level 1: pilgrimage

To reach the waterfall, one follows a small path around the hillside. It takes about 45 minutes from the Horizon guesthouse to reach the waterfall. There's really no other way to get there; no roads. It's pretty inaccessible. And we live in a time when we've become used to everything being very accessible.

Most people live with a mobile phone, which serves as a sort of window onto the world. It's as if the whole world is accessible, through that window, twenty-four hours a day. But there's a difficulty with that: it is still a window. When we're interacting with the world that way, there is no direct contact. It's as if there's a pane of glass between us and the rest of existence. And so, for me, it's always important to actually get out into the world and really make contact with it. And this sometimes requires effort.

That's really part of what a pilgrimage is. It's actually using one's body, physically, to go somewhere – instead of just hopping in a car. I don't know whether you've ever noticed the difference in reaching a place through your own efforts, using your body – how that compares with just using transport. When some machine has done the work for us, it's easy. It's like getting a cable car to the top of a mountain. Yes, you reach the top of the mountain, and enjoy the views. But if you walk up that mountain, although the views are in one sense the same, they have a completely different quality to them, when we have earned them through that personal effort.

And this is especially true when it comes to pilgrimage. By pilgrimage, I mean walking somewhere, somewhere that we regard as sacred. And that's what this waterfall is for me. It's a sacred place. A place where one can reconnect, with nature, with the mountains, with water; and through that, with existence. And this path is not entirely easy. Right now, I'm going down a section, which is rather narrow and rocky, with a steep drop off to the side. Now I'm used to mountain ways, so it doesn't scare me. But for a more urban person, less used to being out in the wilds, this path alone is quite demanding. One time, I saw someone lying on the ground hugging a rock, for fear. But sometimes we have to face such fears. That also is part of pilgrimage. Not necessarily physical fears, of course: our mind is usually full of psychological fears – demons that control our life, and really act to minimise who we are in the world, through fear.

So getting out and walking, moving the body, somehow helps us see all this in a different light. And also using the body – which is becoming less and less a part of modern life as we all turn into couch potatoes – using the body is beautiful. It's a natural part of being an animal, a human being. We've been given a body that moves, and we should move it. In doing so, with any movement – it could be dance, it could be sport, or it could be walking like this – it takes some energy out of the head and into this physicality of the body. Immediately our life experience is a little less mental and a little more direct.

I've paused for a moment, there is a shrub with tiny mauve flowers. It's covered in butterflies, hoverflies, all sorts of little flying insects. Nature is so full of wonders. That's another reason to get out into nature, get away from the cities. Just the sheer beauty and wonder of nature helps to quieten the mind. And as the mind becomes more quiet there comes a stronger and stronger feeling of connection. When I'm really absorbed in looking at the butterflies, in a sense, I disappear. There is just this beautiful, natural, butterfly-shrub experience. But there's no I in it. I can't even say I am experiencing it. I've simply disappeared in the experience.

Now I'm crossing a a scree slope and for a few metres everything is more open. I can see all the way down the valley to a distant village; and across to the far side of the valley, which is covered in trees, here and there with rocky outcrops poking through. It's very steep sided, very mountainous, despite the trees. And seeing these open views, before disappearing again into the rhododendron wood, reminds me of also our psychological outlook on the world. Sometimes it's rather contained and focussed on ourself, narrow minded, small. We don't see the bigger picture. And then at other times, we come into a more expansive moment in our life, when we're really seeing a much grander scale of things. And in that perspective, the small, little personal self, is rather insignificant.

But the beautiful thing, really, is that we have these changing perspectives. One of the great tragedies of the human way of being in the world is that we tend to become fixated. We adopt a certain attitude and stick with it. We pick a particular way of living, and then just repeat that over and over again for years, decades. And that is a comfortable way, often, to live out one's life. But in no way do we reach our full potential when we fixate in that way.

So anything that leads us to see the world through different perspectives is a good thing. Just as taking a walk in nature offers up these different views – different perspectives on the same landscape but looking very different at different moments along the path – in the same way we should create opportunities in our life, to see things differently, to try different things; to give opportunities to our own being to grow and to develop.

Now I have reached level one of the waterfall. It's a lovely spot with some quite deep pools, natural pools, suitable for bathing, if you can handle the cold temperature of the water. It's mostly melt water from the snows higher up the mountain. And between the pools, there are beautiful cascades.

Here there is also a chai shop. The small, single room stone building is also the owner's house.* He lives here year round on his own. And he is a buddha. It's quite remarkable. This is one of the great beauties – especially of India – is coming across people who have somehow found their way home. He doesn't talk about it. Perhaps he's not even really aware of it. But if you ever get to look in his eyes, you can see creation there. The depth in his eyes is unfathomable. He is a hermit. And there's something about people who spend a lot of time alone, that gives them a special quality: often a stillness, and this remarkable depth. It must be a tough life for him. In winter there can be a metre of snow, and no visitors. A simple life too. And this is one of those secrets, really, that most of us have lost: that to live a simple life is often the most fulfilling way to live life. It seems paradoxical, but that's the way it is.

Level one of the waterfall can be a social place. It's quite early in the day still, and there are only a few people here now. But later in the afternoon, there could be a crowd of twenty or thirty people. And that was really one of the reasons why I began exploring further upstream, going deeper into the mystery of the waterfall.

But level one itself is beautiful. I'm watching a small bird flitting about above one of the pools. It has beautiful colours: a kind of coppery red and rather royal blueish colour. And like many of the birds around here, it wags its tail. My theory is that the noise of the water means that birdsong is not as effective. So the visual cue of that wagging tail is probably a more effective way for them to communicate, like a semaphore.

So, for most people, level one is their final destination. But for me, it's really just the gateway to the temple. We've reached the outer courtyard. But the real magic, the profound mystery is to be experienced in the higher levels, as we enter ever deeper into the temple, towards that inner sanctum.

* Some years after I recorded this, the old man had gone from the chai shop. I learned that he was not the owner. Rather, he had been leasing the building for decades. Eventually the lease was given to a new chai wallah and the old buddha was required to move out. The chai has not been the same since.