28.10.2004

Gone Trekking

Singalila ridge. One foot in Nepal, one foot in India. Five days trekking from tomorrow with gaze drawn to Kangchendzonga. Tibet to the north, Bhutan to the east, and raw beauty at all points of the compass.

Sweet. Five days, tentative accomodation - hassles with Indian army hinted at. Only verbal skirmishes perhaps? Any good cricket jokes welcome. I'm just reporting what the tourist office said. For dramatic effect of course. Truth is we have a guide. We are doing the most popular trek. We are off no beaten paths. But it sounds dangerous, and we novice trekkers are now become heroic adventurers!

Which is perfect. We are living in times of Heroes, times in which the Heroic Philosophy is back in vogue. Full circle. Fanatical belief in Great Men not seen since Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin. Dangerous Men like Bush and Howard scour the ground for cracks to pry open and create disasters that call for Great Men - ah - just like them. They can form Gangs and call themselves the Carlyle Group and can actually be that blatant. Thomas Carlyle wrote the book on Heroes and Hero Worship, didn't he?

What does this have to do with our trekking! Well, we'll be disengaged up here while the US hopefully engages over there and tilts the world back into a relatively harmonious daily revolution. If not we might even feel the wobbling downward spiral as we come down the mountains on November 2nd. If Bush is re-elected Nietzsche was right, if a little premature.

We'll meditate in the mountains on a positive outcome and see the beauty that exists whatever the case. A night on Sandakphu (3636m), a night on Phalut (3600m). I already said elevation is important. Anyway spend enough time walking through Mother Nature and it becomes clear Nietzsche was wrong.