he does with admirable skill, as well as being a promising cook of international cuisine and a motorcyclist who’ll happily take you for a white knuckle ride down into the town and all around the mountain roads. They are friendly and helpful and will always do their best to make your stay comfortable and enjoyable.
But for the most part they tend their organic small holding of cultivation terraces and the ongoing demands of the agricultural year: the ploughing, sowing, harvesting, tending the family’s buffalo and chickens. For breakfast every morning there’s always a free range newly laid egg.
Below as I write some establishment from down in the valley is playing “The Shape of You” (aka I’m in love with your body) loudly. It clashes strangely with the otherwise normative rural life and country noises, mixing improbably with myriad bird calls, bellowing of buffalos and bleating of goats, dogs barking, children playing and always the ubiquitous cockerels crowing loudly and incessantly throughout the day, never just dawn. The weather is certainly improving now, with more sunshine and open skies and much less rain. We haven’t had a storm for well over a week now. In the way of life, with the opening skies of course I know that those oh so elusive mountains behind the ridge, mostly hidden from view during my brief stay up in Sarankgot, will likely be fully visible once more. Well, so it seems my brief trip there was by way of a preview and their full glory awaits me sometime in the future.
[i] A ‘Saiva’ is the name given to someone who follows the branch of Hinduism which revers Shiva as the Supreme Being (aka God).