Sunrise Mojo

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Kathmandu, Nepal 32 Years Old

First blue-pink glow of morning light breaks darkness over blue ridgelines of Himalayas and the rooftop of our guesthouse in Kathmandu.

Ragged prayer flags flitter in the endless breeze and a calm Nepali girl swings a golden smoking vase in slow circles across the four-story canyon.

Serenity overwhelms the mind, all but the subtlest nerves for today’s journey…

Today we will rent motorcycles and ride west across the mountains of Nepal with no plan, a cheap map in a foreign language, and one objective: ride west as far as possible.

After a few pots of milk coffee we pick up the motorcycles, latch down our packs, and dash out into the chaos of traffic without laws on 220cc Bajaj Avengers,

There is no such thing here as “jaywalking” or “lanes,” or “stop signs.” pedestrians, cows, bicycles and dogs move, stand, or lay down at random.

Vehicles cross into oncoming lanes without warning.

Trucks and busses drive full speed into hoards of smaller vehicles, expecting the pack to separate.

Consistent, relaxed, high-attention flow-state is crucial to process the anarchy…

An hour later, we escape the city, but the danger is still just as real.

Massive reckless colorful trucks barrel down twisty, blind mountain curves, spewing thick clouds of black smoke we wear bandanas to keep from inhaling.

Before departing, we’d mounted a four-foot-tall bright red Nepalese flag on a stick on the back of the red bike to stir the pride.

The smiling Nepalis loved it, pumping their fists and cheering as we pass through little towns.

After three intense hours of winding mountain riding, we stop by a small cart on the side of the forest road to get water.

A bold little Nepali girl with a sweet smile tugs on my shirt and asks if I’ll take her picture. Her face remains perfectly real, perfectly sweet, just looks right at me, pure.

Then she asks to show her how to take mine.

I ask her if she wants a gift from America, she says yes and I give her the only thing I have, the crispest American dollar in my wallet.

She receives it with both hands and holds it across her nose like a blanket and savors its scent with eyes closed. She pulls it from her face and looks at me with bright eyes, then breathes it in again.

We have to move on and so I look into her clear eyes, as Nepalis always do, and bow to her a tall Namaste.

She presses together her little hands and bows, slowly, with total sincerity. Her small solemn voice speaks “Namaste.”

It is my favorite dollar I’ve ever spent.

We pull back onto the curving mountain road and race like banshees to make the next mountain village called Gurkha by sundown.

We arrive at dusk and roll real slow down the main road. A pack of children runs alongside our bikes as we pull up to a small guesthouse on the left side of the dirt road.

A cheerful man bursts through the front door with a giant enthusiastic smile and arms open wide, and in a loud voice begins singing and swaying from side to side.

The pack of children gathers around to play with the big Nepali flag, and climb on the bikes, singing along to what we now realize is the Nepali national anthem!

“Welcome!” the excited man beams, “thank you for bringing such good energy to our village!”

He launches into a wild speech about how,

“Every positive action spreads to more positive action, you see?! It carries on and on and on forever!”

We did see, and we were just as glad to be there as he was to welcome us after seven hours riding.

We climbed up spiral stairs to the fourth-story roof and dropped our packs, glad to sit in the perfect silence and watch massive Himalayan panorama fade to night.

Slightly after sunrise, I peer over the edge of our roof to observe the dirt street below.

10 or 15 men work together to load a truck, helping someone move. Women stand by silently, watching kids dance around the scene doing their best to help.

After a few pots of milk coffee, we hike up a thousand stone stairs to an old forest temple on the mountains’ peak, passing old silent forest bikhus sitting on the ground along the quiet trail.

We walk and walk until we reach it’s rocky peak, then sit in silence in the soft wind, watching huge birds circle on silent drifts above.

I felt I could live forever in this town, if only I could hike here everyday to be emptied by this infinite incomprehensible hazy mountain emptiness.

But we had our mission, so we fired up the bikes and everyone waved and we headed west.

