Talk to the woman in the tiny remote Nepalese village who has no education and no teeth, who has never seen a car or electricity or running water, who doesn’t understand a word you are saying; and know that your differences are but a fraction of the similarities you share.

Truly, my heart is broken. For anyone who has spent time in the small country, it is nearly impossible not to be changed by the the warmth, kindness, gentleness, and joy of the Nepali people. It has been over a decade since I was in Nepal, I have always wanted to return, and I will, when the kids are old enough to remember. Especially now. I can barely watch the news. I cringe when Dan updates me on the numbers. I see the kids in the mountain villages, so dirty, so poor, but so alive with joy. I see the woman who tried to give me the bracelet per the story below. I see the teenagers, laughing as they doused me in bright colored powder in the streets of Kathmandu. I see the man who sold me the down jacket, who hugged me and told me to be safe. I see the filthy kids outside the tea house, playing with my backpack. And I ache.

I have so many stories from my time in Nepal, here is one, an excerpt from a chapter of Instructions For Living A Life.

Nepal

That which pervades the entire body you should know to be indestructible. No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul. Bhagavad Gita 2.17

The extra two hundred Nepalese rupees or four US dollars it cost to take the direct mini bus from Kathmandu to Besisahar I declared money well spent when I arrived safely in the mountain city a mere five hours and two flat tires later. Only then did I realize I had left my Annapurna Circuit trekking permit tucked safely in my bag back in The Tibet Guest House in Kathmandu. After a few hours of friendly negotiations with smiling Nepalese officials and an excessive amount of good-natured ribbing through broken English, I ate a huge slice of humble pie and was finally issued a temporary trekking permit. By then it was 4pm, the sun was moving quickly toward the mountain tops, and I knew I would never make it on foot to the tea house in Khudi by dark. A single, twenty-six year old American woman hiking two and a half hours along the side of a mountain road in the dark in a foreign country in the middle of a civil war. Right. Plus, I had heard too many first-hand accounts of Maoists fighters blocking trails and roads, requiring trekkers to pay a fee to proceed. Since the US declared the Maoists international terrorists a year prior, Americans were required to pay double the fee. I doubted I had that in my backpack.

So instead, I paid another fifty Nepalese rupees for a bus ride from Besisahar to Khudi and waited at the intersection of two well-worn dirt roads amongst a group of tired smiling people until the bus arrived. As it approached, a slow wave of Nepalese swept me toward the relic of a vehicle.

As I neared the door, a half a dozen hands began tugging at my backpack. I learned in India to be vigilant about being separated from my bag. I resisted the tugging and held tight to my backpack as a medley of smiling faces and hands gestured toward the top of the bus that was alive with movement: people, tied up packages, giant plastic water containers, boxes, all shifting and moving and disappearing from sight. No way I was letting go, my bag was going on the bus with me. I clutched it tighter until I felt a bony hand squeeze my elbow. I looked down.The hand was very old, calloused, weathered and gnarled. Then I looked up. Her eyes were alive and bright as she gave me a mostly toothless gummy smile. She nodded assurance and compassion, saying,

“Okay. Okay.”

“Okay?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Okay, okay” she smiled again, and placed her hands together in a gesture of Namaste. She was a tiny woman, ancient by anyone’s standards, but so full of light and joy I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Okay then,” I said as I watched my red backpack be lifted overhead and passed from hands to hands until it disappeared. I boarded the bus, pushed gently from behind, and took note of the rusted drive shaft, bent steering while, and jury-rigged gear shift. Then I found myself seated in the aisle hugging my knees and surrounded by bodies, my personal space reduced to slight pressure on all sides.

“Okay, then,” I said  again, to no one, as the bus started up and began its lumbering. It struggled to pick up speed while people continued to push their way onto the completely packed bus. There was nowhere to go. An entire family of five sat next to me, an interlocking puzzle of ten legs and ten arms in two seats. The aisles were filled with people sitting arms wrapped around knees, feet to the back of the person in front. The doors to the bus had long since been removed, if they ever existed, and the openings were filled with no less than four bodies hanging out, swaying side to side in unison as if riding an enormous slow bucking bronco. I could feel the roof was also full of people by the way the bus swayed and rocked over each small bump. It was top heavy, much too top heavy. But they had an easy escape.

