Traveling Alone in the Himalayas: Maratika

Traveling alone has its advantages. For instance, you can go wherever you want and however you want. In my case, I went to one of the most sacred places in the world for devotees of Guru Padmasambhava, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism: the cave where he attained immortality (by unifying with the Buddha of Infinite Life according to legend). My journey to this amazing place included traveling by plane, bus, foot, dump truck, hand-made bamboo suspension bridges, and hundreds of miles of single lane mountain roads.

Another big advantage is the opportunity to bask in the kindness of strangers, and thus make new friends. There was no guidebook available for the area I went to, known as Maratika to Tibetans and Haleshi to Nepalis. All I knew was I had to fly to a place called Lamidanda and then try to find some other pilgrims to tag along with. I arrived around lunch time at the tiny, rural airport (the only one I’ve ever seen with zero buildings on the premises) and as I was waiting, spotted a group of Tibetan monks and nuns. I struck up a conversation and when they heard the words coming out of my mouth, they remarking to each other, “he speaks just like a Tibetan!... But he’s white!” They soon became my friends and my guides to the holy cave. I treated the group to lunch and they took me along on their chartered bus along the exceedingly bumpy and cliff clinging single lane mountain road to the sacred caves of Maratika.

We arrived after three hours and it soon became clear that this was no ordinary place. Every hill and rock feature in the area had many layers of spiritual significance for Tibetan Buddhists. The three main mountains there were thought to be sacred abodes for the Buddhist deities of Wisdom (Manjushri), Compassion (Avalokiteshvara) and Power (Vajrapani), respectively. Each of these mountains have sacred caves where many great masters have meditated over the past 2,000 years. The central mountain, and the focal point for pilgrimage, belongs to Avalokiteshvara. Guru Padmasamvhava meditated here for three months with his wife, the Indian Princess Mandarava, and together they were blessed by Amitayus, the Buddha of Infinite Life, with immortality. There are many foot, head, and body prints of Padmasambhava in two of the caves and a large stone thought to be the vase that Buddha Amitayus used to bless them.

The caves are enormous and can host large groups of worshipers. They are also home to thousands of bats, who are believed to be constantly reciting the mantra of long life. These bats must themselves be immortal, as they are equally active at all hours of the day and night. There are four crevices in the main cave that are used to test one’s level of merit versus sin and whether one will be reborn in higher or lower realms. In addition to gaging one’s karma, they have the dual effect of purifying sins at the same time. Despite my 6’ 4” frame and round belly from eating lots of rice at the monastery, I managed to make it through all four (though not without accumulating a lot of ancient dust on my clothes while I cleaned away my bad karma).







I spent the first night there at a crummy over-priced guest house with a mouse squeaking a lullaby to me throughout the night from across the thin whicker wall. The next two nights were positively blissful in a tent at the camp ground I helped my friends to set up by a river. Conversing with like-minded Tibetan Buddhists over delicious campfire food was a highlight of my trip. The second day there, I took a long stroll with my new friend Khenpo-la, a prominent disciple of Penor Rinpoche, the former (late) head of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. There was a great master staying at the monastery by the cave that we were told was not possible to meet because he was in a closed meditation retreat. His name is Taklung Tesetrul Rinpoche and he is an octogenarian living Buddha whose tractor beam of compassion cannot help but inspire and amaze you. I first met him in 2005 at Shyalpa Monastery. Khenpo-la had a hunch as we walked by the monastery that Rinpoche would be in the courtyard and that we could meet him. Sure enough, as we entered the monastery, there sat the great master taking a break from his meditation. We bowed to him and made offerings and enjoyed 15 minutes of conversation followed by a blessing. He had presided over a ceremony in 2008/2009 called the Rinchen Terdzod, which is a four month series of empowerments from Guru Padmasambhava’s treasure teachings cycle. I asked him if he would do it again in a few years, and he laughed heartily, saying that if he were to do it just for me (as opposed to the countless thousands that attended the last one), it wouldn’t be so bad, as he could do it in just one month instead of four.

On the third day, Khenpo-la and I went to one of the main caves and enjoyed a rare treat—“nectar” magically emanating from the cave wall. This is believed by the faithful to be a miraculous blessing from Guru Padmasambhava/Buddha Amitayus which grants great blessings of longevity and protection from premature death when consumed. I collected some in a bottle to share with any others who may have faith in this “fountain of youth” type of water. We then were guided by some local 8-year-olds to a Manjushri cave, which can only be accessed by climbing a rickety bamboo ladder. We both had very profound meditation/prayer sessions there and later in the main cave. At places like this, one’s experience while meditating is amplified by 1,000,000 fold in poignancy and profundity.

