'You should stay! There will be a festival tonight. The lamas will dance. I think it will be very interesting for you," Sirush said. Zach and I eyed each other. We were eating at the small Dakar Lodge in the village of Lupra, a two hour hike from anywhere. We had only planned to stop for lunch. Also, we were definitely the only tourists coming through today; there hadn't been a soul in either direction on the hike in. Our cynicism kicked in: was this a ploy?
"We'll think about it," we replied. We put on our packs and started to head out of the village, passing the bright red gompa on the way. There were lots of people around: lamas in their red skirts, women making tea. The place was bustling. As we peeked through the doorway, we were gestured inside. From the ceiling hung one big mask and several others wrapped in rough brown cloth. "For the festival?" we asked. Yes, they explained. The lamas would wear different masks and dance.
We headed right back to the lodge: "We'll stay!"
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| Lupra |
We learned that the festival is called Dogbay, is part of the Bon religion, and is the biggest event in the town all year. Bon is the indigenous religion of Tibet, which pre-dates Buddhism. Bon's rituals, at least to our eyes, are strongly blended with those of Mahayana Buddhism but have retained lots of animist and folkloric elements. There are only two villages in Mustang with Bon gompas; some Bon practitioners from nearby towns had walked hours just to be at the festival. Interestingly, Lupra has no monks; the rituals are lead by married "householder lamas." Sirush's father is one of them and was busy at the gompa all afternoon, making preparations.
With hours to spare before the festival started, Sirush, in his shy, eager way, offered to take us on a village tour. He walked us up, up, up on narrow winding paths through patches of buckwheat and small orchards. Lupra is tiny; it has 16 families and is built into the side of canyon. Across the canyon, natural caves dot the cliff. Before the town was founded, wandering ascetics would sit in the caves and meditate. On the way up, Sirush kept telling us he was taking us to the "hostel." We couldn't figure out what he was talking about-- his was clearly the only lodge in town. As we came over the hill, we saw a yard full of kids. It was a school!
We spent a wonderful afternoon at the school, watching classes, drinking tea with the kids, teaching songs and counting to the youngest ones and talking with Norbu, the circumspect and motivated Tibetan monk who runs the school. The students range from ages 3-14 and all live at the hostel; for some, their home villages are 2-3 days' walk away. Norbu told us that sometimes he gets children whose parents are nomadic herders in Upper Mustang, a very remote region on the border with Tibet. The school provides them with clothes, because they usually have nothing but some animal skin wrappings.
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| Counting practice |
Norbu runs a tight and effective insitution. 83 kids live together, learn together, and speak, read and write in Nepali, English, and Tibetan (their home language). Norbu's goal is to provide education that grounds the kids in their culture and language while also providing them with the tools they need to advance in the modern world. The young students are eager and the older students are amazing: they speak fluent English, teach the younger kids, and showed us science textbooks that would intimidate an American high schooler. Soon enough the sun had begun to set, and we headed down the hill, promising the students we'd see them at the festival. (Interested in supporting the kids' reading habits? See the end of the post!)
The entire village crowded into the gompa that night. Old women, young women with their babies in arms, nearly all of the children from the school. We were ushered into a corner and served Tibetan tea (tea with butter and salt). Since Zach can't digest lactose, he discreetely emptied his tea into my own glass, and I was greatly relieved when everyone switched from tea to rakshi, a local grain wine with a pinch of flour mixed into it. The monks began chanting; the melodies, horns, and cymbals were familiar from other Buddhist pujas (prayer ceremonies) we had seen. But then the gods emerged. The lamas were clad in red robes with giant sleeves and skirts and they came in and out of the gompa in a stately dance, swinging their arms and timing their steps to the crash of the cymbals. Sometimes, they would take off into a skip, nearly knocking over smaller children who stood at periphery or blowing out candles with a sweep of their skirts. Except for some gentle explanations, the villagers acted like we were part of the family, allowing us to blend into the background and watch the events unfold.
At intervals, the lamas would take a break from dancing. (At one point, they were served dinner while everyone sat around and quietly watched them eat.) During one of these breaks, some of the kids from the school dressed as old Tibetan beggars and came out to provide comic relief. If you asked them where they were from, they would shriek, "We are from Lhasa! Give us money!" and everyone cracked up as they whacked each other with their walking sticks. At 10pm-- after three hours of chanting and dancing and two hours past our normal bedtime -- Zach and I decided to sneak out and head back to the lodge. We found out the next morning that festivities continued until 1am. Apparently much rakshi was consumed.