For ten minutes, the bus lumbered along what could be recognized as a road despite the lack of guardrail or shoulder or markings of any kind. Then the quaint dirt road disappeared and was replaced by a rocky trail cut directly into the side of the mountain, barely big enough for Prius, let alone a bus. A vertical wall of rock rose steeply to the left, so near that the bus made an awful scratching metal sound when it occasionally rocked up against the jagged rock. To the right, the mountain fell away dramatically and I only occasionally caught sight of the shimmering river five hundred feet below.

I began to sweat, then panic, as the bus rocked and teetered along its path. Enormous potholes appeared, then grew bigger and more frequent. The bus swayed dangerously, rocking at thirty-degree angles over the ‘bumps’ in the road. I closed my eyes. I took deep breaths. I recited countless mantras. I counted from one to ten and back again. I tried to practice everything I’d learned in India about quieting the mind and sitting in stillness. And then suddenly, the bus WAS still. I opened my eyes to see the driver exiting the bus, apparently to analyze how to maneuver around a boy and his donkey that were in the road. Six men joined the driver as they talked and pointed and yelled at the young boy and his companion.

That’s not entirely fair, I thought, the road seems much more appropriate for the donkey than for this bus.

After much animated discussion, the donkey and the boy disappeared back the way they had come, and the bus started up again. We passed the two of them a hundred yards later, clingingly precariously to the side of a small run-out in the mountain. Watching them as the bus lumbered by I understood the long ‘road delays’ so common in this part of the world. We would be seriously stuck if we ran into a vehicle larger than the donkey wanting to go to Besisahar.

What if that happens? I thought. And we get delayed and there’s no room at the tea house, and I have to sleep outside.

Stay present. Another thought answered.

Perhaps other cars just know to avoid the road during the bus route time? I speculated.

Are they still called potholes when they can swallow a smart car? I questioned.

Could I get out of the bus if it started to topple? I wondered.

How the hell did I get myself in this spot? I demanded.

Its an adventure, I answered.

Awesome adventure, came the retort.

This, in India, is known as monkey mind.

I left the entertaining debate of my mind and returned my attention to the road. It looked like a war zone, but then, nobody would fight a war on a tiny remote road cut into the side of a two thousand foot cliff.

Suddenly, the bus lurched violently toward the abyss and certain death. Somebody sucked in a deep breath. In the US, people would have been screaming. I’ve seen it on planes, a dip of a wing, and momentarily, the cultivated belief of assumed safety shatters, screams burst forth, followed by nervous thin laughter.

I hadn’t assumed safety, and the violent pitching of the bus combined with the feel of the worn-smooth wheels occasionally slipping on mud induced in me a near red-line panic. Despite the dangers of walking, I seriously considered crawling over the family of five to get off the bus. How was everyone else not panicking?

I looked around, testing the faces of others, until my eyes rested on the calm, soulful compassionate face of the old woman sitting two rows behind my right shoulder. She nodded at me with an ancient and universal smile, clearly meant clearly to convey, ‘It’s okay’. And here’s the thing, sometimes, all it takes is a random text or call from a friend to back you off a ledge, or in this case, a compassionate understanding look from a wise Nepalese woman to keep me on the bus on the ledge. I took a deep breath and smiled a thank you back at her.

We were now thirty minutes (not counting the ten minute stop) into what I had been told was a forty-minute trip. Over half way there, I thought as the ‘road’ continued to deteriorate. Almost there, I thought, as the enormous potholes and huge trenches created by water runoff appeared became more frequent. The mountain was clearly trying to reclaim its road; to me it looked as though the mountain was winning. Each time we came upon a trench or car-eating pothole, a dozen men exited the bus to examine the obstacle from all sides as if they were Jack Nicklaus on a putting green. Talking and pointing, they strategized the right angle of approach so the bus (with its passengers) wouldn’t slip or tip or tumble off the mountain. At one particularly nasty trench, the passengers from the top of the bus jumped to the ground. What about all of us? Can’t we get off too? This is it, I thought.