Some great masters, Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Khamtrul Rinpoche, flew in by helicopter on my last day there and I enjoyed meeting them and receiving blessings before my long trip to India. Maratika is a place like no other. If you have faith in Guru Padmasambhava, please make sure to visit there at some point in your life.

I then set out on foot along a winding mountain road to the towns beyond that would eventually take me to India. I walked ten kilometers before encountering my first town, where I had some lunch. A group of 35 youth from the town came in to the small store that made me ramen noodles to watch this strange, tall creature with white skin. I then hitched a ride in the back of a dump truck with a group of about 20 other travelers. I felt quite a bit like a piece of corn on a hot frying pan, banging around from one wall of the truck to the next as we rumbled along the mountain road. I had found a great walking stick that I carried along with me, but it lost a lot of its charm after one of the fellow passengers inadvertently vomited all over it.
On this crazy ride, I met a wonderful man named Raj who was a mechanic in the Indian Airforce. It turns out that he and his family were going along the same route as I and invited me to tag along. After the dump truck ride, we walked along a rickety bamboo bridge, clearly made by amateurs without consulting with an engineer. We managed to make it across the 200 foot wide river without falling into it, however. We hopped on a bus, which precariously navigated the windy mountain roads and managed to avoid any head on collisions with the dump trucks that crept along the opposite way. We spent the night at an open-air hostel and took two more buses totaling 12 hours to the town he lives in near the Indian border. There, I was treated to a spectacular home-cooked meal and had the opportunity to clean literally two pounds of dust and dirt off of my clothes and body.



I am now in Silliguri, on my way to Sikkim. There was a hullabaloo after initially receiving news about my visa to Bhutan (it turns out the person who told me was misinformed). I have some high profile people trying to help me get in, and it is a 50/50 chance at this point. Either way, I greatly look forward to my next Himalayan adventure and will report back to you in a few weeks.

Pokhara’s Pack of Tourist Wallet-Eating Piranas

The Lonely Planet guidebook lost a little bit of credibility with me for some of its glowing praises of the Western Nepal town of Pokhara and its lack of warnings for the various con artists and tourist wallet-eating piranas that lurk along the area known as “lakeside.” According to the guidebook, Pokhara is an idyllic and laid-back mountain town. It highly recommended getting a shave at a local barber as being a pleasant cultural experience with the perk of getting a nice massage afterward. It said the total package would cost about $4. With that in mind, I hopped in the barber chair and asked for a shave.



He went to work and I spoke with him in Nepali, telling him this was my forth time to Nepal but my first time to Pokhara. I didn’t really notice it at the time, but it turns out the razor he was using was probably dull because it left both stray whiskers and some bumps on my face. Part of the shave package is the massage, so I more-or-less enjoyed a somewhat amateurish back rub for the next 15 minutes (someone forgot to tell him that there are no tense muscles on the spinal cord itself). I asked him in Nepali how much it costs (expecting the $4 figure that Lonely Planet quoted). He put up a number on his calculator equivalent to $25 US dollars. I laughed at him and told him it is 1/8 that price in Kathmandu. He said that Pokhara is more expensive and that I should give him $25 for a mediocre shave and an unskilled massage. I was quite angry at that point, and threw the equivalent of $7 on the table, which was all I was going to pay.

I then went to use the “internet phone” to call a friend, expecting the same rates I get in Kathmandu. When it came time to pay the bill, I discovered the rate was literally 15 times more than in Kathmandu! It turns out that there is some kind of association for the tourist district that sets that rate and the other places in town have Kathmandu rates for the locals to pay. I also paid more for one hour of internet use than I would for 5 full hours in Kathmandu.

Fortunately, I learned to avoid any service that does not have set prices and the rest of my stay went quite well.
(That included walking several miles instead of paying 10 times the local rate for a taxi). The second day, I rented a moped and toured all four Tibetan refugee camps in the area, along with their temples, farms, and homes.

We then drove up to the top of a hill where the World Peace Pagoda is situated, an enormous and beautiful Buddhist monument with stunning views of the Pokhara lake and the Himalayas beyond.

That night, I went out “with the boys” and had a few beers (two locals I had met and the cousin of my friend who lived there).

