Hugging the sacred Juniper tree
I started my trek in the wee hours of the morning to trek to Dah, to visit the sacred juniper groves. My escort shyly introduced himself. He was Tsewang Nurbu. The trek to Dah from Beema took us three hours. It was a dangerous trek, as we crossed several craggy peaks, holding on to tiny crevices to haul ourselves up. We could hear sounds of gunfire across the Indo-POK border. My inner line permit was checked at the army post. One wrong step on this arduous trek, could prove fatal, but I chanted continuously throughout this hair raising experience.
We reached the ancient juniper trees by noon. I hugged these trees to soak in their energy.
The energy aura of these trees was phenomenonal. One could feel a new vigour in each and every cell of ones body, when you stepped onto this sacred grove of the Aryans of Dah. After spending several hours in this picturesque place, I visited a few of the elderly Aryans. They still observed their taboos of intoxicating substances, milk, eggs and meat. I shared a meal with these humble villagers. The meal consisted of jo (barley) rotis baked in an earthen oven, lettuce leaves, roasted potatoes, spring onions, boiled cauliflower and wild mint. Women cooked in an open hearth, burning fallen twigs, collected from the trees in their courtyard. They worshipped trees and hence observed a strict taboo against tree felling. The simple meal was fresh and extremely tasty. It is no meaningful coincidence that we serve a similar raw diet at our ZeNLP based corporate stress management workshops.