My anxiety unearthed a memory from an article about plane crashes: the greatest determinant of survival — more than an aisle or window seat, more than sitting in the front of back of the plane — was how close you were seated to an exit, with an inflection point at five rows. After that, chances of survival dramatically decrease. I was more than five airplane rows from a door. And there were at least three people between me and the windows, which would not fit an eight-year old, let alone me. Not good.

Suddenly I felt a protrusion of sorts against my lower back. Between the potholes and trenches, pitching and rocking, the man sitting on the floor behind me had grown increasingly close until with one huge bump, he was suddenly now straddling my back. My fear had burned through any reservoir I had left. I turned around and screamed at the man while pointing and gesturing frantically, “Feet against my back, okay. Other body parts, not okay. No. Not OKAY!!”

I looked into dead grey eyes as the pressure in my back receded slightly. Just beyond the man, two rows back, the old woman once again nodded her strength and reassurance. Her weathered face and bright eyes eased my anxiety, at least for a moment. With the distraction on my back gone, my attention returned to the predicament at hand, the lurching, stumbling bus navigating tank traps set down by nature.

Voice 1: “I’m too far away from the exit, this thing is going over, what the hell am I doing here?”

Voice 2: “It will be okay. It wouldn’t be traveled everyday if it wasn’t oayk.”

Voice 1: “Right, coming from an American child raised in a litigious society where a woman can sue McDonalds because the coffee in her cup labeled ‘hot, use caution’ was, in fact, hot; where a man can sue Universal Studios for extreme fear and emotional distress after visiting the haunted house; where Consumer Product Safety Commission, the FDA, a million other organizations exist to protect you from yourself in every aspect of life.”

Voice 2: “Locals wouldn’t be on it if it was that dangerous.”

Voice 1: “Maybe they don’t have a choice. Plus, they all believe in re-incarnation, so isn’t it just on to the next life where they won’t have to take this fucking bus.”

I hovered just sane of a full-blown freak out by daydreaming about big beautiful yellow airplane emergency exit slides and the lovely red-painted exit handles on the escape hatches of buses in the US. I will not die, I will not die. A loud scraping jolted me back to reality as the bus rocked between the grinding safety of the mountain on one side and the less safe five-hundred foot void on the other.

Then it got dark. Which was a blessing and a curse. The bus lumbered on. I prayed. I talked to God. I made promises to every entity I’d ever heard of. I apologized to my parents and everyone who ever loved me for my stupidity. I closed my eyes. Then I breathed, bargained, rationalized, and sucked on my filthy hand like a small child.

About this time, the man behind me and his rather irritating member returned. Enough.

“Stop it you fucking pervert. What the fuck is wrong with you? No! You sick fuck! Stop it! NO!”

The dead eyes just stared back. He didn’t move.

I wondered if they’d stop the bus and let me walk if the belligerent white woman went crazy on a local. Or would the bus just keep teetering along with its fifty plus passengers playing a Nepalese game of transportation Russian Roulette. Getting kicked off the bus, despite the dark outside, seemed an increasingly attractive plan.

“Seriously, fucking stop!! NO!!” Most people offered a compassionate smile at my outburst, but made no other motions to intervene; except for the old woman. She whispered something to the man in front of her, who said something to the dead eyes behind me who retracted his feet into his chest as if the space around me had suddenly caught fire.

I nodded to the woman in surprise and smiled. She flashed her gums in return. Then it was back to bargaining and negotiating with all manner of deities until the bus finally stopped twenty-minutes later. Forty-minute bus ride, my ass, I thought, as I stood and stretched. The trip had taken nearly two hours. Every muscle was stiff from chronic tensing as I gingerly made my way to the door.

Outside the bus, the seedy man vanished, my red backpack appeared in my hands, two women stepped off to the side and threw up, and the driver and another man laughed and patted each other on the back, as if their team had just won the Superbowl. Their obvious relief did not make me feel better.