On the third day, I woke up early and went to the top of a hill to do some tandem paragliding with a Serbian professional.
We were both harnessed in and connected by rope to inflatable wings. First, you get the wings into the air the same way you would with a kite and then you literally run right off a cliff and begin to soar through the sky like a bird! In order to gain altitude, you have to go around in circles, which gave me quite the stomach ache.



Things calmed down after that, though, and I took some photos and videos. Unfortunately, there is only two hours of electricity per day in Kathmandu and during that time, the internet is slow as molasses, so I won’t be able to post any videos until I get back to the amazing phenomena of 24/7 electricity we enjoy in American cities.




After lunch, my friends and I went to the International Mountaineering Museum, highlighted by an exhibit to the Abominable Snow Monster (yeti). There were also pieces of original equipment from the first ascents of some of the world’s highest mountains. I posed next to some statues of local Himalayan people in this photo.


That afternoon, I went to the home of a young Nepali man I met at a bus stop and he gave me a traditional Nepali hat called a topi and a delicious meal.

He said that I am now his brother and one of his closest friends. He promptly invited me to come to his village and stay with him the next time I come to Pokhara.

We finished off our trip to Pokhara in grand style with a sunrise hike to the top of a hill where you can see the full Himalayan range of Annapurna, before taking the bus back to Kathmandu.

Final Destination, Nepal Edition

There is a popular movie series called Final Destination depicting graphic accidental deaths. It is quite intriguing, showing how cause and effect can lead to bizarre, fatal situations. For instance, a person leaves something on the stove, which catches fire, and then the person comes in to put it out with the bathroom towel, which naturally catches fire, so the person climbs down the fire escape, which malfunctions, and the person falls to the ground, and is then beheaded by the ladder falling down on them.


--Painting at a temple in a Tibetan refugee camp in Pokhara--

Accidental deaths have played a prominent role in my experience here in Nepal the last week. It all started when my friend Gautam told me a story of his friend, a Sherpa man from the mountains, who spent his early years as a trekking guide before marrying his Austrian trekking client and moving to Austria. He and his wife had just eaten dinner at Gautam’s house in Kathmandu two weeks before. The day before I met with Gautam, the man was going on a hike in the Alps and a freak avalanche came down and killed him.

The next day, my friend invited me to come to a bar near a major intersection close to my neighborhood. I declined because I had to leave for the mountain town of Pokhara the next morning. Within an hour of that call, a city bus that was racing two other buses in a reckless and juvenile competition, sped out of control onto a crowded sidewalk, killing six people and injuring dozens. The locals were enraged and torched all three racing buses to a crisp as they fought off police and blocked Kathmandu’s major highway for three hours.

Two days ago, my friend and I were attending a Tibetan cultural performance in Pokhara, which was meant to raise money for Tibetan schools. Our friend, a comic, was the M.C. With about 45 minutes to go in the show, two members of rival Tibetan refugee camp gangs started exchanging words, and one smashed his motorcycle helmet over the other’s head. After some punches were exchanged, the other took out a 2 foot long knife (pretty much a sword) and stabbed the other right in the center of his chest plate below his ribs. Many people screamed and evacuated the concert hall right in the middle of a performance. As my friend and I looked on, the boy’s friends helped him out of the concert hall. About 20 feet from us, we saw him, with 14 inches of the knife handle sticking out from his chest and his shirt soaked with blood. He thankfully survived after two full bags of blood transfusions.

Yesterday, my friend and I were returning from Pokhara in a taxi, and as we approached the hill to the monastery, came to a stop. I looked ahead and saw a dump truck full of rocks stopped in the middle of the road. Beneath the truck was what
appeared to be a man doing some maintenance under the truck. However, the driver got a better look at him and saw he was actually dead. We got out and saw that an 18-year old boy from the nearby Handicapped Handicraft village (a place similar to Goodwill employing handicapped people) had been run over by the dump truck. The accident was not caused by reckless behavior, but by unfortunate happenstance. Just as the truck was coming up the corner, building up speed for the steep hill, his front tire clipped the handicapped boy’s crutch and the boy fell down and his head was run over by the rear tire. The top of the boy’s skull was severed and his brain had become dislodged about 3 feet away. A stream of blood flowed down the hill, indicating that the accident had happened within a minute or so of our arrival. The driver had fled and there were no eyewitnesses. Even though the accident happened within a few feet of a town’s main intersection, we were the first on the scene. I said some prayers that the boy’s spirit might find it’s way to a better place, believing that his spirit was violently flung from his body (how ghosts are made).

