Our residency village Ngawal by moonlight.
We were on the way to Chame after leaving Besi Sahar, in our convoy of three jeeps, to spend the first night acclimating, when we realized we wouldn’t make it there till late. Amar, driving one of the vehicles called some contacts and soon we were pulling into a smaller village and setting up shop for the night at another lodge. That night in bed I had a classic altitude headache and woke up to find the first peaks of the Manang Valley sloping down below and above us. We reloaded all the trucks after a standing breakfast still feeling jangled bodily by the ride the day before and returned to the bumpy dirt road for another twelve hour journey.
This really felt like the Himalaya, the air felt thin, the trees were visibly struggling and the low oxygen was starting to make things feel dreamlike.
We kept going for another few hours before one of the trucks developed an overheating issue needing an improvised solution and we walked on with our daypacks until they worked it out and caught up with us.
Soon we were following the river as the valley climbed, crossing and re-crossing on tiny wooden bridges and rickety steel ones across blue icewater.
The rockfaces got sheerer and steadily steeper before a terrifying cliffside switchback ascent up onto the high pass where we were to live for the next month.
The night we arrived in Ngawal the overnight fell to -15c quite a bit colder than the averages I’d dutifully looked up at home. At 3650m the shortness of breath and difficulty sleeping were immediately felt, I suspect too a mild hypoxia made clear thinking a challenge at times. We unpacked into our rooms and studios and settled in for the duration, our diverse international cohort getting to know each other slowly.
This element was an unusual experience for me, though I’ve done quite a few residencies around the world they are often solo enterprises. I’ve made many friends on those trips and sometimes had friends, family and partners along with me but going with an unknown group was a new thing. Happily this group was an extraordinary bunch, many of us influencing each other as we went, having some memorable conversations and shared experiences. I don’t know whether it was luck, the self selection factor of choosing to go somewhere so remote, the group curation of Jo and Amar or all of the above.
We were so together daily in our little lodge, in our village of 150 people three hours walk from the next “town” that the group dynamic needed to work for us all.
In no particular order, meals, chats, and sharing with Hema, Frank, Jake, Jess, Jo, Nir and Emma were always a warm and hilarious pleasure. We were so bound together in one remote place with limited facilities and resources it often felt like the tales you hear about people wintering together on Antarctic bases. Emma and I in particular started a lightning round of projection, music and performance collaborations working in the best aspects of that mode where you produce things neither would come up with alone.
On returning to Kathmandu we’d luckily missed the worst of the burning season air pollution but it was still a shock after the alpine purity. I’m slowly acclimatizing now to being in another hemisphere on another (small) mountain where the world isn’t turning toward summer but turning toward the darkening cold. Thanks Manang Arts for that odyssey.
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