“Christ, I made it,” I sighed to myself. I started toward the wooden sign that pointed to the Riverview Guest House. I had had enough of the view of the river, but it was the only guesthouse listed in my guidebook. It would have to do.

I had only gone a few steps when a hand again grabbed my elbow. I turned. She smiled, and I smiled down at her in return. Then she tried to hand me a red string bracelet from her wrist.

“You take. You.” The finger pointing at me was impossibly tiny.

“No, I can’t.”

“You take, you like daughter, you take.”

Did she mean I reminded her of her daughter? I wasn’t sure. Then I broke every rule of travel and hugged this woman as hard as I could as tears filled my eyes. She had been my lifeline to sanity, my only one. I believed in her reassurance way beyond any smart or rational thought. Did she know that? Did she have any idea? “You take,” she said. But I couldn’t take it. Instead, I bowed deeply to her with my hands in Namaste.

“Thank you. Thank you.”

She smiled and tilted her head in understanding. Then she clasped her hands and bowed in return. The divine in me greets the divine in you.

At dinner later that night, a twenty-three year old Nepalese porter named Buddhi Rai told me he’d been away from home for three years to avoid being ‘recruited’ into Maoist Communist Party of Nepal. He said the Maoist did not treat families nicely if anyone refused to join and he had three sisters and one brother. It was safer for him to be away. When I told him of the bus ride, and the kind woman, and the bracelet I should have accepted, he smiled. “You should have taken bracelet. Bus really dangerous, people die, really bad, two died yesterday, brother almost died when brakes fail, bus really dangerous, mountain really dangerous. But people are kind, don’t be afraid of people, people are safe.” Funny, I had always thought it opposite.

*

My beautiful babies,

To this day, I wish I had taken the bracelet. I wish I could go to my jewelry box and pull it out and remember.

….my littles, my hope for you as you travel is that you will be willing to risk the safety of your own understanding about the world. I hope you’ll travel alone with your intuition, not insulated by friends, itineraries, and routines. Buses will be late or won’t come; you will have to find another place to sleep when the tea house you finally stumble on well after midnight is full; the rickshaw driver will take you down the wrong road to meet his friend who sells fragrant healing oils; the plane that has sat on a Chinese runway for six hours through a snowstorm will take off without de-icing; you may inexplicably find yourself on the back of a motorcycle in India dodging trucks and cows and rickshaws and bicycles on your way to birthday celebration for someone you have never met but will soon become a close friend.

And it is also possible you may find yourself scared and lonely and sad. You may find yourself alone and sick thousands of miles from home in a foreign hospital (though probably without a cell phone, times have changed). You may find yourself suffering an allergic reaction to some food you cannot pronounce. You may find yourself doing battle with a flying cockroach and wonder if the small monster bites. You may find yourself…

But know this, the best parts of travel are those times when plans are thrown out the window and intuition takes over. It’s those times when you learn something about yourself, when you gain strength, resilience, and confidence that will see you through rough spots when life goes crazy or when true tragedy strikes. Its also those times when the most beautiful parts of travel occur; you will be invited into a stranger’s home for dinner; you’ll join a wedding party or find yourself traveling with a new friend to the Western Wall in the middle of the night, or to a remote town you never would have known about had you not struck up a random conversation on the bus; you’ll be a guest at religious festivals and celebratory funerals and you’ll learn more than a hundred guidebooks could ever teach you.

So, please babies, risk seeing the world through the eyes of someone in a different culture, speaking a different language, living with different values; and realize that we all share the experience of being human. We all share the common emotions of fear and love and wanting to be loved and a thirst for meaning. Talk to the woman in the tiny remote Nepalese village who has no education and no teeth, who has never seen a car or electricity or running water, who doesn’t understand a word you are saying; and know that your differences are but a fraction of the similarities you share.

Break free when you can, risk knowing what you know to be true in order to embrace all that you don’t know. I love you babies, it’s a big, huge, wonderful world out there, love, Momma