Muktinath, Nepal

 

Nestled before me in the Himalayas is Gandaki Shakti Peeth in Muktinath, Nepal. It is so close and without the wings of a bird, so far. The trip there will be a lot like the one that got me here. Long. It is time to say farewell to Tibet and take a 13 hour road trip from Darchen to Gyirong before crossing into Nepal at Rasuwagadhi.  It is a 2000m descent. Scarcity of the desert terrain with its hints of greenery, dry air, tapestry of cotton candy like clouds woven into a hypnotic blue sky quickly disappears. The image of vastness that is the Tibetan plateau shifts dramatically as we drop into a valley carved out by the Trishuli river.  I begin to comprehend the descent once the road no longer disappears into the horizon, but blindly ends into the curvy contours of this mountain. The sparseness is replaced with lush tropical greenery blanketing sheer stone cliffs. How life comes to exist through the unforgiving nature of rock is a great mystery to...