My New Friend
I was stuck in the jungle, in the middle of the Himalayas. I had no food or water. I could not hear, nor see any rivers. The weather had been changing. It was no longer sunny with bright white rays shining through the thick hemlock canopy, warming my body as I hiked to Ghandruk. With no sun, the forest had become damp and cold. I wondered if there was a storm coming. I wondered if I would be alive when it did.
Weak and disorientated from the lack of food, I tried to find shelter. If a storm was coming, I wanted to be safe. To the left there was a steep hill. If I stood at the top maybe I could see a cave. Struggling, I embarked on my new mission. I shakily started climbing, using my hands to grab any roots I could find. On my way up, I saw a cluster of mushrooms. They were too far to reach. In a state of desperation I stretched to pick one, misjudging the distance. I lost my grip and fell.
When I woke up I saw a peculiar face staring down at me. He reminded me of Sirius Black from the latest Harry Potter movie that I had seen, with shoulder length, curly brown hair, deep black eyes and a scruffy goatee. He was young, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties. He seemed relieved that I was awake. I tried to sit up and realized that I had more strength than before I fell. The strange man smiled at me and in perfect English he told me that he had been watching me. He saw when I fell and had climbed down to get me. Shocked at seeing this middle-aged, Caucasian male speaking perfect English, in the middle of the Himalayas, wearing nothing but animal skin with a bell tied around his neck, I could get no words to come out of my mouth.
He stood up, tall and lanky, and walked outside. It was only then that I realized I was inside of a tent. I got up to follow him. I had so many questions to ask. Who was he? Why was he here? How long had he been here? I opened the tent to see a herd of takin, maybe thirty in total. The taller version of Sirius Black looked back at me, and seeing my surprise, told me that he was a shepherd. He was on his way to Ghandruk to trade some of his takin meat and hide when he heard from another traveller that a hailstorm was approaching. He needed to get his herd to a nearby village where he could rent a place for shelter.
I watched him shout while ringing his bell, and amazingly, all of the takin immediately began to gravitate towards him. In silence, I helped him disassemble the tent, while gathering all of my questions together. I offered to take some of the load. Smiling, he told me that I should take it easy after my fall. My curiosity could wait no more. A stream of questions rushed out, one after the other. Laughing, he started to answer my questions. His name was Cimba. If I remembered correctly, that meant ‘small’ in Tibet. He wasn’t small. I must be wrong. I inquired about the meaning, and he told me that I was right. He said that it wasn’t his birth name, but he didn’t remember his birth name. I asked what he meant. His story fascinated me.
When Cimba was a boy, the doctors in his country found a tumor near his heart. They couldn’t operate on him, and guessed that he had just a few more months to live. His mother was terrified. As a desperate last resort, she took him to the Himalayas. She found a lama who was on his way to a monastery deep in the mountains, and begged him to take her and Cimba, so that they might find the medicinal herbs rumored to reduce the size of tumors. The lama agreed to take them, so together they journeyed through the forests. Cimba remembered being intrigued by the forest. When the leeches would stick to them his mother would scream, ripping them off in fear. Sometimes Cimba would hide them, watching them fill up with his blood. He remembered following beetles while his mother was asleep, running after snakes to his mothers terror, and chasing the water running down the hill to see where it would go. At six years old, everything captivated him. The lama, Choden Rinpoche, was very fond of Cimba, and would sit with him at night, teaching lessons of the Buddha. He would call him Cimba, because he was small for his age. One day it was raining particularly heavily. Cimba was with his mother and Choden Rinpoche when he saw a baby deer fall down a hillside, tumbling down into the river. Cimba ran after it, wanting to help, but also curious about what would happen to the deer. His mother ran after him, and the lama after her. Cimba slipped, and he too fell into the river. His mother jumped in after him. Choden Rinpoche followed the river for days after the rain, searching for any signs of the boy or his mother. On the seventh day, Choden Rinpoche found Cimba, curled up next to a takin and her baby. Choden Rinpoche took Cimba, carried him to the monastery, and with the other lamas and monks, raised him.
The monks wanted to teach him the sutras, teach him how to read and write, but Cimba wanted to be outside and play with the animals. He understood the takin better than anyone else, and would often hunt them to sell their meat to the villagers in the mountains.
“We’re here.” Said Cimba, breaking away from his story.
Completely entranced by my new friend, I wanted to know more. I started to ask him why he never left the Himalayas, but he had walked off before I could finish my sentence. I rushed to catch up with him. He was talking to one of the villagers in a dialect that I did not understand. After their conversation, Cimba told me that in exchange for shelter until the storm passed, he would give one of his takin.
After the exchange, Cimba and I were lead to a long, thin structure, where we were to stay. It was dark now. After helping Cimba tie up all of the takin, we sat down around a small fire and ate some rice with dried mutton and chang, generously provided by the wife of the man whom Cimba had traded with.
While eating, another villager came up to us wanting to sell us some amulets that he claimed would protect us from the coming storm. I quickly retrieved some of my money from my travel bag and paid the villager for the amulet. When Cimba declined to buy one, I wondered why. After dinner, Cimba pulled out a cloth-covered book from under the animal hide that he was wearing and began to recite some mantras. I wanted to know what they were for. He told me that the monks taught him to recite mantras every morning and night, protecting himself from harm and leading him to the path that he was seeking. I asked him what path and he replied with a shrug, saying he had no idea, but he hoped that by doing this he would eventually learn.
As he recited his mantras I felt a wave of fatigue hit me. I retired to the room Cimba had kindly rented for me and was asleep within minutes. My questions for Cimba would have to wait until the next day.
