26 London, 10th - 16th February 2020

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On a Journey...By Susan Griffith-Jones, Exclusive

I am more than happy to change the schedule for the day and since members of the Vietnamese group want a bit of time to pack after breakfast, I go ‘down’ to pick them up mid-morning. Even though it’s only a short 15-minute walk away from the guesthouse to our home, I decide that we’ll get the minibus, whose service we still have for the whole day, to drop us at the bottom of the road to the village of Bhosh, where our house is situated on its outskirts. Their guesthouse is at one end of the village of Sarsai that is directly below Bhosh and to get from there to the road leading up to it, you have to walk along the main street running through Sar-sai. Seeing that I now know how they like to stop here and there, taking pictures and buying bits and pieces along the way, I foresee that this will simply take too long on foot!

Once we arrive, Jamyang wel-comes us with a glass of kombou-cha each and while we’re sitting downstairs drinking this sweet brew, they ask how we came to live here. There’s a long and short ver-sion to this story and as we need to get around all the pictures and then to Naggar to visit the castle there, which we’ve now included into our programme for the day, I tell them the quicker one… While we were still living in Mussoorie in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, after I’d published my first book, ‘The Rainbow Bridge’, Jamyang and I were distributing it place to place by ourselves, literally going around to the little bookshops in the spiritually-focused centres of North India, like Rishikesh, Dhar-amshala and Delhi and leaving a number of books, store to store. Now, at the end of 2009 while the kids are in the UK on their long, 2.5 months winter school break, Jamy-ang and I decide to go to Nepal, to circulate the books in the tourist area of Pokhara, as I’d already done

so in Kathmandu the year before. Anyone going to Muktinath in the Mustang region of Northern Nepal, which the book is based around, will most likely go through Pokhara to get there, whether by flight, or by road. Normally, shops will keep the books and pay you later after they are sold, but on this occasion, I decide that it’s too much headache to have to come again and again to see how they’re getting on and to collect the cash, so I make the price considerably cheaper if they pay for the books there and then. My plan works! In just 3 days, we have great success in that we sell all 100 cop-ies we’ve brought along with us, in numerous little tourist stores along the main drag next to Lake Phewa that’s flanked by the beautiful An-napurna Mountains.

Because we finish up earlier than expected, we decide to ‘pop into’ Kathmandu, a 6-hour bus ride from Pokhara, to visit old friends there. One morning, while doing kora (circumambulation) around the massive stupa of Bouddhanath, we stop for a morning tea in one of the side alleys and notice a sign up on the wall there, offering a bus service to Bodhgaya. As I’ve never been there, I suggest to Jamyang that we go, and so on the next day, Christmas Eve, we travel through the night to the border with India at Birgunj and while eating a heavily spiced rice and dal dish at a grotty little roadside dhaba in the Indian state of Bihar where the bus has a rest stop, I ironically chat with my family in the UK, who are follow-ing the standard Christmas rou-tine. Bodhgaya is the place where the Buddha gained enlightenment and seeing that this is the only time of year when the weather is a com-fortable temperature, many people are there. Each morning, we go to the small ‘Tibet Café’ for breakfast. On the third day, as we’re wander-ing into the place I notice a sign pinned up next to the door, “House for rent or sale in Kullu-Manali val-ley, Himachal Pradesh”, and then some information about it, ”in an orchard…, near the forest…, small

Himalayan village…” Just glanc-ing at the sign, in a flash before my mental faculties can come to rea-son, I know that we’re going to do it, even though I could not tell you exactly where the place was and how even, to get there! I straight-away call the number, speak to the guy, and within the next two weeks, Jamyang and I go to see the place. This part of the story is then wrapped up with another sepa-rate, but entangled one, as after returning to Delhi from Bodhgaya, we’re invited as the guests of Raj Kumari’s brother, Dr B.K. Modi, to Singapore, which is where we are when we decide to make the leap to buy the house and move here. I don’t divulge into this part of the story, as there are many dynamics to it and in that case we wouldn’t be getting to Naggar today!

