Searching for Happy Valley by Jane Marshall

Author:Jane Marshall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RMB | Rocky Mountain Books
Published: 2023-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

Yeshe and I became friends over many conversations, and she recalled her journey 20 years prior, saying, “I had such altitude sickness. I was shit-scared. I walked over a moving landslide, and down one side it was a sheer drop. If I’d slipped, I would have died. I got terrible altitude sickness. My lips were sunburned and swollen, I had diarrhea, and we had to negotiate three checkpoints because Tsum was restricted and militarily sensitive.”

She passed beyond what’s known as the “Eastern Gate” to the inner valley of Sarphu, but did not reach the core.

“When I failed and got back to safety, I laughed and laughed and laughed. Because I realized then that the beyul was actually in my mind. Ultimately, travelling to the heart of beyul is a skillful method to realize the spacious clarity of one’s own mind. Beyul is not about the end goal, but rather a relationship with the landscape. We can see just how we have lost our connections with earth through what we are now facing in climate change.”

Yeshe has become my dharma sister, a yogini woman to share my Western fears and issues with, and someone who has seen and stepped aside from the unhealthy, male-dominated monastic situations in which many Western women find themselves. (Transporting a spiritual tradition from one country to another can have unpredictable consequences.)

After the Japanese group’s and Yeshe’s attempts, I know of only a few other foreign groups that have tried. Dr. Nikolai Solmsdorf of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences wrote an academic paper titled, “‘Sojourning in the Valley of Happiness’: Shedding New Light on [beyul] [Kyimolung].” Nikolai’s paper states: “Despite warnings about its inaccessibility, I eventually received permission from the local religious masters to travel to the centre of [Kyimolung] myself. However, unfortunately multiple attempts to enter the Sarphu valley failed due to unfavourable weather conditions and thus an exploration of the supposed centre of [Kyimolung] still awaits realization by future researchers.”

I reached out to Nikolai, and he kindly gave me the name of another beyul expert named Eric Fabry. Eric attempted the Sarphu pilgrimage in 2009 and later in 2018, when he made it to the abandoned temple. He also found the source of a river that he felt was very spiritually powerful. Eric has a friend who made four separate Sarphu attempts, but didn’t reach the outer bounds of the holy valley.

According to Kyimolung’s lamas, the holiest heart of the secret valley is a mountain called Tashi Palsang. This mountain breaches the sky at 7187 metres,9 offering a pathway to Nirvana. It stands at the furthest tip of the Sarphu Valley, hidden behind a sharp turn that masks it from the view of only the most hardy pilgrims. It was summited for the first and only time via the Sarphu Valley in 1954 by New Zealand climbers, though the Nepal government does not recognize this attempt. It was attempted again in 1983, 1994 and 2000.10 The New Zealanders named it Chamar, a name locals don’t use or recognize.

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