While the Hindu god Shiva, sitting on the top of a tall Himalayan mountain, was in deep meditation, other gods in search of the nectar of immortality decided to whip up the waters of the World Ocean. The ocean was stormy, it was all foaming … The works of the gods were crowned with success. The oil of immortality was obtained, there was also a sun horse for traveling through the heavens and a tree for the fulfillment of any desire.
Gosaikund - a place of power
But the world is woven of opposites - nothing is given even to the gods just like that. And just as night follows day, dream comes after reality, and misfortune often follows happiness, so the poison that came out of the ocean depths became the payment for the acquired oil of immortality.
Shiva, anticipating the danger that awaited the gods, left meditation and drank poison. He saved them, but terrible ulcers covered his entire throat and it turned blue. Pain and thirst tormented Shiva. And then he plunged his trident into the slope of a nearby mountain - and three purest springs poured from the depths like a sparkling fountain, filling all the depressions with water.
So, according to ancient legend, a large lake Gosaikund was born, and around nine more small ones. Gosaikund means “holy lake”. All 10 lakes are located in the highlands of Nepal at an altitude of 4360 meters. This is one of the most famous sacred sites in the country.
Every year, between mid-July and mid-August, on the full moon, thousands and thousands of pilgrims go to Gosaikund. Someone wants to offer their prayers to Shiva, someone hopes to receive magical knowledge, someone dreams of stopping time at least for a moment and prolonging youth. They go with the hope of getting rid of various misfortunes and diseases. Each pilgrim has its own story.
For more than one millennium, these lakes have been revered as places of power.
Cold November
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I did not have any innermost desires, and I climbed to Gosaikund through the mountain passes in mid-November. And November 2010 turned out to be windy and cold in these places. I hid my face, blue with cold from the cold, in the hood of my jacket pulled down almost over my eyes, caught my breath, lost due to a sharp climb, slightly scolded myself for the wrong time of travel, but stubbornly climbed forward and upward. I knew that something out of the ordinary would definitely happen there. Gosaikund is a holy place. Gosaikund is a place of power.
- Nothing special, - I encouraged myself, - there are higher mountains and more majestic panoramas …
Once, during the ascent, I saw an incredible sunset: the ridges of mountains stretching into infinity - tongues of flame in half the sky. I was mesmerized. Shocked! On the right hand - the fiery colors of the setting sun, terrible in their brightness, and on the left - blue-black, already plunging into the mysticism of the coming night, rocky valleys.
On the eighth day of the road, I stopped at a Sherpa (a representative of the people living in Eastern Nepal, in the region of Mount Chomolungma, as well as in India). His house was, frankly, not so hot. It was blowing from all corners, and even snotty and grimy kids did not want to close the doors behind them. I was warming myself with my palms around the metal tube of the stove. Then he ate tukpu (noodle soup), drank a lot of tea and absentmindedly nodded to the French couple, who also stayed here for the night. The husband and wife enthusiastically showed me on camera the red panda they had captured two days earlier. I smiled politely, and thought to myself: "Nothing, nothing - tomorrow already Gosaikund."
At the Shaiva shrine
The sun had already swung down when I, throwing my backpack off my shoulders and catching my breath, eagerly looked at the lake that opened to me. “Nothing special, the lake is like a lake,” I muttered to myself, “I've seen something different.” Sluggishly bargaining with the owner of a one-story hotel, more like a barrack, for the price of a room, I trudged to my damp and dark dwelling, creaking half-rotted floorboards. Then he pulled on a warm jacket over his sweater and, taking only his camera with him, went down to the lake. Although the sun was still high, sharp gusts of wind pierced through. From the height and cold, it sometimes seemed to me that my insides were turning into ice.
Near the lake, I came across a Shivaite sanctuary. On a large stone, with his back to the lake, is a clay figurine of Shiva in the lotus position. Above the head of the god is a large bell. On both sides, embedded in stone, are Shiva's tridents (trisula) with ritual scarves wound around their sharp teeth. And at the base of this place is a flat sacrificial stone with yellow flowers and the remains of rice. I scared off the big black birds pecking at the rice and took a picture. Then he went to the bell and struck it. A strange dry sound enveloped me. He seemed to me alive, or better to say - animated. After standing around me for a minute or two, the sound descended to the lake, glided along the surface and, picking up speed, broke away from the water. Believe it or not, I heard him fly over the ridge and disappear into the deep blue sky.
Walking death
Something made me turn my head and look down. “And what is this ?! - I was amazed to see a scarecrow a few meters away from me. - Probably a scarecrow: dreadlocks to the shoulders, obviously, of yak wool, instead of eyes - glass, mouth, nose, ears are somehow strange. Or - no, most likely, this is another statue of Shiva, but the size of an adult,”I concluded, noting a naked dark torso, long beads made of evergreen eleocarpus seeds, a rosary on the neck and the characteristic three white stripes with which the forehead was painted.
“He’s alive! - I was even more surprised, noticing how this strange emaciated figure moved: got up, took a step and sat down again. - Walking death! - burst out from me.