I then lead them through my photo collage art pictures, room by room, one by one, starting with ‘Two Keys, One Lock’ in our bed-room, describing to them the mean-ing of the 5 elements shown in its crossed design. Then to ‘Pure Vi-sion, Transformed into Organised Confusion’, in Jamyang’s puja room, where the 5 elements are also depicted, but here one on top of the other, creating appearance driven by 4 whirls of bliss at its outer part. And on to my puja room, where ‘Mirror of Space displays the 3 Sanskrit letters of AUM, pertaining to the different levels of gross and subtle existence. Then crossing the corridor into our spare bedroom, we look at the double tetrahedron shape of ‘Rainbow Symphony’ with 2 spirals, one going this way and one that way, each connecting at 13 places within the picture, the spi-ral being indicative of my mirrored art piece, ‘The Circle of Immortal-ity’ that I’ve already shown them on the table in the other room. To see the fourth piece, ‘Key of Life’, we return to Jamyang’s puja room. This depicts a three-sided, down-wards pointing dagger, a ‘phurba’, a ritual instrument used by Tibet-an lamas to subdue obstacles, here containing other shapes within it. Then upstairs to my attic office, where ‘Crystal of Time’ is leaning against one wall there, as I’m still working with it, absorbing it, while doing my daily jobs on my com-puter. Overall, I can barely sketch out their meanings, as we have very limited time so they tell me they’d like to hear more at a later date, perhaps when I return to Vietnam to do an exhibition or workshop there in the future!

We already have our packed lunches with us and having re-turned to the minibus that’s wait-ing for us at the bottom of the hill on the main road, we set off for Naggar, just 4km away. We’re going to visit the upper part of the town,

where there’s a recently renovated 16th Century castle, now a hotel and historic site. Naggar itself was the capital of the Kullu kingdom for around fourteen hundred years, un-til being transferred to Kullu (Sul-tanpur) by Raja Jagat Singh, the then king. This particular building was built by another Kullu Raja, Sidhu Singh, using stones from an abandoned palace in the valley. To manually transfer the stones, the labourers were made to form a hu-man chain across the valley, includ-ing the wide River Beas that runs a few kms below Naggar! Capped by a grey slate roof, long pieces of wood punctuate the stones of the building, whilst wooden brackets and finely carved windows create an originality to the castle, which nevertheless proved strong enough to withstand the disastrous earth-quake of 1905. After wandering around its various floors, we sit on the side that overlooks the valley to meditate and eat our packed lunch-es, much of the time in silence, simply soaking in the majesty of the area.

By the time we get back to the guesthouse, the ones who didn’t ac-company us on this last trip to Nag-gar, have completed their packing, so we can load the luggage onto the roof of the minibus. The large Volvo bus that will take them overnight

to Delhi, will leave from Manali lat-er and they want to get some last minute shopping in first. I now re-alize that shopping should be more prominent on any itinerary, as an hour or so interlude from medita-tion and visiting sites each day, since people really like it! I hadn’t focused on this aspect, because I myself do not like shopping, so I don’t think about it as something you may actually want to do while you’re on holiday!

They are now off to Pyramid Valley in South India for the 4-day conference that Patri-ji holds there every year in the Autumn. After they’ve gone, and so as not to break the mood of their stay, I decide to immediately make a slideshow of all the pictures that we’ve collec-tively taken since the beginning of the trip. This takes me quite a bit longer than I expect, as there are simply so many to choose from, edit, put in order, upload, and fi-nally convert to MP4. This photo slideshow of ‘Meditation in Nature’ may be seen at: https://www.pyra-midkey.com/kullu-manali-valley-india-tour-of-meditation-in-nature/

To be continued...For all previous editions of

Susan’s story, ‘On a journey...’, please go to: www.pyramidkey. com/

readsusansarticleshere/”.

Continued from previous issue…

Susan and the Vietnamese group with ‘Pure Vision Transformed into Organised Confusion’, Shanti Bhawan, Kullu-Manali Valley, India

In the courtyard of Naggar Castle with the Vietnamese group, Naggar, Kullu-Manali Valley, India

Susan describing ‘Mirror of Space’ and ‘The Circle of Immortality’, Shanti Bhawan, Kullu-Manali Valley, India