Sirush had told us that the festival continued the next day: "Starts maybe at 11, over around 4pm. I think it will be very interesting for you." Of course we would stay; we figured we could leave at 4pm and arrive in the large town of Jomsom by 6, safely before dark. But the celebrations ran on NST (Nepali Standard Time, lovingly referred to nationwise as Nepali Stretching Time) and didn't really get going until mid- afternoon; it was soon clear we'd be spending another night. Again, the village gathered in the gompa. Today's rituals were much more elaborate: all the masks came out -- deer, monkeys, demons, and faces that we didn't know how to identify. The children nearest us were terrified by some of the masks and many hid behind Zach's legs.
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| One of many amazing masks |
There were breaks for tea and more comic relief from the kids-- sometimes as beggars and sometimes as little mice, scurrying about pretending to eat rice that was thrown at them. Everyone was involved. Younger men came and went from an inner area all day, running errands; women ran a big kitchen just outside the gompa under the stairs, making food to sustain the lamas in their dancing. The dancing was more varied as well, as the lamas became the various gods and creatures that their masks represented. The day before, Norbu had explained to us that the whole festival was one of renewal, getting rid of the old and purifying to make ready for the new, culminating in throwing things in the river. "No way!" I had cried, a little too loudly. I explained that it was only two days before our holiday of renewal-- Rosh Hashanah-- and that we throw bread crumbs into the water to symbolize letting go of the past. We laughed and decided that it was fate that had brought us there.
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| "Beggars" asking for money |
The culmination of the dancing was a dance of the ghosts. Two men in all white with bells beneath their shirts danced in and placed a small clay figure on the floor. The lamas returned, back in their red robs, holding bows and arrows. The clay man was shot through and then chopped up with knives. Talk about a graphic representation of getting rid of the old!
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| Killing the clay man |
The whole celebration moved outside to where a fire had been set up and a prayer drawn all around it. After more chanting and praying the fire was started in earnest. At intervals, the head lama poured alcohol into the fire and it burst into a gigantic fireball. Murmurs of satisfaction passed through the crowd. As the sun began to sink on the horizon, everyone was ushered back into the gompa for the final stages of the festival. Each person was given a piece of clay from the chopped-up figure and a handful of grain. A grandpa leaned over and explained to us in a combination of English and gesture that we should rub ourselves wherever we had something we needed to get rid of. We looked around: vigorous rubbing was occuring all around us. Heads, necks, underneath shirts, knees, feet. We rubbed and rubbed. Then, the lamas unrolled a long string and everyone in the village had to find a spot to hold onto. It was cut up so that each person got a piece and more rubbing ensued. Finally, all of it-- clay, grain and string-- were thrown into a big basket or over small structure decorated with delicate white paper flags. It was all destined for the river. But first we had one more cleansing ritual to complete. The entire village washed their faces in water ladled out by the head lama. I kept thinking that this was a much more thorough approach than tossing some bread crumbs.
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| The head lama plays with fire |
Young men were drafted to carry the elaborate basket and swords (swords!) were handed out to some of the men. Everyone processed down to the river to the sounds of cymbals. We followed them out of the village and stood in awe: they were silhouetted in the fading light in the middle of a desert canyon. The lamas repeated the dance there, by the river, where the sounds of the cymbals echoed off the canyon walls. I couldn't help thinking that this ritual could have been performed 2,000 years ago, in the mountain canyons of Tibet. There was such a sense of sacred time, of being linked in a bright line to this moment as it was performed over centuries and to the people who placed their hope and trust in these rituals.
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| The last dance |
In the final moments, all the lay people were sent back up to the village, so the lamas could finish the sacred rites. Minutes later, we heard a giant explosion. The structure was reduced to ashes and the lamas threw the ashes in the river. It was complete. Dusk had fallen and all over the village, you could see people returning to their normal lives; pulling vegetables for dinner, bringing in wood for the fire. The children headed back up to to the hostel, scampering across those narrow paths in the near dark. We were thrilled and exhausted; astonished by our good luck, by the generosity of the town's inhabitants, and by the beauty and complexity of the ancient rituals we'd experienced. L'shana tovah, indeed. May the new year be for a blessing, from Lupra to New York and beyond.
PS: We were so impressed with the school and the students, we've decided we want to help support their students. After consulting with Norbu, we'll be running a book drive to help develop a library of children's and young adult books at the hostel for pleasure reading. (Right now, they only have textbooks, and they just read those on repeat.) Stay tuned! We'll be asking for help in early December -- anything from picture books to your old copies of Harry Potter.
PSS: For more masks, more dancing, and more awesome kids, check out the
full album of Lupra photos and videos (~90 photos/videos).
