Always ready for a big adventure
I'm growing more anxious by the minute. My camel isn't happy either. He opens his mouth and begins to bawl. Is he ready to bolt or fight?
I am standing on a great plain under a vast blue sky, watching thousands of riders race towards me from a distant range of hills. The youngest are in the lead, dressed as jockeys, some as young as seven. The older ones lag behind, in colourful coats, boots and cowboy hats. All around me, thousands more people are watching. This is not a dream. The date is August 10, 2013, and Outer Mongolia is galloping into the 'Guinness Book of Records' with the biggest horse race in the world.
Awe-struck by the sheer number and the noisy exuberance, I witness 3,294 reach the finish line after an 18km dash. At the same time, I spare a little shiver of thought for my European ancestors and how they must have felt at the sight of such horse masters charging down on them, led by that alpha of all males, Chinghis Khan.
That I was in Mongolia was amazing enough, but that I was travelling as the personal attendant of a high Tibetan lama was most wondrous of all. There were times when I felt as if I were in a 'National Geographic' documentary, the only Westerner in sight.
One moment I was in a long procession of monks in red robes and yellow hats, horns and conches blowing; the next, I was in the dim shrine of a monastery, paintings and statues of the Buddha from floor to ceiling, butter lamps flickering, clouds of incense smoking, and the low drone of chants; then, later, lunch in a great circular tent (ger in Mongolian, yurt in Russian).
I was seated to the right of the lama, the only woman in the place. We ate rice and meat dumplings and drank cups of suutei tsai, milky tea with salt, and bowls of airag, fermented mare's milk. I was so thrilled to be there, I ate and drank whatever they gave me.
I must admit that some of my delight was rooted in the fact that I was having this peak experience at the age of 60. An adventurer all my life, I worry sometimes that the best is behind me and that I'll go no more a-roving. Given that my mother is still travelling at 90, I need hardly worry!
But it's not just the travelling; it's the greater matter of being open to new experiences, willing to go beyond one's comfort zone, to take a chance with the unknown.
There's no denying that a kind of nervousness creeps in with age, an attachment to the familiar, a hesitancy that makes one pull back from the sort of thing one leaped into when younger. It is absolutely vital to resist these tendencies to diminish our own lives.
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage," said the fearless Anais Nin, who got up to all kinds of marvellous shenanigans, artistic and otherwise, until she died of cancer at 74.
But though I was born with a wandering spirit, it didn't come with a silver spoon and I've always had to be creative in my desire to travel. As Barbara Streisand says in one of her films, "If you live a hand-to-mouth existence, you've got to be ambidextrous."
When I was 18 (1971), I hitch-hiked across Canada and down the west coast to California. Picking up all sorts of friends along the way, I spent seven months on the road in that last flowering of the hippie generation.
Back in Toronto, I signed up with the Reserve Officers University Training Programme (ROUTP) -- Naval Reserve, which helped to pay my way through university As a naval cadet, I had exciting summer jobs.
My favourite voyage was sailing up the coast of British Columbia on the HMCS Oriole, Canada's tall ship, with wooden masts and old-style rigging. At that time women could not stay overnight on board, so my female platoon and I camped out each evening on dry land and cooked over bonfires. Forsaking the tent, I slept under the stars. Should I mention that we used to line up along the shore and moon the male crew of the ship, just for a laugh?
Thus a pattern was set for my life's journey. Always ready for an adventure, always ready to work. It brought me far and wide and doing all kinds of things: sheep-shearing on the Isle of Erraid; talking to native schoolchildren in the Northwest Territories; shaving my head in the Auroville community in Tamil Nadu, India; making a documentary in a converted convent in Denmark's Jutland; staying in a remote village where no cars could go, in the Alpujarras in Spain; taking a magical megalithic mystery tour of the Orkney Islands and the Outer Hebrides with a Jungian psychologist.
And when I wasn't wandering in the world at large, I went deep diving into inner space, a fledgling "psychonaut", to use Terence McKenna's term. "For there is never anywhere to go but in," as Doris Lessing says at the beginning of one of her works of speculative fiction.
I've taken workshops with the Irish Centre for Shamanic Studies, explored Holotropic Breathwork with Dr Stan Grof and his wife Christina in the Swiss Alps, explored medicine dreaming with ayahuasca and Brazil's Santa Daime church, and went on a pilgrimage to Lough Derg. "Extreme prayer," said my daughter of the latter, impressed by descriptions of fasting, all-night vigils and bare feet on stones. "I'm here for the spiritual adventure," I told an old priest who, you may be surprised to know, was delighted with me.
Most recently, I've been helping to run a Tibetan Buddhist Retreat Centre in Co Cavan, of which Panchen Otrul Rinpoche is the resident lama. There I've learned mind-training techniques from Rinpoche's teachings -- his title means "precious one" -- including mantras, meditations and visualisations.