There’s a calm fluidity that overcomes the mind after several hours on a motorcycle. Mind and body become a single awareness. The right action happens by itself.

Three hours of twisting mountain switchbacks later we arrived in the lakeside city of Pokhara. The town is bustling, but our search was for peace.

So we rent a little wooden rowboat and push out onto the quiet lake at dusk.

As this hour, everything turns to gold.

The water ripples like orange mercury. The setting sun lights a glowing haze in the spaces between fading mountains,

Sparkling rays shoot through gaps in clouds, dancing beams of light on the small world below.

The only sound the wet lapping of our wooden oars, and wind wisps on wings of tight flocks weaving wild patterns over water.

We row across the mercury to the far bank, speckled in small houses only reachable by boat.

A fisherman stands knee-deep, tossing and draggin a tattered net, while a squatting boy washes clothes nearby in the day’s last light.

The whole lake is perfectly quiet.

We soak in the silence, feeling so far from all the bustle of our lives back home.

So far from status and careers and responsibility and smart phones and stock markets. Now we’re just outside, breathing, floating, alive.

As humans have for thousands of years.

The next morning, something incredible happened.

Pushing deeper into the forests of west Nepal, we rode all morning and still had a ways to go to reach any town, so we were really moving fast.

Twisting through tight curves and dodging potholes, we came roaring up a long hill. A boy sits on a motorcycle on the shoulder of the forested road as his girlfriend steps off.

They stand and talk sweetly as we approach.

Kevin whizzes by.

Just as I reach the couple, the boy kisses the girl goodbye, and then, without looking, u-turns his motorcycle across the single lane road, blocking the whole width only 30 feet ahead.

I was moving far too fast to stop, but I tried anyway, slamming on the front and rear brakes both and, seeing that I would smash into him, tried to swerve the bike with both wheels locked.

This of course sends the bike into a full slide and me bodysledding across the pavement, the noise of my helmet grinding on the gritty black pavement deafenening.

And somehow the moment was incredibly freeing. I let my body go limp.

Despite the stinging of ripping flesh and the slam of bones on stone and metal on pavement, I felt within a candle burning untouchably calm, so deep within the core of this physical body, a place impervious to pain or panic.

Sliding on black asphalt with the same ease as laying in my mother’s arms as a boy, or laying on a blanket in the shade.

Some vibrant space within exists, some radiant slow-churning star, and it cannot be harmed. There is nothing in this world to fear.

It’s real.

My bike grinds to a stop a few feet from the boyfriend and my body grinds to stop a few feet before that.

I stand dizzy and wave off the couple, who weren’t actually trying to help, just looking on confused.

I straighten my crooked helmet, stumble over to my bike, pick it up and ride off feeling stronger than perhaps I ever have.

I catch up to Kevin in the next village. We pull over and sit on a stoop while I clean and bandage the wounds on my shoulder, forearm, and ankle.

Villagers pass, smiling at the flag, intrigued by the foreigner sitting on a dirty stoop covered in blood, laughing while dressing bleeding wounds with toilet paper and duct tape.

Kevin disappears for a second, pops by the open air shop next door and comes back with two big bottles of Nepali beer.

We look at each other and clink our big bottles. “Well…if this isn’t good, I don’t know what is.”

A few kilometers down the road, the one-lane road becomes a rocky, rutted dirt path.

A local says it only gets worse for a next hundred kilometers or so. This is it. Our westernmost point.

We turn off the bikes and soak in the silence. The only sound the endless breeze through red Nepali pride flag and over the wings of sparrows dropping faithfully in flight.

We fire up the bikes and carve our way back up the mountain ridge, up and up and up we climb, until we’re at altitude with massive white puffy clouds and golden eagles soaring on thermals high above the valley.

We slip off our dirty helmets, and sit on old stools under rusty tin canopy on what feels like the edge of everything, basking in the ancient warmth of the untouchable kiln where the flame of life burns forever.