Tatopani - Ghasa (2100m)

Leaving early in the morning for the next village named Ghasa, i went down to pay my respect to Gandaki, bathe and look for Salagrama Silas in the same time. Water was very cold, and strong currents still. But i have found my first Sila, a Sesa Sila.
Then we went straight up and down toward Ghasa. In the Himalayas you dont find a steady way up, all the footwalks are up and down. You walk hard for 2 hours high up, and when you reached the top, you have to come down again and then up again... very frustating for the mind. As the rainy season stormed in Nepal, we where wet from heat and from the rains as well.
I thought i could walk with my indian Bata* slippers, they broke right in kathmandu so i had to buy stronger shoes - it was my luck i realized when i walked trough the mountains. The friend Cira who walked all the way along with me, had refused to give up his beach shoes and he did walk the whole way with these shoes (but to this story later a bit more)...
The goverment of Nepal have a plan to built a Road for cars from Beni up to Lo Manthang and further to the chinese border, and will complete the project in 5 years. They want regain the trade between China and Nepal trough this route, and they have allready done a lot for this. I was surprised to see suddenly a road appearing in the middle of jungle and mountain. That might bring to one of the last places on earth western "culture" with a lot of setback for the culture and traditions for the region. But it also improves some of the condition as well. To built these road they bombed practically the rocks away. Suddenly we where stopped and pushed into a House near by and falling rocks fell hardcore* on our roof with loud noise!!! I thought that might be the feeling in Iraq and other places of war, and after some time we tried to escape and cross the place (see picture1 in close up!).
We passed the bombing spot, and further we heard another blast. Actually the whole area was blasted... scarry to walk nowadays, in ancient times you had to be careful of Lions and tigers as Tirumangai Alwar has written in his Pasuram of the praises of Salagrama Ksetra, and today you have to be careful that you be bombed away... at least in this area... puhh after a 10 hour walk we reached Ghasa, and the scenery has changed a bit from Jungle into a european forest. We entered the village and had to go trough a buddhist Chörten, a kind of prayer house, to purify and welcome one into the first Mandala of Mustang. We saw the shrine inside with a big library of ancient prayer books of buddhism (see pic2). They store this scriptures inside some cloth with some woodcovering, the prayers are written on hand made paper. The main deity of this chörten (temple), was the Padma Sambhava, the pioneer of tibetan buddhism who went the way trough this valley to reach Tibet (to him and his preaching later more).

This Village also has a lot of "hotels" but - no season - no people. So we had a very excellent evening, relaxed and a very good vegetarian feast of Momos (nepali tradition of a samosa steamed) and swiss rösti (potato roast)!