This latter venture brought me to India in 2011 and 2012 for the teachings of the Dalai Lama and trips to Dharamsala in the foothills of the Himalayas, the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the burning ghats of the Ganges in the holy city of Varanasi, and the vast Tibetan monastic settlements of Karnataka. And, of course, just this year, it brought me to Mongolia.
Heart pounding, breath held, I slip my foot into the stirrup and swing my other leg over, astonished to find myself successfully seated. It's hard to describe the strange, undulating and privately painful experience of riding a camel: jostled on a moving rock.
Three of us head up a sand dune, following our guide who undoubtedly had a few drinks before we set off. This is not your standard safety-belts, mind-the-tourist kind of excursion. (Those cost a small fortune in Mongolia. This is a cheapy trip booked at the end of my stay.)
I can see the vulture at the top of the dune, hopping about and shaking his raggy black wings. Is he dancing with delight at the sight of a few foreigners? Do he and the guide have an understanding?
I'm growing more anxious by the minute. My camel isn't happy either. He opens his mouth and begins to bawl. Is he ready to bolt or fight? I can see the headline in the news. Wicklow woman in unfortunate camel/vulture incident in Outer Mongolia. Luckily I have a smattering of Mongolian, thanks to lessons on YouTube, and I shout enough "uuhgwees" -- no! no! no! -- to wake up the guide and make him change direction.
I also traversed the Gobi in a jeep with Rinpoche. Though he is in his seventies and has health problems arising from his time in a Chinese labour camp, he didn't balk at the eight-hour drive to the village where he has established a small factory to employ local women.
Given our own religious history, we are more sceptical, even cynical, about clerics and holy men; but if you had seen how people's faces lit up like the sun when he blessed them and how he kept going, hour after hour, day after day, listening, advising, gently touching. Compassion, loving-kindness, is the sign of a tulku, a reincarnated lama, a living Buddha.
And what was my job exactly? Making certain he had water, that he ate, that he took his medication, that he had a coat when it got cold, a hat when it was sunny, an umbrella when it rained. That the jeep was ready to pick him up. That he took a break and had a walk. That his food was safe (he's a diabetic). That he was on time and on schedule. Being a personal attendant is a cross between being a mother and a secretary. Having been both of these things in my day, I think I did a fairly decent job.
And what's next for me? I have three screen projects and a book to write, the latter a work of non-fiction about my travels with the lama; but I've no doubt there'll be another journey or two, either inward or outward, along the way . . . before that Greatest Adventure of them all.
O R Melling's new novel 'People of the Great Journey' is published by Hay House UK. www.ormelling.com
Irish Independent
I am standing on a great plain under a vast blue sky, watching thousands of riders race towards me from a distant range of hills. The youngest are in the lead, dressed as jockeys, some as young as seven. The older ones lag behind, in colourful coats, boots and cowboy hats. All around me, thousands more people are watching. This is not a dream. The date is August 10, 2013, and Outer Mongolia is galloping into the 'Guinness Book of Records' with the biggest horse race in the world.
Awe-struck by the sheer number and the noisy exuberance, I witness 3,294 reach the finish line after an 18km dash. At the same time, I spare a little shiver of thought for my European ancestors and how they must have felt at the sight of such horse masters charging down on them, led by that alpha of all males, Chinghis Khan.
That I was in Mongolia was amazing enough, but that I was travelling as the personal attendant of a high Tibetan lama was most wondrous of all. There were times when I felt as if I were in a 'National Geographic' documentary, the only Westerner in sight.
One moment I was in a long procession of monks in red robes and yellow hats, horns and conches blowing; the next, I was in the dim shrine of a monastery, paintings and statues of the Buddha from floor to ceiling, butter lamps flickering, clouds of incense smoking, and the low drone of chants; then, later, lunch in a great circular tent (ger in Mongolian, yurt in Russian).
I was seated to the right of the lama, the only woman in the place. We ate rice and meat dumplings and drank cups of suutei tsai, milky tea with salt, and bowls of airag, fermented mare's milk. I was so thrilled to be there, I ate and drank whatever they gave me.
I must admit that some of my delight was rooted in the fact that I was having this peak experience at the age of 60. An adventurer all my life, I worry sometimes that the best is behind me and that I'll go no more a-roving. Given that my mother is still travelling at 90, I need hardly worry!
But it's not just the travelling; it's the greater matter of being open to new experiences, willing to go beyond one's comfort zone, to take a chance with the unknown.
There's no denying that a kind of nervousness creeps in with age, an attachment to the familiar, a hesitancy that makes one pull back from the sort of thing one leaped into when younger. It is absolutely vital to resist these tendencies to diminish our own lives.
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage," said the fearless Anais Nin, who got up to all kinds of marvellous shenanigans, artistic and otherwise, until she died of cancer at 74.
But though I was born with a wandering spirit, it didn't come with a silver spoon and I've always had to be creative in my desire to travel. As Barbara Streisand says in one of her films, "If you live a hand-to-mouth existence, you've got to be ambidextrous."
