Walking with Pilgrims in Tibet

She lifted the well-used spoon out of its natural holding place in the bark, and extended it confidently into the dark recess. I watched as her hand and wrist disappeared, then her arm up to her elbow, and right up to her shoulder as if the little hole was really filled with magic of the Mary Poppins variety. As she gently withdrew her arm I watched in eager anticipation – what hidden treasure would be carried to the light on the end of that spoon?

I try to eat as many interesting things as I can when travelling, but for the first time I was not concerned about what the thing might taste like, but more about how sick I might get from it. I rationalised that since it was being given to me by a nun during a pilgrimage around one of Lhasa’s most popular holy walks with a party of pilgrims, I just had to try it.

So, discarding all my mother’s warnings, I put the spoonful of murky brown “tree juice” up to my mouth and slurped it all up, much to the delight of my newly made friends. The coarse texture and muddy flavour were what one might expect of liquid that comes out of a hole in the bottom of a tree, and I hoped that my whispered prayer to the medicine Buddha would protect me from whatever shock it might give to my immune system.

Just earlier while walking around the Sera Monastery pilgrim circuit in Lhasa, Tibet, I had made the mistake of walking past a holy spring without cleansing myself properly. A family of local pilgrims who were following closely behind decided at that point to take it upon themselves to teach me the proper way to make pilgrimage – stopping at each sacred rock and spring to show me with a language of gestures and smiles what to do.

Mo-lah* took hold of my hand with the rugged grip of a hard-worked woman, and I felt like a child: wide-eyed and ready to see the world as she showed it. She led on, talking and laughing in her native tongue, not concerned at all that her stories went flying over my head. She was probably explaining how much karmic benefit I was about to get from drinking the “tree juice”.

This day would have no “I was there” photos, no heart-racing adventure story to tell after, and would not fit any tick-boxes of “Things to do before you die”. Not even the best photographs could show my wonder about the “tree juice”, the motherly way in which Mo-lah took me in, or the sense of belonging that I felt with the party of pilgrims. This is the day I became a local.

*“Mo-lah” = Tibetan “Grandmother”