Feeling Watched while We’re Dancing

My last little trip before returning from Nepal. Before leaving this beautiful country for the fourth time, every time a bit richer, a bit fuller, a bit more me, different me, new integrated me. 

As the clouds are moving so is my mind. As the sun is rising so are my thoughts. As the fog is blocking the view so is my soul.... and so it is all... Moving, changing, finding its place. Finding a new place. A new view, a new perspective, new understandings. With time, with nature, with me returning so does my confusion. Confusion. The state of mind where the mind is ready to shift, ready for some new insights, ready to be cleared up from the old, to unlearn and find clarity. Confusion the time that's most uncomfortable when you feel change is near.

A new chapter of life. A new vision, a different version of myself arising out of somewhere. It's that stage in life. The town is too much, the people are too much and yet I love it. I wanna be. I don't wanna be. Who am I? What do I want? I feel alone. Clearly I'm not.

And so I go out of town. Just for a night. Just for two days. Up to the mountains again. Not high. Just a few hours. Only to say bye to all the majestic mountain rage rising up in a panoramic view once I reach the top of the hill in the early afternoon. The sun is burning, hitting my head going up. The air is fresh and clear. Spring has arrived.

I'm standing in front of a self made gate. In the middle of the hill sits a man on a plastic chair. Excuse me I'm calling out, not sure if to move the barriers or not. He's pointing me to come through, walking towards me, moving the wooden logs for me. All the trail I was wondering if I was the only one walking this way as it seemed deserted. Left. Quiet. No one else there. Slowly I look around this beautiful camp with 360  degree panoramic view. One more hour to the view point does my map tell me. I'm asking the man for the Australian camp and he's smiling. Look around you are here. This is it. In the front you will see the sunset and the back the sunrise in the morning. I'm confused. But my app... He points me to sit down. I'm not sure if he doesn't understand or if I don't. 

I sit down on the grass in the blistering sun and order a cappuccino as he has a little house with a fully functioning coffee machine. I look around, drinking my coffee, contemplating if to stay, to go, to check out the place. It seems like I am the only one. He tells me people will come later. It's only 2pm after all. Slowly I decide to give my mind peace and stay. I choose a tent. This camp is absolutely beautiful. Why look for something else? I settle in, put my scarf on the floor and rest for a bit.

Only minutes later some people show up. Italians. A couple with their daughter. My age. She comes talking to me as I sit on a table. More people around us show up. All somehow ironically connected to yoga. We start speaking, she just came from India as. She is warm, attentive, we have an instant connection. She sees me, we speak the same language. Some minutes later I hear music that reminds me of the Berlin festival scene. Slow beats, intertwining beautifully with nature. A couple my age, sitting down with the Italian girl. 

I overhear some topics of the conversations and feel the urge to join. Philosophy, psychology, mindset, life, Berlin, yoga, India. All the same topics, like minded people and surely enough they are from Berlin. He is German she is British. Sure enough we are all connecting our stories which funnily come together here. The Italian girl leaves to join her parents while I find out more about the two and they about me. They have also come from Rishikesh. They have also come from the same places in the South of India that I have been. Yet we only meet here. On all our last step in Nepal. I tell them my story. My ever lasting search for home and belonging. For community and connection. For love an friendship that I did not have in Berlin, my own home. Going out to look for it else in the world. Speaking about it in trust after only a few minutes of meeting, I find it easy to open up to them. Their kindness, care, attentiveness and genuine interest, giving me an instant feeling of being welcome as I am. Connecting the dots without hesitation their prompt reply is to invite me to Berlin. For summer. For connection. For community. Full on empathy. They assure me that their large circle of friends and like minded people would welcome me with open arms. That they would be more than happy to have me there. Gifting me Home in my Home. Heimat. Something I am not so sure I ever truly felt. Feeling a lot out of place. A nomad.

My perspective starts opening up more and more as I have felt it coming subtly over the last months, weeks, growing much stronger in the last days. The clouds opening up. The hints are there from all the happiness I can see from the people who seem to find their way in life, to fully live and connect, finding their place. It's been leading me back to the West. To look at different ways of living inside a normed society, finding your own niche, your own joy, your place inside it.

I feel my mind opening up to more than I have imagined of how I would live, how I should live, how I wanna live. I feel a shift, I feel people coming to me, holding space for me, with me with warmth and kindness, embracing my existence without hesitation. Fully completely.

Writing these lines the boys are walking in. I'm in a small local dhaba. Ah nee. Si Germans. I laugh. My cottage mates. Again. Since I returned from the hike the evening before. Coming from the Australian camp with my newly won friends, this wonderful couple who has been my caretakers throughout the evening into the night. While we're ordering dinner carrying on our conversations, the owner is joining, continuously serving me the local wine Raksi, the topics getting deeper, the as the night moves on. Their natural interest in who I am, bringing out my whole family story, long forgotten details about my childhood pain. The stages and phases of my life that I've lived and worked through, while their open, curious attitudes and their timeless wisdom making it easy to share, bringing together bits and pieces, puzzling my puzzle for me, completing emotional patterns, scanning through me to the essence, the core applying their psychological knowledge, their knowledge about Indian traditions, chakra psychology, life itself, human wisdom. 

With each moment we dive deeper while they are holding space for me in their selfless friendship, digging up what needed to come out to light, to be seen, validated and cared for with the utmost sensitivity. Our host is listening and telling the story how I showed up earlier in the day not knowing if to stay. How confused I looked and how happy he is that I found friends. He keeps saying this is home and that I should always feel happy. that there is nothing to worry about, refilling my cup, giving out crisps. All for us. We are friends. When I'm tipsy enough and the night is late, I get up to go to sleep in my cozy tent under the beautiful sky full of stars. Before I go he is handing me the Baghvat Gita. It's a gift. I guess it's time. This is salvation. He says I should read it, it has all the answers just like I heard from so many people. The holy spiritual book of India. It's all around. 

