Mustang

Our village is on the uprise. The medicine factory, first in the region is almost built. A farmer that is growing herbs for the factory requested some special herbs from our journey in exchange giving us food. This was a very good deal since we didn’t have many farmers or food traders in our expedition group. The printing press is taking longer than thought because the carving of the wooden print plates takes very long. Talking to one of my builder friends she explained the model for the new library and it sounds amazing. Im excited to see what it turns out like.

The day we leave for Mustang is here! For those who don’t know Mustang is a region in todays northern Nepal, also historically known as the Kingdom of Lo. The people of Mustang were once practiced the ancient Bon Religion.

Our group got together in the village centre, I had two yaks that were carrying the equipment I made for the group. Every body looked pleased with how the back racks turned out. Karim had talked to Sherpas and convinced them to help him with the climbing task. These Sherpas were from the neighbouring village. Their knowledge with mountaineering was going to come in handy when we arrived at the huge cliff of unstable rock. We looked like we were ready to begin our journey. Chodak, our hunter guide, showed up a little late than the time we presumed to be taking of to Mustang. Right after he joined the group, I made a mandala offering with my fellow ritualist friends chanting purification chants, some prayer flags were scattered off to the wind. We set off.

It was going to be a long journey and I decided to take the yaks along just incase we wanted to bring back more things that we could carry. The journey is going to be hard but just like Chogyam said the bright weather on our departure is a sign of luck. The luck wasn’t on our side in the forest, there were leeches everywhere and they would find a way onto your skin even if you were fully clothed. I hoped for better fortune for the rest of the trip to the caves and back.

We had finally gotten to the cliff side where the caves had revealed themselves. It looked like a honeycomb, so many of them too! It was almost night fall so we decided to resume the next day. Made camp and had dinner. In the morning i woke up with the sunrise to start burning juniper branches, so the path of the climbers can be purified. Ive had knee problems ever since I was a child. I was responsible for keeping the burning fire offering below the climbers.

Such bad luck the first day of climbing Shelby broke her back falling from the cliff stuff. Chogyam being the only doctor did not go climbing to look after her. I don’t know what went wrong maybe the smoke didn’t reach to the point she was climbing at. I felt terrible kept going back and forth the camp and the fire offering.

No body has came down yet so it is yet unknown to me and a few others what these caves hold. I hope Shelby gets a better enough to be transportable, right now it holds life risk moving her at all.

I wait in patience to see what is discovered.