It is a very quiet town with very little traffic, so the people were in total shock. Some women cried and some young boys went closer to get a look at the carnage. Some people from the handicraft village arrived later, and apparently expressed their rage at the situation by setting fire to the inside of the truck. The police came to restore order and the crowd was relatively calm after that. My friend requested that I take some photos of the accident, the least graphic of which I am putting here.

The incident hit close to home at our monastery, as the truck was headed to dump rocks for a construction project we are working on. Those rocks never arrived, and sadly, the boy will never again make it to work at the handicraft village.

Tibetan Buddhist Protection Cords

For the vast majority of the past 10 years of my life, I have told people with all sincerity that the cords hanging around my neck, which contain the blessings of several living Buddhas from the Himalayan region, are my health insurance. The effectiveness of my “policy” has been tested several times, from a high speed bike accident on the Manhattan bridge (the other bike involved smashed into pieces, but neither of us sustained an injury) to climbing slippery dead trees in a lightning storm to hang prayer flags at a New York meditation center. The cords seem to be quite effective at protecting me from danger.

The protection is provided by a sacred knot that is prayed over and blessed by a high master and worn around the neck of faithful disciples. One of my main protectors was an amulet that contained the protection cord knots of the major living Buddhas of my tradition, such as HH Chatral Rinpoche, HH Trulshik Rinpoche, HH Taklung Tsetrul Rinpoche and HH Dodrubchen Rinpoche. I wore this amulet along with the highly coveted “sungdi nakpo” of the late HH Minling Trichen Rinpoche every day for the past five years. The sungdi nakpo is a black compilation of 9 knots that was blessed by a living embodiment of Guru Padmasambhava (the 2nd Buddha and founder of Tibetan Buddhism). Its protective powers are renowned throughout the Himalayan region and I still meet people today who swear by them and wouldn’t trade them in for $1,000,000 cash. Another cord that I have worn every day since 2004 is a medallion containing the sacred image of HH Chatral Rinpoche on one side and Guru Padmasambhavha on the other side. It was given to me and personally blessed by HH Chatral Rinpoche himself. One time, a Tibetan man asked to see it and wanted badly to keep it himself, on account of how hard it is to meet with HH Chatral Rinpoche and how powerful the blessings and protection of the medallion are. His friend had to pry it out of his hands in order to return to me.

During the 1950’s and 60’s, the Tibetan resistance army from Kham (eastern Tibet) was very famous for their protection cords and amulets which reportedly made them impervious to harm. Even the Chinese soldiers began to believe in them and the power of the cords was feared even more than the fierce soldiers themselves. At night, a Tibetan soldier would hide his protection cord and amulet, which were far more valuable than any weapon could be, in case he was captured by a Chinese soldier.

I had the good fortunate to go to the home of HH Chatral Rinpoche last month and make offerings. In return, I received a new protection cord from him, which I will cherish for the rest of my life. This week, my protection cord collection grew quite a bit, not through my initiative, but through circumstances attributable to fate. First, I met with a Buddhist lama friend of mine who was a student of HH Dudjom Rinpoche. He gave me a rare blessed object on a protection cord that he says he rarely gives out and asked me to keep the details a secret.

A few days later, I met him again to take a day trip and he said he felt we should visit Lama Tsering Wangdu Rinpoche, a highly realized Tibetan Buddhist master. The experience was amazing, complete with many profound blessings and a special three-in-one protection cord that he only gives out in special circumstances. The first of the three is a special kind of 9-knot sungdi nakpo that provides protection against nine types of dangers, in the tradition of the Tibetan Buddha Padampa Sangye. The second is a special Guru Padmasambhava protection group of knots that he said he prayed over for several months. The third is an amulet with a double vajra on the front and a special mantra on the back, filled with many sacred protective substances.

With all of these protection cords working for me, I many never need health insurance again!

All of these recent blessings led to some exciting news: that I received a Journalist Visa for Bhutan. That means I will be able to spend 10 days in this amazing country. Normally, that is not possible for income-less people like me because a Tourist Visa entails a minimum of $2,500 in fees for 10 days (not including transport to the country) My total expenses will be a fraction of this. For this good fortune, I sincerely thank all the masters I have met and Guru Padmasambhava for answering my prayers.