And then I almost got to the point. It was a sadhu! Hindu ascetic! Present!
In this cold - naked to the waist! This is not like in the center of Kathmandu - picture yogis posing for tourists, substituting their silver buckets for alms.
I approached him and asked for permission to photograph. He gestured assent, but pulled a brown coverlet over himself. “He doesn't want to give up his energy,” I realized and pressed the camera button. The sadhu threw off the veil and, glancing over me, beckoned me with a nod. I went. Putting his hand on my head, he mumbled something, and then shouted with all his might: "Bom!" and strongly moved his palm to the forehead, as if trying to knock something out of me. I don’t particularly like sentiment, but then tears just flowed. An intolerable feeling of regret and bitterness seized me, but after a while it suddenly became surprisingly light and light. I turned around. The sadhu sent me to the lake with his stubborn gaze and with a gesture of his hand made it clear that everything - the communication is over. I stripped to the waist and quickly, quickly began to wipe myself off with scalding ice water. Then, wrapped in all the clothes,climbed a low hill. Two lakes appeared before my eyes - and, lo and behold! - one of them, which is smaller, lit up, played with emerald color, and the second, the main lake - Gosaikund - looked like a giant dark blue sapphire. "Jewels of Shiva!" - I thought. And from this intense, dizzying light, I almost fainted….
Poison drops and citramon
I couldn't sleep at night. The moon through the window flooded the entire floor and the opposite wall of my room with a greenish light. I looked at my watch every minute, tossed and turned in my sleeping bag and sighed: “Tomorrow is the pass, you need a lot of strength, but my eyelids are not closing. And without sleep - what strength! I won’t get there…”And when in the second hour the long-awaited dream began to approach me, some kind of devilry began. An inhuman scream tore through the dead silence of a moonlit night, and then hysterical female laughter, like a rockfall in the mountains, fell upon me. First, numb with horror, I pulled the zipper on my sleeping bag to the top. In the house, besides me, there is only the owner with his wife. “What is he doing there - cutting her into pieces?” - the blood pounded in his temples. When this happened again, I decided to find out what's what.
But before he could get out of the sleeping bag, the ominous laughter suddenly turned into a stormy stream of enthusiastic, some hissing exclamations. "Okay, God bless them," I decided, "I need to sleep." I unbuttoned my sleeping bag, felt my first aid kit on the table, and squeezed two citramone tablets out of a plastic bag.
These wild sounds were repeated, but I was already distracted and began to forget. A short sleep still overcame me. When I woke up, it was quiet. The floor and the opposite wall were illuminated by the moon. I looked at my watch - about three. So he lay awake in absolute silence until the morning.
In the morning the hostess was not visible, and the owner, with a gloomy face, put a bowl of yesterday's cold oatmeal and a glass of lukewarm tea on the table in front of me.
At the beginning of the road to the pass I came across one local as a companion. I asked him about the owners of this hotel.
“This is Lhakpa,” said the fellow traveler. -She came here with her husband a few years ago, rented a house. She was sick. Her legs were swollen, veins were swollen, she could barely walk. But then she unexpectedly recovered and even prettier. But two years ago she was moved by her mind: she says that she flies over the lakes on moonlit nights and sings songs to Shiva himself.
I slowed down a little, said goodbye, and myself thought: "Who knows, maybe when Shiva drank poison, saving the gods, drops of this poison sprinkled the earth here?"
How I was not recognized at the hotel
Despite the sleepless night, I felt a surge of energy. I overcame the Lauribina pass (4610 meters) without difficulty … Yes, and the remaining five days of the road to Kathmandu with endless descents and ascents seemed to not walk, but ran, I had so much strength. On the second day, after the pass, in sunny weather, I saw Shisha-Pangmu - the lowest of all eight-thousanders (8027 meters). On the top of this mountain, Shiva meditated before drinking poison … The mountain was 40 kilometers from me, but it seemed to me close, as if on a horse from the sun's rays I flew up to it and back!
In Kathmandu, he returned to the hotel, where he had stayed before traveling to Gosaikund, and joyfully greeted the owner. However, he looked at me as if I were a stranger. Only when I introduced myself did the owner burst out:
- Oh! You have changed so much! A completely, completely different person …
- Oh really?! - I looked at myself in the mirror. - Well, blackened by the sun, well, a two-week beard, but not to find out …
And here…
“Wait, wait,” I said to myself. - Eyes! Eyes like that sadhu at Gosaikund!
The next morning, I smeared my face with shaving foam, leaving only those "not mine" eyes. And as the stubble was shaved off, I could see in the mirror, as on a lake surface: the expression of the eyes changed, they became softer, more human, or something. I gradually returned to my usual "I" …
In Kathmandu, there is a tall five-roofed Khumbeswar pagoda. The pagoda has a source. It is believed that the crystal-clear waters of this spring originate in the Gosaikunda lakes. So thousands and thousands of people can pick up the precious miraculous water of God Shiva himself …
And then everyone will have their own story.
Oleg Pogasiy. Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" № 7 2011
