Nepal
Nepal: A Place for Discovering the Spirit
There has long been something about Nepal that has attracted spiritual persons. Is it in the rugged mountains around it, of which one boasts the highest elevation on our planet? Is it in the snow-sprinkled valleys between the ranges, which seem natural cradles in the bosom of the world? Or is it in the people themselves, who manage to retain their charm and warmth despite the snowy rocks they often live beside? It may be all of these things and more—that is, the compounded history and picture all these things have made possible and continue to render possible to build on.
Nepal is one of those places you have to see first to understand, though. This is not a country you can grasp from staring at a map or just a few pictures. That’s fitting, in a way: the country that holds the roof of the world (or its pillars, at any rate) should not be a country one can capture in a few lines on an image or a paragraph of description. This is the earth at its grandest, away from the oceans and not dwarfed by them, but rather striving for the very heavens.
All the more appropriate that so much of Nepal’s history has focused on heavenliness. This is the perfect location for ascetics and soul-searchers, a land sprinkled liberally with stupas and temple complexes amidst the villages and local bazaars. You come here to see what people have built amidst all this natural beauty in their efforts. There are lakes next to tourist towns, national parks beside and including enormous ranges, gorgeous stretches of greenery ramifying into tendrils of lush reaching up into the snowy caps. Nepal is a place to go trekking or motorbiking, to conquer the rivers with rafts or gaze into their bubbling stretches, and a place for prayer or simple admiration of that which both god and man have wrought.
