These days I am living two different lives.
The first one is of course the rat race, no
further explanation needed. The second one
however, is my dream world. Well, its not
really a dream. It is actually living the footsteps
of travelers who tread the highest and toughest
mountains in the world. I also visit the secrets
of the so called 'Hermit kingdom', North Korea.
Then I am shouting pro Tibetan slogans in
the Ten downing along with other protesters.
I have just finished Joe Simpson's 'Storms of Silence',
a vivid of walks in the Nepalese Himalayas,
small towns and villages around the bases of the mountan
range, and Kathmandu; the mysterious and haunted
hills in Peru, entire county sides, towns and villages
buried by landslides.
In the first part of the story, he sets about to climbing
Cho Oyu, one of the few that are above 8000 m.
The stories are of the valleys, rivers, gorges, glaciars,
the superhuman porters - the Sherpas, Tibetans running away
from the Chinese and crossing over the mountains in
nothing more than rudimentary garments and even
the yaks. The accounts of this great traveller and
writer takes you in the air freezing cold at the top of the
world, snow beneath your climbing boots, the winds,
the prayers, the flapping of the tents in the wind,
the Sherpa society, Tibetan History and present
and many other magnificient incidents that cannot
be imagined without being among the mountains.
I actually started reading this book when I was in
Kathmandu, mostly while sitting in the warm winter
sun, on my home rooftop. The book sat untouched
in my shelf in my Sydney flat since I returned here
about two and a half months ago.
This period I have gone thru two other books actually,
the first one called 'North Korea: Another country' by
Bruce Cumings and 'For Tibet with love' by Isabel Losada.
The first one was so gripping that I could not leave it
whenever I was home, I finished it mostly sitting in front
of tv. The insights the book gives into real North Korea is
really astounding. Even more of an eye opener is how
the west has failed to understand the whole history of
the Korean peninsula, how the americans have repeatedly
humiliated them (Koreans), killed hundreds of thousands
of their civilians, used all sorts of brutality and breached
war conventions and yet failed to understand why they
hate US so much and are so much fearful of the similar
history repeating and threatening very existence of their
country. But the writer also underlines the blind worshipping
of the Kim Il Sung and his son by the population, almost
in a state of trance.
The second one is not as strongly written but is a
loosely held story of a wannbe Tibetan activist London
woman. Amazingly she managed to fall for
a monk and make him like her too. But midway
thru, she sort of changes track too abruptly and
it was a bit too ordinary of a reading.
The books are a relief to me, adding spice to my
otherwise ordinary existence in Sydney. Things
here seem bland and mechanical compared to
thrills and peace that mountains bring.
