Silver Dagger - Demons, Prayer Wheels and other Tibetan Relics

Hey yall,

We got out of Kevin's Jeep in a little village called Luoji, a hot, two-dirt road town inhabited mostly by Yi people. From Luoji, we made our way up through a valley into an area that was mostly inhabited by Naxi people.

I've heard a lot of crap about how great Tibet is. I heard so much that I avoided Tibetan areas for a while, so as not to be that typical tourist searching for his own Shangri-la. But I have to say, there was something especially spiritual about the Tibetans. As we were hiking, we made our way out of Luoji, up into areas inhabited by the Naxi people. Some of the Naxi were nice enough. When we stopped to ask directions, a few of them gave us water and some bad-tasting apples. But later, as we were approaching the divide between the Naxi and Tibetan world, a drunk Naxi man approached me and told me that he would give us a ride to the village that we were trying to get to. For an absurd price, of course. We rebuffed his offer and he stumbled back to his friends, yelling.

But then we crossed an invisible line into the Tibetan world and the atmosphere seemed to change. We came upon a pile of stones with prayer flags tied to the top, shivering in the wind. The first house we passed shouted, welcoming us, drunk probably, but a friendly drunkenness.

That night, we eventually found someone who was willing to host us, a middle-aged lady taking care of her 88 year old grandfather (her husband off working in the mines). We threw our stuff in the room that looked like it might be a small hostel, and went to sit in her living room/kitchen area as she prepared us food. She scurried from the fire to the little plastic bags filled with dry meat and then back, preparing food for us, but her grandfather did nothing but sit next to us, cross his legs, spin a little handheld Tibetan prayer wheel while chanting Tibetan Buddhist scriptures (something like this http://www.singingbowlshop.com/prayer-wheel-12.html).

The chanting was a little haunting and humbling at the same time, reminding me of my own mortality and my lack of piety. Fortunately, he regularly punctuated his holiness with outburst of yelling at his granddaughter, lending an air of mortality to someone who seemed to already have one foot in the door of Heaven.

The family we lodged with the next night was just as friendly, and the setting of the guesthouse was something close to stunningly beautiful. We stayed in a place that was located at the top of a village called Niru, where houses clung to the hillsides above terraced potato and barley fields. The village was fairly large, a collection of about three hundred houses in this valley where two or three rivers came together.

In the terraced fields beneath us, there were three guys kicking an ox, trying to get him to plow a field. Pigs randomly appeared on trails, scurrying away to somewhere with an air of what appeared like urgency. Every ten minutes or so, the barking of dogs off somewhere unseen seemed to punctuate the bucolic calm. All was in the shadow of monuments wrapped in prayer flags and a mountain creatively named, "The Holy Mountain."

That evening we were invited to eat with the family, sharing a traditional meal of bread and slabs of pork fat (yummy). The grandfather of this household was not quite as old and not nearly as holy as last night's. He talked with us that night over the dinner, discussing life here in Tibet. After a few minutes, I asked the old man why he carried a silver dagger around his belt.

"Oh this, we used to have a problem with demons a hundred years ago, so we would use these silver daggers to kill them. Now, we keep them around just in case." He grinned in a way that didn't allow me to pin down how serious he was.

Towards the end of the night, I went outside to take a Sprite-induced bathroom break. As I stood on the porch in front of our room, I looked down on the village and the terraced fields. The rural scene was now blanketed in the silvery glow of starlight and the random twinkle of stove fires. A few pigs still seemed to wander busily from here to there as purposefully as they had earlier that day. Cows mooed and dogs barked, but all with less urgency than during the daytime.

At the village entrance, a sign had listed how far it was from there to Kunming, Tokyo, New York and so on. It seemed aptly placed since the bustle and hassle that is China seemed like it was a million miles away. The challenges that we had faced getting here seemed like they were already ancient history, completely beaten.

But the calmness of the scene brought a false sense of comfort and ease, one that did not prepare us for the battles that we would fight the next day.

Until then,
Lee


Then she picked up that silver dagger
And she stove it through her lily white breast
Sayin' goodbye mama, goodbye papa
I'll die for the one that I love best

"The Silver Dagger" by Old Crow Medicine Show