When it's 6 in the morning we are tired but happily out for the last breathtaking sunrise behind the mountains, beyond the mountains. The peaks reaching between 5.000 and 8.000m. Majesty. The Himalayas. Magic. Pure. I look at the two of them who have taking me in so warmly. The two who are holding each other as well, who have meaningful conversations about the depth of life. Of the little things, of how we've been conditioned, of how we feel and how we do and who we are and how we want to be. How we feel watched while we’re dancing. Their energy is giving me fresh perspective. New life impulses and.... Love and care. The way they embrace me is giving me the feeling that I've been missing for so long. And from them it will continue to go on...

After a partially separate draining journey on foot, back to town, I walk directly into my social garden ready to order the menu up and down. Setting my first foot inside I see one of my five German cottage mates right at the first table. He's reading Siddharta just like I did right here in that place five years before. He is welcoming me with a bright smile. I sit down and we start chatting. It feels like we're friends. My energy starts to come back while I order a fruit smoothie and a cappuccino waiting for my new favorite couple who had to take the bus at some point. My feet are hurting but my heart is full of love. A few minutes later the second cottage mate is arriving, sitting with us as well as my friends. They are here for the first time. Amazed by the social vibe right at the lake side, the social playground for all our spiri friends with their alternative hobbies. Acrobatics, juggling, throwing scarfs in the sky. For some minutes I walk in front of the gate with my house mate laughing along. We have such a similar mentality. We don't stop talking. Same energy. We could never participate, we're just watching, thinking our part while my two loves are socializing on the open field. 

The one who cannot be missing and will not be missing is my little ego yogi who is sitting right in front talking to... I don't believe it. The girl I wanted to meet for a few weeks already back in Rishikesh. Super power natural woman who is so skilled and talented. So strong and inspiring. Of course everything had to connect here. I see them talking and feel jealous of him. I don't like the energies together. Imagining her, she must feel like me in the end. Keeping my distance, observing and addressing her later. When the two love birds return we have a short good bye or better to say see you in Berlin after I have given them my rings of the moon and the sun. The female and the male energy. I felt strongly they belonged to them and from all I can understand they are moved and grateful for the gift and from our time together affirming me how beautiful our time together was. That we will meet again and they wished we had a little more time together.

An answer to my call for love and connection. For community, for people to embrace me for who I am. Moving on, I am exhausted but enough to not go and have a few beers with my German companion on the balcony. We sit and talk and listen to music and I feel like it's just always been that way. Things flow naturally into the night and I seem to have underestimated that I have multiple living space mates who all somehow have become friends over the past weeks. Every single one. Still positively surprised how well we get along and how similar our world views in the details, the way we our, our preferences, the things we care about and laugh about. His friend joining in again before they take off for dinner and I go for the upper terrace to finish my beer. 

Only two minutes later my two other living partners who live in the upper rooms are joining me to continue to chat. It's good to have you back says A before finally going to bed. It touches me. Again it seems like we've become a little family and I can feel our sincerity, our person interest in each other and our journeys just coming together at the same time in different journeys but the same place. The observations we make, the little details we notice around us, creating meaningful and easy connection. It's all linked. All the energies, the topics, our shared interests for life. 

I notice how each and every one of them is listening. Is attentive and respectful. Each so different and yet so similar in the ways we are, our values and outlook on life coming from completely different backgrounds. Four German, one Irish. I enjoy their easy company that makes me feel just comfortable. And happy. Happy in my heart. The little things that may slip my perception when I'm not attentive enough. The message that the Universe is sending me while go on in my confusion over the last week, they have been there all along.

My struggles with toxic masculinity, with company, with connection and community. Finding my tribe while life was carefully planting the right people all around me. Next to me. Into my home. All staying for the entity of the time. Before.... It's time to go. It always is. At some point. My time has come now.

I wake up at 6 again from all the beer. Still very tired. I go through all the lovely messages I received throughout the journey. From the people I met and from the ones I love and know for long. Taking part with me. My body is still stressed. No need for any major exercise. Just rest. Slowly going into the day I make up my mind about the breakfast place. When I finally get going I run into the brother of my owner. He is happy to see me acknowledging that I'm still there. Learning that I have to leave, he is issuing me a bus ticket and offering to bring me the next morning. The first point on my schedule has been solved for me. The flow is still going. Spontaneously when going down deciding for a different breakfast place. This is where it connects again while I am writing this. Like it always is. Again in our similar energies changing the breakfast menus ordering up and down, we are eating together, contemplating about the next steps of eating, drinking where and what. It's making me giggly how synchronized we are, deciding to go for our favorite energizing juice sugar cane ginger lemon to the next family restaurant. Leaving the place I run into Nature Girl. Finally I see her for the first time in the physical world. She needs to go back to Rishikesh too. I like her energy. We're hugging. I hope to meet her again for some chatting. We keep going to check out a recommended outdoor shop, he is joining me while I collect some pastries on the way to finally go back to my socializing garden.

For the last time. For now. For when it's time to come back, I will be back. And I will rejoin with people just like I have now. Only opening my phone for a quick second shows me the next person from Rishikesh being in Pokhara right now. These connections seem to never end and ever last. All the connections between Nepal, India, Thailand in Georgia that have come up only over the last days, incredible. My heart will be sentimental. Sentimental and full of love and new experiences teaching me so much more about myself. About my journey and that there people, everywhere, always who love me as I am. Who see me as I am and who care for me as I am.