When I was 18 (1971), I hitch-hiked across Canada and down the west coast to California. Picking up all sorts of friends along the way, I spent seven months on the road in that last flowering of the hippie generation.
Back in Toronto, I signed up with the Reserve Officers University Training Programme (ROUTP) -- Naval Reserve, which helped to pay my way through university As a naval cadet, I had exciting summer jobs.
My favourite voyage was sailing up the coast of British Columbia on the HMCS Oriole, Canada's tall ship, with wooden masts and old-style rigging. At that time women could not stay overnight on board, so my female platoon and I camped out each evening on dry land and cooked over bonfires. Forsaking the tent, I slept under the stars. Should I mention that we used to line up along the shore and moon the male crew of the ship, just for a laugh?
Thus a pattern was set for my life's journey. Always ready for an adventure, always ready to work. It brought me far and wide and doing all kinds of things: sheep-shearing on the Isle of Erraid; talking to native schoolchildren in the Northwest Territories; shaving my head in the Auroville community in Tamil Nadu, India; making a documentary in a converted convent in Denmark's Jutland; staying in a remote village where no cars could go, in the Alpujarras in Spain; taking a magical megalithic mystery tour of the Orkney Islands and the Outer Hebrides with a Jungian psychologist.
And when I wasn't wandering in the world at large, I went deep diving into inner space, a fledgling "psychonaut", to use Terence McKenna's term. "For there is never anywhere to go but in," as Doris Lessing says at the beginning of one of her works of speculative fiction.
I've taken workshops with the Irish Centre for Shamanic Studies, explored Holotropic Breathwork with Dr Stan Grof and his wife Christina in the Swiss Alps, explored medicine dreaming with ayahuasca and Brazil's Santa Daime church, and went on a pilgrimage to Lough Derg. "Extreme prayer," said my daughter of the latter, impressed by descriptions of fasting, all-night vigils and bare feet on stones. "I'm here for the spiritual adventure," I told an old priest who, you may be surprised to know, was delighted with me.
Most recently, I've been helping to run a Tibetan Buddhist Retreat Centre in Co Cavan, of which Panchen Otrul Rinpoche is the resident lama. There I've learned mind-training techniques from Rinpoche's teachings -- his title means "precious one" -- including mantras, meditations and visualisations.
This latter venture brought me to India in 2011 and 2012 for the teachings of the Dalai Lama and trips to Dharamsala in the foothills of the Himalayas, the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the burning ghats of the Ganges in the holy city of Varanasi, and the vast Tibetan monastic settlements of Karnataka. And, of course, just this year, it brought me to Mongolia.
Heart pounding, breath held, I slip my foot into the stirrup and swing my other leg over, astonished to find myself successfully seated. It's hard to describe the strange, undulating and privately painful experience of riding a camel: jostled on a moving rock.
Three of us head up a sand dune, following our guide who undoubtedly had a few drinks before we set off. This is not your standard safety-belts, mind-the-tourist kind of excursion. (Those cost a small fortune in Mongolia. This is a cheapy trip booked at the end of my stay.)
I can see the vulture at the top of the dune, hopping about and shaking his raggy black wings. Is he dancing with delight at the sight of a few foreigners? Do he and the guide have an understanding?
I'm growing more anxious by the minute. My camel isn't happy either. He opens his mouth and begins to bawl. Is he ready to bolt or fight? I can see the headline in the news. Wicklow woman in unfortunate camel/vulture incident in Outer Mongolia. Luckily I have a smattering of Mongolian, thanks to lessons on YouTube, and I shout enough "uuhgwees" -- no! no! no! -- to wake up the guide and make him change direction.
I also traversed the Gobi in a jeep with Rinpoche. Though he is in his seventies and has health problems arising from his time in a Chinese labour camp, he didn't balk at the eight-hour drive to the village where he has established a small factory to employ local women.
Given our own religious history, we are more sceptical, even cynical, about clerics and holy men; but if you had seen how people's faces lit up like the sun when he blessed them and how he kept going, hour after hour, day after day, listening, advising, gently touching. Compassion, loving-kindness, is the sign of a tulku, a reincarnated lama, a living Buddha.
And what was my job exactly? Making certain he had water, that he ate, that he took his medication, that he had a coat when it got cold, a hat when it was sunny, an umbrella when it rained. That the jeep was ready to pick him up. That he took a break and had a walk. That his food was safe (he's a diabetic). That he was on time and on schedule. Being a personal attendant is a cross between being a mother and a secretary. Having been both of these things in my day, I think I did a fairly decent job.
And what's next for me? I have three screen projects and a book to write, the latter a work of non-fiction about my travels with the lama; but I've no doubt there'll be another journey or two, either inward or outward, along the way . . . before that Greatest Adventure of them all.
O R Melling's new novel 'People of the Great Journey' is published by Hay House UK. www.ormelling.com
Irish Independent
Comments
Post a Comment