Although I`m back in Banaras after a trip in Tibet, my mind is still there trying to replay the moments, taste again some fragrances, colours and sounds. There is a picture coming into my mind often these days, the moment when we were about to reach Nyalam (a Tibetan village near the Nepali border). From the endless plains of the rocky desert plateau the road descended steeply into a deep gorge with a river at the bottom. The dry air of the Tibetan highland also changed into the moist air of the Indian subcontinent. And then I saw a tree, and then more and more trees, something we didn`t see for days. I was overflowed with joy as if it was a sign of reaching home after a long journey.
I was touched as I remembered the boy in Eric Valli`s Himalaya film, the little chieftain-to-be, when he saw the first tree in his life. Many thoughts rushed through my mind, about trees I`ve seen before, the sacred trees of India, banyans and pipal trees, tree worship. Then I thought I should catch this moment, I should be able to explain or describe it with words or pictures what that tree near Nyalam meant to me when I looked at it, but I couldn`t put it into words. And today in Benares, sitting in my hotel room reading, found a piece of poetry by William Blake who I think really made it: 'The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.' (Photos: the landscape before and after Nyalam)
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