Every morning we awaken to the smell of burning juniper wafting in the air. The smoke creates a pathway from earth to the sky. The smoke creates a connection between this world and the spiritual one. Aromatherapy and spirituality...Welcome to a new day!

Today, we hiked up to the Hundred Rupee Lama. A lama is a Buddhist monk that has achieved enlightenment. The Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of Buddha.  The 100Ru-Lama is 95 years old and lives in a house built into the cliff. His daughter and two granddaughters live with the lama. Upon arrival, we remove our shoes and then we each in turn kneeled in front of the lama and received his blessing and a knotted necklace, a sundgi. We are the wear the necklace for three days…That’s the expiration date for the luck. The necklaces can then be put in a Chorten wall or kept.  Our prayer flags were also blessed in a ceremony.  We will hang one to assure good luck before crossing Thorung-La Pass. This blessing and hanging of the prayer flags is felt to be vital for good luck before attempting any of the high passes and peaks.  Our flags must now be stored in the bag they were blessed in and must not be packed below anything else. We have careful flag care instructions!

ACAP (Annapurna Conservation Area Project) group is based in Manang and they invited HRA and us to dinner last evening to celebrate the end of the season.  Greg’s group (HRA) shares equipment and people with ACAP and developed a strong relationship as a result. The party was EPIC! They held the party in a 20 by 20 room that doubled as the kitchen, dance floor and a wine bar. The locally brewed wine is called “Raaxi” For Americans the best comparison is Tennessee moonshine directly from the still!  We arrived at 6PM and finally left around 11 pm. There was singing and dancing the entire evening. The many various songs were explained to us as “expressions of longings”. One song would end and then several suggestions for new songs until the next were settled on. We played local drums, brought the tambourine and guitar from clinic and everyone simply joined in when the verses repeated.  One chorus was “sometimes rafting, sometimes trekking, la-la-la-la-la”. The amazing part of the dinner-party was the friendliness of everyone.  Everyone simply looking for a reason to smile and everyone was singing and dancing nonstop for four hours. Even the children. One of the women is a very good traditional Nepali dancer and was fun to watch her hand movements. Our group contributed our versions of Lola, American Pie and the Manang modified version of Country Road.

Hopefully we were good guests and their only comment might be on our bad singing!  We finished the evening doing a circle dance together that thanks the guests for coming and the hosts for hosting.  The walk back to our hotel was in total darkness and we could see stars just like you see while camping on top of a Colorado 14-teener.

From the Trek to the Lama in the morning to the local ACAP party in the evening it was a truly memorable day in Nepal. 

Lama of Parken Gomba	Parken Gomba

Team - background Mt. Gangapurna