Bruce Kirkby - Blue Sky Kingdom: An Epic Family Journey to the Heart of the Himalayas

PRAISE FOR BLUE SKY KINGDOM

In Blue Sky Kingdom, Bruce Kirkby not only takes us far across the world and deep inside a rarely seen culture, but also allows us an intimate view of his family, all while writing with tender honesty, penetrating insight and a delightful lack of bravado. Kirkby gently reminds us to breathe, embrace the unfamiliar and celebrate even the smallest of moments.

Jill Fredston, author of Rowing to Latitude and Snowstruck

Bruce Kirkby has lived the dream of the modern globe-trotting adventurer: crossing Arabian sand seas, sea-kayaking Iceland and Borneo, traversing Northern Mongolia on horseback. In Blue Sky Kingdom, Kirkbys wife and two young sons join him for a different kind of journeyto an isolated Buddhist monastery, yes, but also to the elusive and fragile heart of wisdom that we all hope to glimpse in this lifetime. What a heartfelt, lovely and kind book this is.

Daniel Duane, author of Caught Inside

Insightful and adventurous, Blue Sky Kingdom offers a road map on how to learn from the world There is wisdom in this book. Open it and let your imagination soar.

Conrad Anker, acclaimed American alpinist

In an era when countless demands make it increasingly easy to ignore people and engage instead with devices, Blue Sky Kingdom provides a much-needed call back to the physical world.

Darcy Gaechter, author of Amazon Woman

A rollicking journey, full of insights on cultivating a nourishing, fully present life amidst so much noise and distraction.

Brad Stulberg, coauthor of Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox

By any standards, its a big adventure to travel the slow way across the world to a remote corner of the Himalaya and live there for months in a spartan Buddhist monasterybut taking young children along ramps it up to another level. Written with zest and clarity, Bruces account is compelling, moving, funny and above all honest, sharing hardships and frustrations along with the joys and ultimate rewards.

Maria Coffey, author of Where The Mountain Casts Its Shadow

BLUE SKY KINGDOM

Pegasus Books, Ltd.

148 W. 37th Street, 13th Floor

New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2020 by Bruce Kirkby

All photography copyright by Bruce Kirkby

First Pegasus Books edition October 2020

Interior design by Maria Fernandez

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

Jacket design by Derek Thornton, Notch Design

Imagery by Bruce Kirkby

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-64313-568-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-64313-569-4

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

www.pegasusbooks.com

For the novice monks of Karsha Gompa,

Lama Wangyal,

and above all,

for Pitter, Big B and Tiny T.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity

Simone Weil, Letter to Jo Bousquet, April 13, 1942

Himachal Pradesh

Northern India

Lumbering trains carried our family westward across the Indian Plains. The terrific heat of summer had descended, and our days dissolved into a mirage of dust, tightly pressed bodies, greasy curry and childrens storybooks.

Way too smelly, our young boys would groan as the tang of perspiration and urine rose in unison with the thermometer.

So we surrendered our seats, choosing instead to stand before open carriage doors, braced together against the wind, watching the country race past: teeming streets, brick factories, rice paddies, water buffalo, egrets on the wing. And late each afternoon, just as the suns final embers drifted from the sky, I spotted dark clouds gathering on the horizonlooming a little closer each day, as if pursuing us.

But it wasnt until we reached the foothills that the fever broke.

We were crammed into a dilapidated bus, bouncing up steep mountain roads scarred by rockfall, when a wave of cool air crashed over us. Moments later, heavy drops began hammering on the roof. With faces pressed against foggy windows, our boys watched as the surrounding hillsides were obscured behind silver monsoon curtains. In terraced fields, farmers scampered beneath umbrellas of oak and chestnut, and along roadside ditches, groves of head-high marijuana bowed to the deluge.

Inside the former British hill station of Manali, tarps were hastily yanked over market stalls. Horns beeped, dogs barked and foreigners in fluorescent jackets darted down cobblestone alleys, between trekking agencies, German-style bakeries and cybercafs. Overhead, thickets of hand-painted signs, satellite television dishes and tangled power lines obscured the hemorrhaging skies, so profuse they reminded me of rainforest foliage. Long before this deep valley became lionized as a stoners paradise, it was known among Hindus simply as Kulantapithor the end of the habitable world.

It certainly wasnt that anymore.

Exhausted and fighting the flu, the four of us took refuge in a stone cottage tucked amid the crooked temples and stooped shanties of Old Town, where orchards of apple and plum gave way to mountainsides of cedar and mist. Packed together into one small bed, we read aloud The Berenstain Bears and Too Much TV while sipping ginger tea. Then Richard Scarrys Busy, Busy World. Then Bill Peets Wump World. Outside an open window, the downpour intensified.

Long after our boys had drifted off to sleep, my wife and I worked beneath a bare lightbulb. Slowly and steadily we sorted a tangle of gear and supplies into two piles. The bigger moundthings we once thought we needed but actually didntwould be abandoned. The smaller pile held just the essentials: everything required to survive three months amongst the worlds highest peaks.

The next day, a minivan would carry us north, over soaring passes, toward an unmarked trailhead. From there, we would set out by foot, crossing the spine of the Great Himalaya Range and plunging into that swirl of summits and contested borders where China, Pakistan and India collide. Our destination was Karsha Gompa, a thousand-year-old Buddhist monastery barnacled to cliffs above the union of two great riversour home until winter.

In an adjacent room, door slightly ajar, both boys slept soundly with a fan blowing on them, cheeks flushed and sheets cast aside. Chestnut-haired Bodi was seven. Angular and lanky like a caribou, he was a thoughtful boy and exceptionally brighthesitant around strangers and a stickler for routine. Three-year-old Taj was Bodis foilblond, carefree and giggly. His easy manner had drawn others to him from the earliest days.