An ethnography of memory in the secret valleys of the Himalayas : sacred topographies of mind in two Beyul pilgrimages

And so, acknowledging that the phenomenal experience of a pilgrim whilst travelling through/to Beyul starts from an 'anamnestic attitude,' in this chapter I want to explore these hidden valleys as a tradition of memory work. I pick up on the ways that memories disrupt the perception of place in the Terma tradition and, conversely, are evoked and transmuted by those disruptions. Further, I seek to engage with the Terma tradition's peculiar range of what Olick (2008) refers to as 'retrospective products, practices, and processes' that could otherwise be masked beneath the generalising notion of 'tradition' or 'collective memory.' And to do this, I draw on auto-ethnographic experiences of pilgrimage routes predominantly to the Langtang Valley (recognised as the location of Beyul Dagam Namgo [Tib. zla gam gnam sgo]) and to a lesser degree the valley of the Melamchi Ghyang (revered as the location of the Yolmo Beyul). These are contextualised by the few published Neyig and commentaries.