“The only way to transform gracefully is to concentrate on what is permanent.” This was said by Christophe, a yoga teacher I encountered in Chiang Mai a few weeks ago. Today I and Elina are in Laos, tranquil by name, which with its elongated vowels and silent s is difficult to mouth with haste. At the heart of this country there appears to be a calm earthiness, different to the gentleness of Thailand and spiritedness of Cambodia.
After spending two days on a boat, a mini bus, a large bus, sleeping in a dirty guest house at the side of the bus station, a middle size bus, two bus taxies and two more boats, I find myself mesmerised inside Kong Lo Cave. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey, they say and rightly so. But for me Kong Lo is unlike any other destination.
We enter the cave by motor boat. Seven kilometres long, the ground of the cave is mostly covered with clear, cold spring water. As the darkness swallows us the air smells musty but feels fresh after the angry heat of the jungle. Our two local guides glide us through the waters without words and it’s easy to imagine a world of ghosts, untouched by the sun. But the loud rumble of the motor boat keeps my thoughts from being spirited away by the timeless phantoms that rule this motionless stone kingdom. The roof of the cave rises and falls from a few meters to unknown darkness but there is little echo. Our guides’ head torches cast arched lights, like grey scale rainbows across the cave, illuminating otherworldly stone formations that inspire the mind to fly to space. Our shadows are long and our presence is the only movement I sense, made possible only by tiny glimpses of torch light that fight a losing battle against the cave’s eternal night. I emerge back into our world my eyelids glued to the back of my eyes from awe. The sun is blinding and my pink, fake Ray Bans are stuck in my hair. Untangling myself with my eyes closed I savour the moment of having seen something miraculous, something I didn’t know existed.
Afterwards the two of us walk in silence to a nearby village of maybe ten houses and ask for a home stay. A woman – her name sounds like C’mon – who lives in a large bamboo hut built on stilts, agrees to take us in. With no one in this village speaking English we quickly befriend the lanky limbed children lifting and throwing them in the air our three languages, Lao, English and Finnish mixing with giggles of joy that we all understand. In the evening after a mushroom and grasshopper curry on the hut floor the granddad, Mr Muoang, brings out a bottle of something strong and an old, tattered envelope that holds treasured photos. Elina smiles, “my dad would’ve had an envelope with memorabilia just like that too.”
We leave early the next morning repeating khorp jai, thank you. The heat has been replaced by welcome rain clouds that circle the mountains and verdant jungle. Ahead of us lingers another day on the bus, this time to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. My mind wonders on the cave, on village life, on Christophe’s words. Inundated with new influences, experiences and ideas we are in a state of constant change. But we look for permanence in patterns and routines that we recognise as familiar – the way village life is the same here as it is in Mongolia, the way the rains always melt the haze of the heat one drop at a time, the way dads everywhere cherish envelopes filled with warm memories. The only way to transform gracefully is to concentrate on what is permanent. Well, in my case gracefully might be an overstatement but let’s say less clumsily.
