Funeral in Badhouri

The sun was high when we started walking. The track led from the road, quite flat, past scattered houses. Below us spread the Pokhara valley and and to our left the mighty snow capped Anna Purnas.

We walked for about three hours, stopping once for tea in the village of Badhouri. I had fallen asleep on the coach, and drifted off here in the sun too.

Our destination was a tea shop and lodge higher up the hill. We arrived about an hour before sunset, and I lay for a while on a little hill nearby, with a littler brook bubbling up watching the vista below.

We passed a funeral celebration a few hundred metres below our final stop, and the atonal chanting and syncopatic drumming drifted over me and my eyes closed again and I nodded off.

It is easy to dream in the mountains. There is something about the mighty and almost unnaproachable beauty of the peaks, the cool clear air, and the physical exercise that takes you away to distant places.

I dreamt of my future again, what I would do, where I would go, what I would be. As my return date gets closer, like the mountains before me, these questions also loom large.

When I got back to the lodge, I spent a while watching the people at work. A man was making planks with a hand axe and a plane. He had a pencil behind his ear and a tape measure tucked into his belt. The women were chopping vegetables for supper, gossiping away occasionally shrieking with laughter. All bathed in the golden light of the sunset.

Deepak told me a bit more about the funeral over supper. 'The owner here, is a lama. He has gone down to chant at the funeral, but he comes back here afterwards.

'Funerals are a big deal. They cost a lot of money, maybe £7000. It goes on for thirteen days. Relatives and the villages help out with the money'.

At the communal table a couple of men were drinking somenthing called Roxy, a home brewed grain wine made in a still at the back.

'The day after tomorrow, big festival'. One of them slurred at me, reeling slightly. It was difficult to make out his words. 'At the lake. Many pilgrims. You have roxy with us?'.

I declined, but after they had gone, had a glass. It was not as strong or as fierce as I feared. It was freezing, but without the sun, the air was chill, and it took the edge off.

The sky was filled with stars, more than I had seen before. I crept off to bed and slept more soundly than I had in weeks.