Kalopani April 14, 2001 Midday. I think this is Nepali new year though there is no sign of that here. Last night I was filled with a strange lightness after talking with the owner of the High Plains Inn in Tukuche (the cleanest place on the whole trek and excellent food). The owner, a Dutchman, had a harshly unromantic view of Nepalis as an expat, business owner and husband of a Nepali woman from the village. We discussed things back and forth in front of an audience of two young couples in front of the fire, one German and the other Dutch. I ordered my second entree of deliciously squid-like Bamii noodles, donned my rain coat and walked out into the steel grey evening. The path curved up the hillside after passing through one of the most delapidated stupas I have seen (the paitings inside on the ceiling were almost entirely gone). At a wide feild children played and I walked accross to the red stone Gompa on the other side, stealthily hopped over the wall and onto an adjoining roof. Securing the old wood plant doors of the Gompa was an ancient squid-shaped slide lock and I found it opened easily under my touch. Pushing the screeching doors inward I pressed on into the dusty sanctuary, prostrated three times and after some fumbling in the near-dark put on an oil lamp of scrap cloth which I found by the altar. I removed my boots and seated myself half lotus at one side of the altar, stilling my panicky breast which leapt with each wind-blown screeech of the door. I could hear the children outside as I closed my eyes and slowly attempted to visualized the tantric host around me. When I opened my eyes again the room was completely dark except for the dancing orange light of the lamp. Looking over the wall paintings of Gautama Bhudda holding the bowl of devine wisdom (called "Amrta") in his left palm and flanked on both sides by his favorite desciples Sariputra and Maudgalyayana holding Karsils (like a scepter) and dressed in Bhiksus (like a toga). It seems among the people of Mustang, the Manangis and the Thakalis of the Kali Gandaki valley that Bhuddism has degenerated into little more than funeral rites, superstition and custom. I see no healthy Sangha (monastic community) here. Perhaps it is like a layer of badly applied paint falling off the firmer earlier surface of animism and Bon. Maybe the money brought here by the Annapurna Circuit's tourists has changed things, perhaps material existence is simply enough - I am not qualified to speculate at this time. Today I finally realized one of Tolstoy's ongoing messages and it is a great piece of wisdom: people seldom really communicate with one another, they usually just guess at each other's meaning and guess wrong. During the few moments when communication does occur people usually realize that "there is an immense gulf between them and a barrier of questions on which they could never agree."