A Himlyayan Pilgrimage

A few years ago I trekked to Gokyo Ri. It took 8 arduous days to reach the high camp by a lake at the base of Gokyo Ri, not far from Mt Everest.

I met a lady who had made the long trek twice to the holy lake, but failed in her first attempt to reach the summit of the mountain. But on this day she had succeeded, breathing with difficulty in the thin air.

In the distance Mt Everest, Chomolungma, the holy mountain, shone dazzling white. Wisps of snow streamed fiercely from the summit. All around vast craggy mountains, gleaming white snow and bluish ice, jostled together in the greatest mountain range on earth. Prayer flags fluttered in the wind, carrying their messages into the great unknown.

We were almost 5500 metres above sea level, but astonishingly, in this bleak place, an eagle soared in the sky above us.

Seven hundred metres below were the milky blue lake and miniscule tents nestled on its shore. A glacier wound down the valley, an icy dragon slowly edging its way to a distant river, there to melt into waters feeding Mother Ganges, and, at last, to enter the immense ocean.

Next year the monsoons will come again and carry those waters deep into the mountains once more, feeding the snow and glaciers and completing another great, endless cycle - a cycle that lies at the heart of the Buddhist faith.

There is nobility and an example to others that comes from overcoming suffering, and I greatly admired that lady who stood with me on Gokyo Ri, just as I admired the pilgrim who hobbled into Santiago with his injuries.

There is also the universal human need for pilgrimage, to search for something that lies beyond the calculations of reason. Pilgrimge to holy places is a universal yearning of mankind. That is why we walk in the Way of St James, why we trek to holy mountains.

Physical and Mental Preparation for the Camino

General fitness for most urban dwellers doing ordinary things focuses on (1) aerobic capacity, (2) flexibility, (3) strength, and (4) endurance. These are the "Big Four" aspects of fitness.

However, each of these factors focuses on "subsystems" of the body, such as heart/lungs, muscles, tendons and joints. That's fine for normal, everyday life and typical sports as practiced by the average person - not elite athletes. Moreover, the "big four" deal only with the body - not the mind.

For unusual activities, such as sustained walking over weeks (eg the Camino), high-altitude trekking (eg Nepal, Andes), we need to adress a 5th fitness factor. I have called this factor "work hardening", but a better word might be "contitioning".

Conditioning involves doing training activities as close as possible to the actual activity being preparedfor (eg the Camino Frances). Conditioning trains the body and mind as one holistic entity, in conditions of terrain, weather and mental state similar to the actual event.

While gym workouts are useful for everyday fitness, they are done indoors, in comfortable weather, when one feels like it. In other words, gym conditions don't mimic the mental conditions one might face on a long distance walk, on which one might become tired, injured or simply de-motivated. The same comments apply to swimming and cycling, neither of which are remotely relevant to walking the Camino.

During the Camino, one will be carrying a pack in both good and bad weather, so train with a pack and try to go out in bad weather as well as on nice days. In bad weather, when tired or hungry the bodily sub-systems and the mind adapt to those stressors in a connected way.

It's difficult to explain the concept properly in a short posting here, but I hope these remarks provide a glimmer of insight into why it is so important to train by doing the actual activity. Of course, that's exactly how the early pilgrims did it: when the right season came around, they simply went on pilgrimage, as Chaucer describes so vividly in The Canterbury Tales. They trained by doing the actual pilgrimage itself, taking rests and longer term stops as required.

That's a valid way of proceeding, but most of us today are driven by fixed vacation and flight schedules, so we don't have time to "waste", so we prepare and train our bodies. That's fine for walks of say one week, but not for those who want to complete the entire Camino Frances in one attempt.

Mental aspects of the Camino (and any challenging physical activity of long duration) are important in determining the likelihood of completing the journey. Here are two examples from my own Camino:

A young lady at an albergue was crying and quite upset because of sore feet, blisters, and probably mental exhaustion as well. I never saw her again, but I hope she found the strength to continue and also that she found supportive companions in her trials. She had plenty of the latter at the albergue. One can draw on the strength of others, and this is very important.

I occasionally met a man during my 35 days on the Camino Frances who gradually became more and more disabled by injuries. I passed him again on the outskirts of Santiago. He walked with great difficulty, but he walked, nevertheless. Mental strength (and perhaps inner faith) had got him there, and in so proving himself, he found that mental strength would be a sure and faithful guide through life. Sometimes there is nobility in suffering, in not giving up.

The Camino tests both our bodies and minds. In surmounting difficulty (or being overwhelmed by it), we learn who we truly are. Therein lies the possibility of spiritual growth and the possibility of being a guide for others.

I hope these reflections are useful. May you also experience the gifts of insight as your mental Camino progresses alongside the physical Camino.